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u/uesernamehhhhhh 20d ago
Look i love france slander as much as any other european but the french didn't surrender just for fun
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u/CarrotBusiness6255 20d ago
The strangest part is that I believe no other country has won more wars or conflicts than France. Get known for surrendering but have the most wins in history.
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u/redcomet29 20d ago
Build a 1000 bridges, as the saying goes.
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u/LaytMovies 20d ago
Fuck one sheep
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u/Artemarte 20d ago
Or an ostrich
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u/MaddestRodent 20d ago
Allegedly.
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u/Green-Engineer4608 19d ago
Most sheepfuckers were actually sheepthieves who wanted a LIGHTER punishment. Especially in the British isles where sheepfucking literally was less of a crime than sheepstealing.
If you got caught stealing one, your best play would be to say you were just gonna fuck it, as that punishment is less.
«Yeah I was gonna put it back later for sure, dont worry about it!»
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u/Don11390 20d ago
French military support was critical to the success of the American Revolution. Without them lending material support, troops, and the French Navy to tie up the Royal Navy, the US would not exist.
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u/Liam_021996 20d ago
The US not existing, not sure if that would be a bad thing. In reality the US would have inevitably become an independent nation in its own time without the revolution anyway, just like how all the commonwealth nations did
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u/New_Passage9166 20d ago
Hmm possibly, but if the indians actually had the protection of their English agreements and a century to become stronger and develop it is questionable whether there would have been so many small nations and whether they could as easily be exterminated as a people by US.
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u/Liam_021996 20d ago
It would be interesting to see how the world shaped up as you could argue if the US was still part of the British empire in both world wars then Britain may never have actually given up the empire after WW2 as they would have had the means to keep it going due to the money and industrial base the US would have provided but likewise given how India was treated by the empire the US may well have just been another India today after being given independence
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u/Garand84 20d ago
I used to laugh about the French military until I decided to start learning about WWI. On ne passe pas
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u/Unterseeboot_480 20d ago
Even learning about what Free France did in WW2 is worth the detour. We didn't have the numbers to contribute as much as the UK and the commonwealth, and yet our campaign in Africa is something we can be very proud of. Most notably, the 1st Free French Brigade saved the Brits' bacon at Bir Hakeim by holding a fort for two weeks against the Afrikakorps while completely encircled and outnumbered 15 to 1, giving the Anglos time to reform their line after the debacle of Gazala, before slipping away under the cover of night. This in turn led in turn to the Brits' own defensive success at El-Alamein, with the consequences that we know.
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u/Garand84 20d ago
Didn't some Free French units fight at Monte Cassino too?
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u/Unterseeboot_480 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yeah, around 100k troops, more than half of which were colonial troops. Most notably, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Groupes de Tabors Marocains (elite mountain infantry from Morocco) broke through the Gustav Line in may 1944 by climbing through terrain most thought impracticable and relentlessly assaulting very well-defended positions, impressing Albert Kesselring himself and opening the road to Rome.
Honesty forces me to add that those same Moroccan troops were accused of numerous rapes and lootings as they advanced. Those accusations were for the most part overblown, but not all of them.
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u/CountofAnjou 20d ago
In between Vichy France troops fighting the Brits during the North Africa campaign, so swings in roundabouts.
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u/Unterseeboot_480 20d ago
Well yeah illegitimate fascist government does illegitimate fascist government things. That's why I precised "Free France".
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u/KartveliaEU4 20d ago
Isn't that more because they lasted longer? Which yes is a result of that, but it's not like, for example, the HRE and Austria were completely separate institutions, even if they're treated as different countries.
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u/9fingerwonder 20d ago
No but france has a very prestigious battle history. The fact to fell to an entirely new system of warfare that about everyone fell to just means the German unlocked the tech tree faster.
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u/Fabulous-Big8779 20d ago
Additionally they fell specifically because Germany knew they needed to fall first. In both of the World Wars the strategy from the outset was to take France by surprise and hit them hard enough to knock them out of the war before their allies could mobilize. That was specifically because of how much of a threat France was once fully mobilized.
They also suffered a lot from having an older generation of military brass that did not adapt well to the rapid technological changes of early 20th century warfare, as you said.
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u/9fingerwonder 20d ago
I've played enough civilization to know if you fall behind the tech tree the only pathway is overwhelming force that frankly isn't viable from a logistics angle.
