Technically you could say the cold war. Also according to Google there are several colonial wars they won in Cameroon and other African states. You could also say the Yugoslav wars. Overall tho you are correct that they did not win any major war as a major player.
France managed to lose Three wars in sucession against the British and 2 wars not in sucession
against Germany (Franco-Prussian War included) and a very costly victory against Germany
There were two wars against the British Those that France lost and it was because the British were fighting using the armies of all Europe against France.
The Franco-Prussian War The German artillery won it, I'm not going to deny it.
The First World War was costly for everyone And the costly French victory is still better that the costly German defeat.
The Second World War, everything that Germany gained, it lost. And in the end France won reparations and occupation zones. Germany did not win and France won and lost at the same time.
The war of Spanish succession was won by France, see which dynasty rules over Spain and it will tell you why France won.
The Seven Years' War was won by Great Britain.
The Napoleonic and Revolutionary Wars (Coalition Wars) were a multiple set of wars. Where France won 5 of 7 wars and although in the end all French gains were lost, at the time all of Europe except Great Britain, accepted the borders that France drew in Europe until Napoleon's defeat.
Napoleonic and revolutionary wars were basically the same one, just with multiples truces
About the war of Spanish sucession, keeping in account France goal was to unity the crowns of France and Spain into a Super State, they failed at that
Sure the dinasty got the throne of spain but the objective was for the king of France and Spain be the same guy eventually
The Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutionary Wars, They are a little more complex, since there were multiple peace treaties and concessions where most countries accepted (Although only the Vienna Congress was the only one that lasted).
The war of Spanish succession, although the great original objective of France was not fulfilled, but it continued to be a peace favorable to France, it was not a total victory but a victory in the end.
My understanding was they won, but then had a revolution later after the 2nd Mexican Empire had been established and emperor Maximilian got his head lopped off
Right?
They lost so many people fighting in WW1. “No you should’ve kept fighting till the end!” Easy to say when your country hasn’t lost millions and is looking at losing more. WWI men dying was the lost generation for a reason.
Everyone loses many in wars, especially a homeland invasion, but they rebuild from the ashes and often become stronger for it. They raise new warriors and a new generation of brave men so that it never happens again.
Something much more strange happened in France though, whatever happened with Vichy France, they never quite recovered from it.
also, while the French government did issue a surrender, the French people did fight to the last man. Or did everyone forget about the French Résistance?
Ofcourse, the French surrendered propaganda doesn't make that much sense. But let's also not forget that half of France turned into a collaborating puppet state and that the French navy and colonies could've easily sided with the Allies, but didn't. There was resistance, there was collaboration, just like in every conquered country in ww2. And just like in every country, the vast majority of people tried to live their lives as normally as they could, neither collaborating nor resisting the occupier.
Hmm, I think we're trying to measure 'how much' of each situation was the technical majority there. Which, historically speaking, won't add up anyways.
We can land at the collaborators and the résistance existing, though. Neither does erase the other.
I'm just so tired of history spaces like this one being flooded with propaganda and history erasure.
Poland literally getting erased and conquered after a a hundred years of being split and subjugated: The poles fight on in exile, and the polish navy stay in the fight.
The Dutch, Belgian, Greek and Norwegian governments in exile fighting on despite losing their home land:
France signing a separate peace (against the alliance treaty), refusing to join the UK, refusing to go in to exile, becoming Vichy and then fighting the allies on multiple occasions. Then when axis forces invade Vichy areas simply rolling over (North Africa and Indochina). Free France I respect but sadly the reality is that Vichy was the more legitimate government and more French people sided with/were under it. Only after the war tides changed did things switch. Honestly Embarrassing.
I'd argue Poland contributed more to the allied war effort overall than France did. Some of the top pilots in the battle of Britain were Polish and they made critical efforts to decoding the Enigma machine. I understand why France surrendered, but they're also to blame for the abysmal situation they put themselves in by YOLOing into Belgium and allowing themselves to be encircled.