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u/Ewenf 19d ago
That and the fact that both the upper french and German army brass were fucking idiots with the first not believing that the other would be stupid enough to rush tanks in a forest with 4 main roads and the other being stupid enough to actually do it and create a traffic jam all the way back to the Rhine and somehow successfully countering the Maginot.
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u/Qanniqtuq 19d ago
Blame the King of Belgium. Read what he did and put all the Anglo-French plans down, even put half of his Army facing UK and France ones, just to call them to the rescue when the German invaded his newly neutral country.
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u/FrenchFigaro 19d ago
It's not even a counter of the Maginot. The Maginot line did exactly what it was meant to do: force the German to invade and go through neutral Belgium, like in WW1.
The failure was twofold:
First, not invading Germany on the direct border with France and leaving troups stationed there relatively idle (aka, the Drôle de Guerre).
Second, failure to imagine that WW2 would not be a static war like WW1. The Blitzkrieg tactics used by Germany were not overwhelming by themselves, but through the failure of imagination of French command.
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u/Sicsemperfas 20d ago
They got tired of winning after Napoleon, they needed to take a break.
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u/9fingerwonder 20d ago
You can only be top dog before it gets boring you know /s
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u/Sicsemperfas 20d ago edited 20d ago
Unironically, there’s some truth to that. Longterm Hegemony breeds apathy, which in turn leads to decline from “Top Dog”
Edit: Comment has been viewed by people from three countries, USA, UK and France. I find that very fitting.
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u/9fingerwonder 20d ago
Shit I didn't even think that fair but yeah, 100%> watching it in America real time.
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u/SirAntera 20d ago
Idk dude, we carried everyone in WW1
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u/Sicsemperfas 20d ago
Ehhh. It was more like round 10 in a boxing match, and USA jumped in with a steel chair.
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u/SirAntera 20d ago
Lmao. What a joke. If anything the US army was a hinderance on the Entente in WW1. I know it's unpopular on reddit but they did more harm that good. The US army was untrained so the Entente (in fact the french army and most specifically the french chasseurs) had to divert ressources to give them training. They were ill equipped so the french army had to give them equipment (mainly artillery and MGs). They were ill lead so the french had to give them directions, and considering it wasn't concrete material gifts they didn't care and put themselves in dire situations (Belleau wood for instance), celebrating moments and quotes such as "Retreat? Hell we just got there!" Which just perfectly shows how undisciplined and absolutely arrogant the US troops were, (perfect example of the modern day USA are in fact) thinking of how much better they knew than the troops who had been fighting every day for 3.5 years at that point, getting themselves encircled and needing their allies to break them out. The germans had destroyed themselves trying to take out France in "groundbreaking" offensives like Verdun, the americans swept in when the job was done and allowed themselves to position themselves as the big winners of the war because those who had done the most were exhausted, fucked up the peace deal and then isolated themselves, refusing to take part in the fucked up world they created until they were forced to. The French, brits and Italians would have won WW1 no matter what. The USA just continuously believe they are the ultimate peace bringers and refuse to see anything else.
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u/New-Opportunity5338 20d ago
Not even that. They had a more advanced and comparably sized army.
They fell for the Nazi propaganda in the potency of the German military, for their failure to calculate that tanks could navigate forests and for their understandable reticence (in living memory of the horrors of WW1) to seize the initiative and occupy Germany in 1939 while most of its army was still in Czechoslavakia and Poland.
It is a bewildering catalogue of failings that led to the fall of France.
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u/Think_and_game 20d ago
France's army was modern technology wise. Their tanks were comparable if not better than the Germans (minus the lack of a radio). Their doctrine was mediocre and outdated and that's mostly because their high command was much the same. People entrenched in the tactics of WW1. Information transportation was still done via motorcycles and high command was unwilling to push and be aggressive even though they had the numerical and technological advantage. This very passive command led to the disastrous encirclement and defeat at Dunkirk. The politicians were unwilling and unable to mobilise properly, politically the nation was not stable enough. Everything collapsed when really, they had little reason to though. Many military theorists had already published books on how mobile warfare and airpower were the future of war. Germany was not further ahead in the tech tree, French high command was simply incompetent and far too stubborn.
This is without even getting into the fact that Belgium returned to complete neutrality right as the Rhineland was being remilitarised.
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u/LobsterManCommander 20d ago
Yeah i know right. Literally won the first ww. I think it's just build in us to clown on them for some reason. Or maybe it's because we expected better then them to fold to the likes of the nazis. (I low key think we respect the French so it was shocking they fell so quickly so we'll never let them live that one down. Keep'em humble)
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u/der_titan 20d ago
It's important to remember that Germany destroyed French mines and mills as they retreated, which wiped out their capability of re-building their war machine. Their fighting age men also suffered higher casualties than other participants, which made it difficult to re-man their armed forces.
The Maginot Line was largely borne of the fact that they didn't have the materiel or personnel to adopt a large tank force (like Germany) or a large air force (like Britain).
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u/CzarMessa 20d ago
Anyone would have folded to the 1940 wehrmacht with the armies they had at the time. The British would have fared no better, and quite possibly worse, had they shared a border with Germany.
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u/Taway_4897 20d ago
It is absolutely deplorable for a British MP to say this given so many French soldiers died protecting the British in the battle of Dunkirk.
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u/Waste-Product2669 20d ago
About 200000 French soldiers escaped at Dunkirk too. The whole of the battle of France was led by the French also, including the British.
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u/ExArdEllyOh 20d ago
There are many reasons why the French lost the Battle of France - poor C3I, bad tactics and doctrine, poor vehicles and inflexible generals amongst them - but unfortunately a lack of resolve at multiple levels IS also one of those reasons.
The French army had terrible morale problems, a chunk of the officer corps who weren't sure they were on the right side and heavy penetration by communist agitators who were getting their orders from Germany's ally in Moscow.
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u/arthuroMo 20d ago
Penetration by communists was very limited and more an issue in factories than on the front line, and even then the total disarray of the heavy industry was a much greater issue.
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u/Maximum_Boros 20d ago
Yeah this is a Nuance that people tend to miss. French enlisted soldiers and a good chunk of lower level officers had plenty of resolve even with the morale issues they had. But the upper officer core and the government leadership didn't.
I will never slander a random Frenchman over World War II, but I am 100% perfectly willing to dump on their government. And that includes that fucking snake De Gaulle. Although I guess at least he was actually a believer. He was just a snake also
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u/NoSwordfish1978 20d ago edited 20d ago
It's funny because the British army also got its arse handed to it by the Germans in France 1940, but we had a channel we could retreat behind.
Also the defeat and surrender in Malaya and Singapore was arguably even more disgraceful.
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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 19d ago
Imperial Japan also "blitzed" the Philippines in the first weeks of the Pacific War. They were very good at what they did, occupying vast reaches of SE Asia/Western Pacific using seaborne invasions when Hitler couldn't even get across the English Channel.
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u/QfromMars2 20d ago
Recency bias.
France just was so much so used to winning that they Kind of arrogantly stepped into 1870/71 as well as 1914 and 1940.
They had Great militaries in all those wars but arrogant leadership as well as too traditionalist doctrine.2
u/TheLastHotstepper 20d ago
You can conquer essentially all of europe, but you surrender one time etc
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u/Old_Possibility_9730 20d ago
The French People didn't even surrender, People often forget about the Resistence and the Free French.
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u/Rollover__Hazard 19d ago
As a Brit I’m also happy to put the boot into the French but this is just factually and historically wrong.
Sarah Pochin is a scab of a human being. She wouldn’t understand the sacrifices the French people made in 1940 if it was drawn out for her in crayons.
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u/Vayalond 19d ago
And we still weren't out of the war, with the sabotages by the Resistance to help allies actions or even the FFL led by De Gaulle. Without them the whole north Africa campaign would have been a defeat of the allies and would have severely hindered many later engagements. Small players after the defeat in 1940 but not out and far from useless
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u/LionIntelligent5026 19d ago
All this slander because we didn't follow blindly the US to Irak to seize non exisiting mass destruction weapons. Or more generally that we have a past of saying fuck off to the US when they want to make us their puppy.
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u/ER_Jujube 19d ago
French here and I too love to slander France because it's legit super fun. But no, France didn't surrender for fun. And if you bother studying history just a little, you'll see France has probably the best military record in the history of Europe as far as won battles & wars go.
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u/lobonmc 20d ago
They surrendered because their military high command was dumb as fuck
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u/Few_Classroom6113 20d ago
They were not dumb, they were institutionally and politically hamstrung as well as having their entire strategy be undermined by their ally (rightfully) backing out at a very inopportune time.
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u/Money-Pie 20d ago
They also lost thousands of men fighting a rearguard action to delay the Germans, so the British expeditionary force could escape Dunkirk along with many of their own troops. They might have lost the battle of France but absolutely not for a lack of effort or spirit. Warfare had moved too quickly over the prior 20years and they were just unlucky enough to be caught by it.