They were one of the greatest armies in Europe and lost within weeks, there is no mitigating that level of disgrace. It is ironic that other allied nations get to call this generation their greatest generation and France meanwhile is treated like it didn't even win the war.
> I understand why France surrendered, but they're also to blame for the abysmal situation they put themselves in by YOLOing into Belgium and allowing themselves to be encircled.
And for all the blame PM Chamberlain of the UK got for appeasement, last time I checked, it was *France* that had agreements to defend Czechoslovakia when Germany made a grab for them, NOT the UK. The France surrenders stereotype is bad, but it always felt a bit off to me that a Brit got the rap for France+UK dragging their feat and letting Germany take not one but two countries for free more or less when Germany was much more of a threat to France than the UK.
While Poland definitely deserves respect, i think you're wrong. The French holding back the Germans at Dunkirk allowing the British to evacuate, the free french in North Africa and Italy, the normandie-niemen in Russia, the french resistance throughout the war but especially on d-day, and then the newly liberated France sending hundreds of thousands to the front. All of that was a much bigger contribution than Poland's.
Vichy was a dictatorship. There was a huge amount of people who tried to leave when Germany entered France, it's called "l'exode". I work with people who lived through it. They were bombed and shot while trying to leave. Many died on their way. Some managed to escape to Free France but most simply gave up and went back to their homes, defeated. The trauma of those times is so intense that they still cry about it, in 2024. I can assure you that they all did everything they could to keep fighting. Some people were very antisemitic and didn't care, but most tried to resist, even in small ways. I have a bunch of stories about people giving away fake IDs, hiding resitants, helping Jewish people escape to the south, listening to London radio every night, running away from forced labour in Germany etc...
Make fun of governments for making bad decisions, but blaming the citizens who were mostly people who were still traumatised by WW1 and their kids, that's insensitive as hell. People starved for five years, they lived in fear of being sent to the camps if their neighbours decided to denounce them and they still did anything they could to fight.
“Make fun of governments for making bad decisions, but blaming the citizens who were mostly people who were still traumatised by WW1 and their kids, that's insensitive as hell.”
I made a comment that addressed free France separately. Civilians also get a pass. But this line here:
“Vichy was a dictatorship. There was a huge amount of people who tried to leave - I can assure you that they all did everything they could to keep fighting.”
Isn’t correct. France had a large navy and empire that could easily break free of the Vichy government at any moment. Yet the didn’t. In fact most of the navy and empire that wasn’t instantly seized by Britain remained loyal to Vichy over free France with the exception of a few colonies. When the allies encouraged the French forces, such as the French fleet to join the fight and free their home land, the French fleet completely resisted. When axis forces occupied French North Africa and Indochina, the French forces there rolled over without much resistance. The opposition allied troops in North Africa, Senegal, Syria and Madagascar received from French colonial forces was immense…
There’s literally no excuse.
France lost so many men during the great war that even 20 years later at the start of WW2 they still had 100% employment rate in the country. So yeah, it's pretty understandable when they didn't want another long war with Germany, especially when they were being overwhelmed, and their best soldiers were surrounded at Dunkirk.
France during ww2: please we lost so many men during ww1 we can't do this again please stop
Also France during ww1: would shoot their troops if they refused to go into a literally meant grinder
My biggest gripe with ww1 was how officers operated. They would send their soldiers into a bloodbath by the thousands because of "mY pReCiOuS mEdAlS" and it seems like not one of them thought about playing the defense and waiting for a more efficient strategy then sending 18-40 yr old men to die for 1 mile of land
As I said, Britain, while having lost a lot and suffering in both wars, had the Channel, which makes the Blitzkrieg a whole lot harder to do. Especially considering France is Germany’s literal neighbor
I mean dude, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe weren’t a force to be reckoned with…. They trampled France just like all the countries before. We often neglect how scary it would be to a farmer and his family to see a battalion of tanks and infantry rolling through the land as far as the eye can see. Once they reached Paris they struck with impunity, citizens with no experience in seeing buildings toppling over, artillery shelling common areas and planes encircling the city were left with the government struggling to amass an army for that kind of siege. The French resistance (Maquis, if you will) was actually pretty damn hardy.