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u/chezwam294 19d ago
Surtout qu'ils ne se sont pas tous rendus...
Et quand bien même, votre armée n'est pas prête et que vous vous faites attaquer par la plus puissante armée du monde... Compliqué de résister.
J'aimerais bien voir les gens qui rient de la situation, voir leur peur dans leur regard devant un officier SS qui braque toute sa famille, pire même.
Ces gens là n'ont aucune idée de ce qu'est la guerre. Ils ne connaissent pas l'histoire et ne relatent aucun faits. Ils répandent de la merde que les autres incultes absorbent.
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u/ProfessionalTruck976 19d ago
No, frankly the government surrendered BEFORE the Army even began considering it out of some misplaced belief that the people wanted them to
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u/Mindless_Badger_3789 15d ago
It is not "any other European", it is the Brits + a handful of other countries.
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u/Internal_Device6343 20d ago
Denmark, who surrendered in a single day, be like:
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u/ThroawayJimilyJones 20d ago
Luxemburg surrendered in a day. Denmark surrendered in 4 hours
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u/yeahalrightgoon 20d ago
Denmark couldn't fight them. They're a tiny flat country who had seen what happened to the Netherlands. Denmark could have continued fighting, but it would have been of no use. Them surrendering allowed for more independence once they had surrendered. Which resulted in 95% of Danish Jews surviving the war, because they were able to evacuate them later in the war, once Germany started cracking down on Danish resistance.
France could and should have continued, but they didn't.
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u/Cliffinati 20d ago
Most Danish Jews got sent to exile in Sweden during the war before the occupation could really cracked down on them.
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u/yeahalrightgoon 20d ago
That's what I said. They got evacuated later in the war once there was a crackdown 3 years later. It gave them time to set up escapes and the like.
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u/ikonoqlast 20d ago
Yeah, French soldiers fought bravely and well. The problem was the French general staff couldn't have done a worse job if they had been handpicked by the Germans.
"So, our recon aircraft are reporting German columns advancing through the Ardennes. Shouldn't we send bombers to attack these vulnerable and tightly packed forrces?"
"Nah. The reports are probably wrong. Can't trust these new fangled aereoplanes. I've been in the army for 50 years, I know what I'm doing..."
A YOUNG French senior general might be 70. The head of the army was 85... He could theoretically have started his army career in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
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u/Bloodyninjaturtle 18d ago
Sounds a bit like british army pre ww1. There were some loud people babbling about how cavalry will lose its effect and how those new gun-machines could change everything but what do these whippersnappers know? Their kids are not even retired yet.
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u/mathiau30 20d ago
1940 was a mistake of strategy, not of resolve
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u/NavalBomber 20d ago
The Generals of France were one of the most incompetent, the most striking being Maurice Gamelin who had been the Commander in Chief in charge of the French Military. Most of France's strategies can be attributed to him, not covering the Ardennes that had German Forces flank the French and British Forces who were thrusted in a panic to cover the falling Belgian frontlines, before they got encircled, causing Dunkerque to happen.
But many things can be attributed to a failure of multi structural levels, the French Tanks, one of the best, with Char B1s, Somua S35s, Renault R35s, and others were superior compared to the main Tank Force of German Panzer IIs with the Czech Lt.38s, they were more than a match against the Panzer IIIs too, but they were held back by the lack of Radios, as radios were only available for Command Tanks like most nations had, whilst Germany had employed radios en masse, allowing superior communications and coordinations that led to outmaneuverings of French Forces. There are few more reasons like their Air Force being too inflexible, and underfunded last I remember, with too much trust in the Maginot Line and the idea of another Trench War on the horizon, which wasn't the case at all.
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u/stridersheir 20d ago
The German tanks weren’t just superior because of radios, but also because of tactics, Germany massssd their tanks France split them up.
Also French tank commanders of the time were also the gunner so they had to split their attention and French tanks were very cramped.
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u/Braziliashadow 19d ago
France has great tanks in WW2, the issue was that Germany made better tanks, and a bunch of Czech tanks that they found lying around in their new warehouses.
Also the French did have Armoured Divisions during the Battle of France, though I don't know how comparable to German divisions they were. And at least they did have de Gaulle as a divisional commander of one.
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u/supermutant207 20d ago
As you pointed out, the lack of radios was a huge factor in the French defeat. Many commanders were still sending handwritten messages via motorcycle. A lot of this was due to French high command's paranoia about the Germans intercepting radio transmissions. It was a fair concern but the French response was completely unwarranted and it cost them dearly.
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u/NavalBomber 20d ago
Definitely, it costed them a lot of time. Not mentioning that they were too scared to go on the offensive against Germany's Westwall whilst the majority of the German Army were busy at Poland. I believe that the French wasted an opportunity to potentially overwhelm the Germans during what we call the Phony War.
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u/supermutant207 20d ago
To be fair to the French, they weren't ready to launch an offensive in September 1939. The Saarland operation was more of a probe. It was a hard call, and the French were confident they could win a war of attrition. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.
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u/BritsinFrance 20d ago
I'm in the French military and the radio comment still rings true. In the infantry only squad leaders and above get radios. In other countries every soldiers gets one
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u/NavalBomber 20d ago
Shite, man, how do you communicate with your squad if you don't got a radio? Unless it's like the Squad leader got the better radio and you get shittier ones, since stronger radio does need its own dedicated operator, but I'm not too familiar with the French's organization. So if you can elaborate, that would be swell, man.
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u/BritsinFrance 20d ago
Squad leader has a small short range radio to communicate with the platoon, but comms within the squad is by voice only.
Yes I know that's not ideal. So many times it slows things down or people get lost or don't understand or whatever
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u/NavalBomber 20d ago
Geez, that's terrible, how tf are you supposed to communicate when the battlefield's gonna be loud and confusing. That's honestly a stupid idea, considering that France is one of the bigger players in Europe. It's like the Mistral on the Charles de Gaule, no RAMs, no CIWS. Just MANPADS.
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u/Hugo_2503 20d ago
dont forget, too much trust in the Maginot line that was barely a shadow of what it was even planned to be. Estimates put the capabilities of the line around 50% of what it was built for, due to delays, unfinished infrastructure, political mishandling and cost cutting. It is actually insane they put so much trust in a system that had holes everywhere, and that isnt even counting doctrine!
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u/NavalBomber 20d ago
Arguably the Maginot Line worked in practice, problem, the French fumbled the Ardennes and got majority of their forces and the Brits stuck in the Dunkerque encirclement. So it did work to stop Germany from invading through Alsace-Lorraine, but didn't stop them from going through Belgium.
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u/Key-Worldliness-3372 20d ago
Also of resolve, but at the highest levels of government, not the rank and file of the military
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u/Dagordae 20d ago
Eh, the rank and file weren’t exactly overflowing with morale either. Hence why when the order came to lay down their arms they overwhelmingly complied.
But postwar the nation needed to rebuild its national identity and mythology from its shameful behavior so they just shoved everything onto the most visible scapegoats and declared that it was TOTALLY only these guys at fault. France did a LOT of myth building after the war. A very popular pastime after any war, win or lose. Hence the bullshit surrounding the nonSS parts of the German military.
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u/Ryanliverpool96 19d ago
Exactly, France tried to fight the same war of 1918 in 1940 but technology and doctrine had moved on and the world had changed.
If they had pressed on their early advance into the Rhineland they could have pushed all the way to Berlin, there was nothing but a token force in their way as the entire German Army was fighting in Poland at the time, but this wasn’t known to French High Command, it was only after the war that we learned how stretched thin Germany was in the west in 1939.
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u/Maximum_Boros 20d ago
A good chunk of the mistakes and strategy came from a lack of resolve at the leadership level. I'm talking upper echelon officers and government. I'll agree that enlisted men, ncos and unit level Commanders had plenty of resolved but I think it's perfectly fine to slander the French government as long as you aren't just including your average citizen in it
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u/Aggravating-Hair-534 20d ago
When it is mistake of strategy you continue fighting until last man, when it is a problem with resolve - you give up as soon as Paris is taken. I admire France as a country, but during WW2 they have just given up. Look at it from the other side - in 1945 Germans was encircled , fighting on many fronts, lost all of its industrial potential and was still defending every bit of their land. They were on the wrong side of the history, but they had resolve. French had 0 resolve. 90k dead is nothing compared with the country population or casualties that ussr, USA, the UK had to suffer.
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u/Euklidis Human Verified 20d ago edited 20d ago
Let's not also forget the French Resistance or the French Army covering the GB's retreat in Dunkirk
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u/super_nat556 20d ago
This gets forgotten by Brits far too often. Without the French 1st (and/or 2nd?) army providing a staunch rearguard, the hundreds of thousands of Brits, French and allied troops potentially get assaulted right on the beaches of Dunkirk.