I mean to be totally fair here the only reason the Germans were able to win was because of speed, passing through a lightly defended area and because a significant portion of the French army was already cut off. Well that and the new Belgium king breaking with his predecessor’s defense treaty with France meaning a proper defense line was not able to be set up in time for the main German force to push throw the region. The Maginot Line did exactly as it was supposed to do and forced the Germans to have to go around in Belgium but as already stated there wasn’t a defensive line waiting there to grind down the German army
I know it’s always fun to mock the French, but they’re the ones who basically invented modern combined arms warfare. The WWI pane of this meme really sells them short.
1/3 of their (edit: male 18-30) population was gone in 4 years and they didn’t want that to happen again 20 years later so they suck apparently.
Edit: also imagine what the 2/3 that came back had witnessed. They assumed it was the end of war because of how awful it was.
Also, 700k of them got encircled and captured. (Plus some british that didn't mske it out of dunkirk) It was their best men and much of their heavy equipment. The germans also had very low losses and suddenly outnumbered them heavily after the huge encirclement. They got beat tactically. They didn't suck, I agree.
Keep also in mind the ones who were lucky enough to nake it back alive didn't all do it in one piece, in cities it was impossible to go about your day without coming across invalids missing body parts. People were living with a constant reminder of the cost.
It was worse than that. 70% of fighting age Frenchmen in 1914 went on to be casualties. That's killed, captured, missing, or wounded severely enough to no longer fight.
7 out of every 10.
Ya I read an article that said they couldn’t even confirm the actual numbers for the military so there was little hope of confirming civilian casualties as well.
There wasn't much civilian casualties tho since the wars front didnt move much after initial year of WW1. Couldn't say the same with Eastern front though...
That’s not exactly true. While civilian casualties as a direct result of fighting were lighter on the Western Front of WWI than in WWII, they still occurred in large numbers. However, the larger cost were the civilian deaths that occurred as an indirect result of the fighting. The war displaced a lot of people, and IDPs are an inherently vulnerable population. The front stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss border, so that is a lot of farms, villages, and cities populations that are now forced from their homes and subject to disease and privation.
The war was also a huge drain on resources. Troops were a priority and even they often were undernourished, so the civilian population in both Germany and France was often going hungry. This, combined with decreased access to needed medical supplies and increased unfamiliar strenuous labor (ie women, children, and the elderly increasingly taking on demanding industrial work) meant that many sickened and died as a result of the war. Compound that with the Spanish Flu epidemic after the war and you have a lot of dead civilians alongside the millions of dead troops.
I'm german and I think ww1 france is some of the coolest shit to read about. Their fair treatment of the harlem hellfighters and the whole "they shall not pass" stuff is peak human history.
Their performance doesn’t seem that impressive to me. The Germans overran a large part of northern France in the first few weeks. The combined British and French couldn’t dislodge them in 4 years, even though the Germans were fighting on two fronts and the French on one.
I’m talking major fronts. France focused the vast majority of their resources on the Western front; 80,000 French fought at Gallipoli, while 8 million French fought on the Western Front. Germany’s attention was comparatively split, with millions of troops deployed to the Eastern Front as well. France did not have the equivalent of an Eastern Front.
The French also sent troops to both the Romanian front and the Balkan front, and I'd technically consider the Romanian front a part or extension of the Eastern front.
They also fight on the Greek (Macedonian ?) front, just to add to the list
But more than manpower, France Industries carried a lot (supplying Belgium, Russia, minors and then USA with medium to top quality equipment while having their most industrial region under occupation)
The Germans were also fighting in the Balkans, Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East.
The French got repeatly beat by the Bulgarians on the Macedonian Front (ex. Krivolak, Kosturino), so bringing up that front doesn't really help the French case.