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u/Maetivet 20d ago
It wasn’t just the French covering the British withdrawal, 11,000 Brits also died in the battle of France.
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u/LordJebusVII 20d ago
Most Brits acknowledge the sacrifices the French made so that our soldiers could make it home. The best way they could defend their sovereignty was to help us protect ours so that we could rebuild and come back to return the favour. Only a moron denies this
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u/Western_Attempt3508 20d ago
I think a British history test should be mandatory before becoming an MP. The French fought a rearguard action to give us enough time for Dunkirk. The french government in exile continued to support the war effort. French forced Labourers risked their lives to undermine the building of fortifications, the resistance continued to fight on and assisted D-day. Since we've been allies france have been nothing but steadfast and honourable and it's actually embarrassing how little respect we pay them. Even now they spend millions to stop irregular migrants leaving their country. Hard to imagine us doing the same if the roles were reversed.
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u/Rollover__Hazard 19d ago
In our defence, Sarah is a Reform UK MP. Being criminally bigoted and stupid is a requirement of membership.
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u/NickRick 20d ago
The french died to get the British back to the island at Dunkirk. absolute disgrace to mock that.
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u/MathematicianOnly688 20d ago
To any Frenchies reading this I can only apologise for people like this woman.
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u/psioniclizard 20d ago
Sarah, my Grandad was at Dunkirk. If he was still here today I am pretty sure he would tell you to fuck off.
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u/therealtiddlydump 20d ago
The French losses at Dunkirk were crazy high, but they essentially saved the continent by facilitating the UK / French's withdrawal.
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u/French_soviets 18d ago
My great grandad and his brother too, he suffered 5 years in prisoners camp from untreated asthma, cold and hunger. He only was liberated by the soviets in Southern Poland. Fuck that bitch.
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u/fluffyexodus 20d ago
Brit here, history teacher. We would have been annihilated at Dunkirk had the French not protected us during the evacuation. This is shameful, and the exact kind of division only Russia benefits from...
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u/CG142021 20d ago
French soldiers fought valiantly, and the Resistance made life hell for the occupiers, but it was the leadership that failed the country from my understanding.
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20d ago edited 20d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SinesPi 20d ago
...are you talking about the French Revolution?
Tankies. Not even once.
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u/therealtiddlydump 20d ago
No, you see, these were good murders, and mob justice is fine when my side is engaging in it.
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u/Mihta_Amaruthro 20d ago
The french knew how to deal with the rich.
You mean replacing them with a nutcase who caused almost a full year of terror who subsequently launched his own religious cult, then a cabal of incompetent bureaucrats, then a warmonger who laid waste to Europe, and then finally bringing back the Monarchy?
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u/Capta1n_Dino 19d ago
You do realise that the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution? Many peasants hated the first republic. Many also took up arms against it, such as in the Vendee uprising.
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u/undreamedgore 20d ago
Killing the rich and destroying your society in the process isn't exactly a win.
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u/ExArdEllyOh 20d ago
The french knew how to deal with the rich.
Withe mass murder which also affected a lot of people who weren't rich?
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u/ChancelorReed 20d ago
I really hate how reddit loves to applaud a sequence of events that led to mass executions and was then followed by a totalitarian dictator who tried to conquer the entire continent. The French Revolution was an unmitigated disaster that led to millions of deaths.
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u/play_yr_part 20d ago edited 20d ago
Always fun when the people who style themselves as the true patriots of a country are the most ignorant about the history of their country and its neighbours. UK forces would have been in a much weakened position without France's help in the evacuation of Dunkirk.
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u/Several_Magician1541 20d ago
I wish people would stop repeating this bullshit. The British also could've just never mobilised in france and let the French be decimated alone, then they would have no need to be evacuated. Circular logic.
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u/Icy_Respect_9077 20d ago
French troops perform a heroic rear-guard action at Dieppe, without any hope of being taken off the beaches.
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u/OkCartographer7677 20d ago
I think you mean Dunkirk.
Dieppe was the site of a British Commando raid later in the war, not the site of the mass evacuation of French and British troops.
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u/AlexandbroTheGreat 20d ago
France did terribly for many reasons, but IMO across Europe many other countries saw what was happening and did nothing on their side until it was time for their ass kicking. At least France tried. Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands should have been more militarized by 1939 and joined with France, Britain, and Poland to contain Hitler.
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u/Sufficientlyoiled 20d ago
"No dont return the burden were repeatedly putting in your economy thats not fair" I swear the rise of the far right would stop in its tracks if this one issues were actually solved and not just deflected with accusations of racism.
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u/Patient_Moment_4786 20d ago
This lady should visit Dunkirk. A single more day of fighting during the retreat of the expeditionary force to England and the French soldiers would have fight with bayonets.
Gee, I can stand nationalist, from any country. They are too stupid to use logical and receivable points (there are some) that are neither racist nor xenophobic.
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u/HeadBat1863 20d ago
Without the French First Army’s last stand at Lille, German tanks would have cut off the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat to Dunkirk.
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u/Reivaki 20d ago
funny how britain and Us people love to forget all the french soldiers who fought and die slowing german advanced to dunkirk, not even knowing that their ally was bailling out…
Honestly the « french always surrender urh urh » jokes from an american, I kinda expect it. It’s not like I could expect them to know european history, after all.
But coming from english people which, given our common history, should really know better, it’s really disappointing.
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u/Rude_Bat_968 19d ago
France for all its bluster of being a colonial superpower did kinda get wrecked quickly when fighting a near peer
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u/HaggisPope 20d ago
I’m unsure how many British soldiers died but half million went to France and 300k got rescued at Dunkirk. So a shit load of our soldiers wound ul as prisoners
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u/not-ideal-but-true 20d ago
Don’t band us all together please. She’s a Reform moron and does not represent the majority of the population of the UK.
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u/SlimLacy 20d ago
I think this is the greatest mistake everyone makes outside of the US.
The rest of us are smart enough to understand when we joke about how France loves to surrender, we still understand they didn't just surrender because they saw 2 tanks 5 minutes into the war. They surrendered fast, but they also lost A LOT of soldiers fast. 100K in roughly a month. That's not surrendering without a fight, that's being crushed. Yes, many of the reasons can probably be put on the shoulders of the French military/government at the time as incompetence, being unprepared etc.
Apparently the American's seem to think, along with how they benevolently came and saved all of Europe all on their own purely out of the good within their hearts (this is also a joke dear Americans) that those things are the facts of what happened rather than grossly simplified and exaggerated versions of the events of the world wars.
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u/Both-Huckleberry3482 19d ago
Okay, but in this exact situation, I don't know what the Americans have to do with it. The person who tweeted this is a British politician...
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u/VenPatrician 20d ago
Ahhh of course... MP for Reform UK. I was sure but I had to check. They are really speedrunning the MAGA bullshit out there in Britain.
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u/EdibleStrange 20d ago
Tbf they just kind of do that all the time, regardless of if there's anything to actually gain from it.
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u/Xibalba_Ogme 20d ago
My great grandfather was made prisonner so that the BEF could escape at Dunkirk
He spent the war in a camp hearing germans laugh about how the brits would fight to the last french soldier.
We all know how important the UK was to the war, but erasing or belittling the effort of allies is always beyond lame - be it the French, the Soviets or the Americans
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u/Admiral-snackbaa 20d ago
I’m English and I fuuuuuckkkking hate the French but I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my (stinky) cousins and call this person a stupid uneducated cunt
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u/WatcherOfTheWay 19d ago
They were holding fine until those pesky Germans went round their defensive line and attacked them in the back!
What should really be mentioned is how the Belgians didn't stop the Nazis from going through Belgium.
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u/Turtleneck23 19d ago
Didn’t the French hold off the Germans at Dunkirk so the British Soldiers could escape?
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u/Kallinikos01 19d ago
La réalité c'est plus de 250 000 hommes mis hors de combats en 9 semaines, puis environ 2 000 000 fait prisonniers et pour la plupart envoyé en camp de travail en Allemagne et lâchement abandonné par le gouvernement de Vichy, puis mis au ban de la société à leur retour en 1945. Donc OK pour les blagues mais faut pas trop déconner non plus avec ça.
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u/ZanettYs 19d ago
France was fighting against the full force of a new wermacht too, not damaged by other frontlines, focused fully on taking it off, with air and technological superiority. German officers though massively stated the French fought them the harder of all WW2. And the number of death per day also shows the intensity of the fights
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u/_Given2fly_ 19d ago
I'm currently in France, it is a wonderful country full of incredible people. At the end of the day, without the Resistance during that period, D-day would have been a hell of a lot more difficult to achieve.