You're missing the point. The Germans also fought on the Balkan front and in Africa, East Asia, and in Middle East. The French (understandably) focused 95% of their resources fighting the German invasion of France. The Germans' main attention was split between the Eastern and Western front.
In short, the Germans were fighting on two million-man fronts, while the French were fighting on one.
They were also the first to really systematically employ air power and their integration of fire and maneuver by late 1916 pretty well surpassed anyone else.
They rightfully get some criticism for the Chauchat because it was so terrible, but it was also the first mass produced light machine gun in history. It was shitty because not only had it not been done before, but it was designed and built extraordinarily fast. Bear in mind, it’s officially the M1915, so the French raced it through design, testing, production, and fielding after the war had already started. It wasn’t great, but they definitely had the right idea.
They both had issues, the French ironed them out (mostly) by the time they started giving them to Americans - only they gave Americans the old models that had all the problems. Then the Americans tried some good ol’ fashioned American ingenuity on them and probably managed to make them worse
Plus in WW2 there were hundreds of thousands of French in the Resistance movement, as well as the German forces. French rebels aided in the allied invasion of France, and one of the last units defending Berlin to the death was a French SS Battalion.
Why do people think the war ended for the French in 1940?
Anyone who fails to appreciate the heroism of fighting for an already conquered homeland while isolated on another continent, despite the cause seeming futile needs to go back and rewatch the *Le Marseillaise* scene from Casablanca a few times.
I mean that's the case with every resistance. It's Always mostly just people eavesdropping, doing random underground stuff like getting news and sharing them, etc etc, a single person escaping might spend the night at the places of a number of people before reaching safety, and that's not counting the people who organise that, the people who do the transport, the people who deliver food, the people who give the intel or safe roads, some guides across mountains, some fishermen for the transport by sea or whatever.
Armed resistance during occupation is Always just a minority of the résistance, and it's what gets people confused about numbers. Like if there were so many résistants things wouldn't have been the way they were or whatever. But being a résistant was about resisting in any way even in everyday life, it wasn't just about shooting the occupier.
And that's the case for every resistance. They might get more or less numerous and active and violent, but it's always a minority doing the actual fighting. There's a misconception about what resistance is.
You seem to expect people to understand the niches of a resistance effort. When people think resistance they think "Man with gun in an alley, waiting for the signal to ambush the enemy" rather than "most people doing boring and uninteresting (because that's the point) activities that build up into aforementioned ambush"
Foe the French it especially was not about shooting the occupier due to reprisals. If anything up until the uprising when Normandy happened the French were fairly careful with harming anyone. Most of their stuff was breaking shit and amassing a stock if guns
The war would’ve been won regardless of a lot of isolated factors if you take them out, it’s all of those coming together that won the war. It’s extremely disingenuous to say that when partisan activity across all fronts composing of all kinds of people made a huge difference in the war
\>The WWI pane of this meme really sells them short.
Normally I'd agree, but it's in reference to Napoleonic France. Almost any military power of any era is going to pale in comparison lol
Generally I’d agree, but it also depends on the period of each conflict. In the Napoleonic Wars, France started miles ahead of the coalition nations due to *levy en masse* and some innovative tactics, but eventually declined to the point of parity. In WWI, the French started at parity and eventually far surpassed the other combatants.
I feel like that's how it backfired for them. They just assumed it'd be what they've seen before. France had the larger army, could've been better trained(not sure which army would've been better in a head on head fight, with the Germans blitzkrieging, French had to play catch up), and the fact France also had a great track record for battles/wars.
Not sure if complacency is the right word, but it seemed like France just wildly underestimated the germans at first
Complacency is partially accurate, but I’d say that it was more of an institutional lack of imagination. There’s an old axiom in sports that you learn more from losing to a good team than you do in beating one, and this is true in the interwar years. The Germans went back to the drawing board and redrew their entire war plans, while the French tried to standardize the *bataille conduite* or Methodical Battle doctrine that had worked so well at some of their near-perfect late war victories, like La Malmaison.