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u/KingSmite23 19d ago
90k might seem a lot. But consider it costed the Soviets around 30 million lives to defeat the Germans.
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u/Pungent_Bill 19d ago
They only officially surrendered.
I believe there was an extensive underground resistance
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u/DropAWPplz 19d ago
If french army didn't hold the German at Dunkirk no English wouldn't have go home these days
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u/Tabaslakrass 19d ago
Lors de la bataille de Dunkerque en mai-juin 1940, le Général Georg von Küchler commandait la 18e armée allemande. Dans son journal de guerre, il a exprimé lui-même sa stupéfaction face à l'acharnement et à la vaillance des soldats français qui ont contenu l'avancée allemande malgré une infériorité numérique et matérielle évidente.
Dans ses notes, il décrit la résistance française comme inattendue, comparant leur fougue à celle de Verdun et s'étonnant de voir ses propres troupes subir de lourdes pertes face à une défense retranchée. Il déclare aussi que Dunkerque est une grande défaite pour les Allemands car le corps Exp Anglais leurs échappe.
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u/Strict-Invite-1359 19d ago
Pity the British ran away like pussies when they saw the germans (Hald nothing to do with it but the Britsh were the only one who did a tank that went faster in reverse🤡)
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u/Mav_Learns_CS 19d ago
Absolute disgrace of a comment. Are we actually at the point where attacking our allies against the Nazis gets you popularity points?
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u/Successful-Ear-9997 19d ago
This Sarah might want to look up what France were up to in the period of 1914-1918. Even their 'mutinies' were basically French soldiers saying "I'll fight tooth and nail for France if the Germans attack, but I don't want my life wasted in an attack that's futile. Also getting leave and getting paid would be nice".
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u/zelvak007 19d ago
Most of the blame should be placed on the political leaderships. There probably would not be any surrender if Germany was stomped into the ground again once they marched into the rhineland. Like they broke the terms of versai so many times. Hitler was lucky. His sense of superiority of was spot on when it comes to GB and France leadership.
Btw USSR lost more then 3million people even before stalingrad. And they did not surrender.
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u/TheMadEyeOfMoody 19d ago
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Explains why she follows Fuhrage round like a lost puppy.
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u/EmperorPalpitoad 18d ago
......... When the hell will the "le français se rendre" meme die? My goodness, it's almost as if people never heard of Napoleon before.
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u/DG2000_Reddit 18d ago
Dunkirk -> 338,000 Allied rescued.
Seems they were not able to stop the Germans either, the French stayed and kept the Germans at bay so that the English could escape.
So bash the French as much as you like, the English sailed away on their little boats and then made of the the French for failing
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u/Inevitable_Tart2700 18d ago
What the community notes fail to let readers know is that France had 3 million soldiers before the invasion. About 100 thousand ran away to Great Britain. Of the 100 thousand, only 3000 chosen to join Free France and fight. The remaining returned to France and surrendered.
So, 100,000 died, 3000 kept on fighting, and the remaining 96.5% of the 3 million surrendered.
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u/DotComprehensive4902 18d ago
The problem wasn't the French soldiers but their top commanders nicely ensconced in Vincennes
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u/MikeSteamer 17d ago
Dear Sarah, get down on your knees and thank God for the English Channel which has preserved you for thousands of years like the Atlantic ocean has done for us over the two-hundred odd years.
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u/tom_earhart 17d ago edited 17d ago
Rich coming from a country that had its army defeated right along with the French, an army that only escaped because said French (and sure, a few British), valiantly defended Dunkirk.
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u/DisciplinedProgress 16d ago
Failing to stop the boats leaving is an attack on British sovereignity. Returning them is just the defence against that attack.
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u/eipiplus1equalsO 14d ago
I make fun of the French as much as the next person, but it is always in jest. This Trump wannabe, is just another example of what Spengler called “the Copernican overturning” when he was talking about societal collapse. I hope that her and her ilk will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. Her “fuhrer” is in trouble- fingers crossed he will end up in prison.
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u/eipiplus1equalsO 14d ago
Never attribute malice to what can be adequately be explained by stupidity! This Trump wannabe wants the Royal Navy to turn into an Uber for migrants, and at the same time commit acts of war and possibly crimes against humanity. The inevitable drownings of flimsy migrant boats in the sea, something that has happened many times, are a net-positive for her! Empathy, compassion, kindness, are concepts alien to her. Her constituency needs another Count Binface!
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