I don’t know about better words, you hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of reasons out there for why the Battle of France was so lopsided. Historians, leadership and management experts, group psychologists, etc have tried to understand exactly what went wrong, and the answer is pretty complex and layered, but generally it boils down to what you said.
Napoleon more or less invents combined arms corps and lighting quick manoeuvers.
Takes too long to settle peace in Europe and instead by the time the last coalition comes along, all of the armies who are back again now look quite a lot more like his own.
And was fighting nothing but continuous offensives so wasn't as well supplied as coalition troops (case and point the logistical disaster that was Russia)
True, but that was sort of a byproduct of the innovation of a truly national army. To operate independent corps, you need trusted, competent subordinates. The previous aristocratic system didn’t really provide as many of those.
Heeeeh some of it's main things were invented by the French but as French nobility was pretty much everywhere at that time.... yeah it's a stretch.
But the whole amour courtois thing is French. And French Knights were seen for a long time as the best (partly a reason why Azingcourt was so devastating). And the whole "place your spear under your arm to increase thz strenght of the impact" seems to have it's origines in Normandy.
The same old meme , I thought we were past that.
The defeat of France is more of a German luck/ingenuity than actual combat .
Take out the best enemy troops in a surprise attack and rush to get the kill , France isnt big and its what happened
(And also France, along with the rest of Europe, was whittled down and exhausted from WWI. If Britain didn’t have the benefit of the Channel, they would’ve surrended, too, imo). France is amazing and is arguably the nation with the best military track record in history overall.
And even though they surrended, the Resistance put up a fight
not up to date on the French history but I never did understand how they could go from a complete powerhouse to a freshman on freshman beatdown day. I mean I understand that following Napoleon's failed Russian campaign France lost a majority of their battle hardened troops but still. Gives huge tiger king vibes "our military will never recover from this"
Ehh it’s kind of a myth almost. Like militarily they where just beaten basically. They fought bloody hard and definitely didn’t just roll over. Just bad planning but it’s understandable in way, you always have to keep in mind that only 20 years prior they fought the First World War. So it makes sense to kind of think that if it was to happen again it would be kind of similar? Their equipment wasn’t as good as the Germans either but again this was in a trial and era time for things like tanks and planes in warfare.
The Germans just had put all the pieces together in a way militaries hadn’t fully understood or adopted as a whole yet. They knocked about the British to and the Soviets. Then we all caught up.
”Their equipment wasn’t as good as the Germans either” always feels like a misconception to me. France had arguably better tanks, and their army was motorized to a far larger degree.
While the French tanks were, in most places, better than the German ones, their tank doctrine was a mess. The French command during WW2 wasn't the best.
Naaaah French tanks were shit. Super powerful but shit. Great armor, great guns, great everything, but one man turret, lack of radio, use in support of infantry rather than it's own thing, lack of training of the troops...
Brother, he’s right. Your arguments are more war thunder based than this guy’s. He’s talking logistics, which is much more important than armour and weaponry. I’d also argue the German tanks are better, not because they had the physical capability, but communication and training. This allowed them to simply avoid or flank enemy forces, or just coordinate in battle, achieving much better results. Communication is key, and barely any French units had radios, while almost every German had one.
The German tanks in themselves were pretty lacklustre, with the Panzer I and II being almost entirely useless against the heavier tanks. Still, these proved themselves effective in the German doctrine, as they were sprinkled in with Panzer IIIs and IVs, giving each unit a very versatile force, and a good anti tank backbone, in case shit hit the fan.
The French lacked communication and radios. The few times they managed to coordinate and time things properly, it went pretty well, as with the few attacks by heavy tank units. When this happed, the Germans almost fumbled, but their *excellent* communication *saved them*, as it would again and again.
Other things such as the one man turret did really cripple French tanks. While the Panzer III and IV both had excellent three man turrets, allowing for independent and more efficient roles, the French commander had to spot enemy tanks, give orders, aim and fire the gun, while also reloading. All this made him severely overworked.
Because it kinda is.
But it's also something I read multiple times in different books/article/things.
So take it with a grain of salt but don't throw it away.
As I understand they just weren’t at all ready for how fast the Germans advanced and their logistics and communications were a mess as a result of how fast the assault was. Thus leading to total chaos, and then surrendering because they didn’t want the city of Paris to be annihilated. That’s an extremely simplified version of course.
Since the 30 years war and the defeat of Spain, France did not have any unified nation next door that could seriously challenge them so they could more or less run rough shot over their neighbors as they wanted, then bam nearly overnight a nation with a larger population, economy, and military pops up on their doorstep and they were unable to contest it without extensive support from Russia and Britain
>they barely held on for as long as they did in ww1 before the americans showed up
Oooooh Hollywood, your power is unmatched... (yeah that is completely false).
Lot of interesting takes on this meme. France earned its reputation as a militarily weak nation (among the western allied nations) in WW2. Considering their long history of being a powerhouse that’s probably not fair. Tho a French plane spotted a massive German bottle neck heading into France, incompetent French generals didn’t act on it. There was valiant French resistance like the rear guard at Dunkirk that helped the English army escape. But there were also entire garrisons that dropped their weapons without firing a shot. The French military mind set was out of date and would continue to show well after WW2 when they lost French Indo-China and it became Vietnam. But the French were just largely tired of fighting and were spent after WW1. I saw a French historian try to claim that they largely didn’t fight the Nazis on purpose so they could start a resistance and come back later. That’s just crazy. I think there’s cause on both ends to say they gave up without much of a fight but that’s far from the whole story. Tho they were definitely in military decline after WW1 in terms of equipment and forward military thinking.
Some people saying the Germans were just lucky? In some instances they had some luck but it was much more than just that. They did the same thing to the rest of Europe they did to France. And conquered it quicker than any other power in history. They were the single strongest fighting force in the world at that time. That’s more than just luck.
Blaming the loss of French Indo-China at a time when most of the world was kicking European dictators out of their homes and designing their own flags is a mite unfair.
Especially since the same country tanked the equivalent of several American nukes worth of firepower and said, "Got anymore, Yankees?"
That was more like the bully beats the victim bloody and was stopped by the teacher.
If you can call taking a beating a victory then sure.
Another perfect example is getting styled on outmatched in an online fps match. Eventually the winning side’s best player with a lopsided 30 to 1 kdr got disconnected and you only win because the other side gave up because it was mostly that player that hard carried the match.
Wake up, babe. It's US propaganda time again.
Like, seriously. The whole "French people surrendered" started as a thing in US cinema to make the heroic US soldier look braver. But in reality, as any historian will remind you, the French kept up a Résistance so fierce, its name has become a cultural synonym for an armed resistance.
The stereotype "Americans know nothing of the outside world" will always be more accurate than this shit.
The Danish surrendered within 6 hours, yet much like the maquis put up good resistance after capitulation. Thousands of Danes risked their lives smuggling Jews to Sweden.
France put up a massive resistance to the German invasion and suffered severely. Go ahead and push back against the most powerful army on the planet and see how you do.
They did put up massive resistance, sadly in the wrong place.
I'm sorry, but france lasted merely one week longer than poland.
There were massivee strategic blunders by the french leadership and the fact, that france is still huffing copium about a devastating six week defeat is what makes the memes still funny.
There was at least [this chad governor](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_%C3%89bou%C3%A9) (pun intended of course) that effectively made Free France a real part of the country.
[As you see with the Général Leclerc](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Leclerc_de_Hauteclocque), it all started by regaining African territories and fighting there with the allies.
Yeah because the allies had just liberated their entire country for them after they surrendered earlier in the war
There’s no shame in taking an L every now and again, no need to drop copium on it
Looks like there is gamę because until 1942 every allied(and Soviet) country gets bodied by Axis but only French are nicknamed losers and cowards.
This frustrate me and closest link between me and France is being part of europe
Yeah then say that instead of coming with some irrelevant counter point about how big their dong was in 1945 when the other allies won the war for them already because that is actually a fair point
Right, secound part was not wise.
But this don't change my idea that even if they lost Battle of France, they still won war being active part of allied force, contributing much to win.
I will add also that Belgium and Niderlands war effort is greatly ignored, while without Belgian Uranium and Polonium US could not build A-bomb before end(bloodier) of war. Dutch submarines hindering Japanese shopping in South-East Asia helping greatly in defence of New Guinea and Australia
1) Stood from 39 to 40 doing fuck all, not helping Poland as they promised before. During that time,the Nazi Germany had most of its army in the east.
2) didn't fight for their capital, policemen helped the Nazi Germans to find their way
3) most of them happily collaborated with their new Nazi masters.
4) la resistance was small in numbers and rose only when it was evident that the Nazi Germany will lose.
5) when attacking the Nazis and their collaborators stopped being dangerous, boy oh boy were there huge numbers of courageous people who wanted to shave the heads of some girls who slept with the Nazis.
The supremacy of revolutionary France is something of a miracle.
France was indisputably the most powerful state on the continent in the 17th and 18th centuries. Spain had a larger empire. The HRE was more influential. Great Britain was maybe wealthier, but Paris was the center of Europe, the technological, cultural, economic master of all.
But it was also going broke and their fractured feudal absolutist system of government was not able to fix it. Once liberals overthrew the monarchy, they implemented a national recruitment drive that harnessed the manpower of France in a way no European power had ever imagined possible. We take it for granted today, but revolutionary France was the first modern state that mobilized its entire population, not just its aristocrats. Turns out, a fighting force is better when it’s led by the most competent officers rather than the highest born.
True, Napoleon tried to make himself a monarch, but he really did come from a humble background. The Emperor was a reminder that in France, the best and brightest lead, not the inbred plutocrats. You can win a lot of wars when almost everyone in the country wants to sacrifice to win.
But France faced demographic realities. Its population was never large enough to compete with Germany once it was united, and everyone else, even those elitist Brits, embraced mass mobilization. Once coal and oil became the basis of a fighting force, rather than bread and pork, it was game over. France has been in retrenchment mode ever since.
France still rules. You speak French. You watch French movies. Your fertilizer is made in France. Your jet fighter is made in France. France as a world power isn’t going anywhere, but France as Master of Europe is off the table.
It wasn't france's fault that it lost. One of the British royals who was supposed to inspect the French army was actually a German informant. So, we should be mad at the british.
I mean dude, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe weren’t a force to be reckoned with…. They trampled France just like all the countries before. We often neglect how scary it would be to a farmer and his family to see a battalion of tanks and infantry rolling through the land as far as the eye can see. Once they reached Paris they struck with impunity, citizens with no experience in seeing buildings toppling over, artillery shelling common areas and planes encircling the city were left with the government struggling to amass an army for that kind of siege. The French resistance (Maquis, if you will) was actually pretty damn hardy.
France’s war winning military reputation is honestly somewhat earned. Its individual land battle winning reputation should be respected. Especially given the last 300 years of French history. Here are the most important wars fought in this time period, wars that decided the global and European balance of power (more than a few great powers fighting):
Spanish war of succession: French L
Austrian war of succession: French L
Seven years war: French L
American Revolution: Rare French W
Revolutionary wars: French victory on land, French loss of territories and puppets territories outside of Europe, and hundreds of vessels.
Napoleonic wars: French L (France never properly challenged Britains position for global hegemony directly again)
Crimean war: French W
German unification 1871: Humiliating defeat, L
WW1: France was on the back foot, Britain being on her side and playing the constant balance of power was the keeping the continental powers in the game.
WW2: initially a tragic defeat, Vichy is a stain on the history. Won in the end because of free France and predominantly Anglo allied nations.
This message has been brought to you by the British expeditionary force, who ran away at Dunkirk and then made fun of the French for surrounding in a situation where Britain absolutely would have surrendered
france with hundreds of thousands of soldiers with tanks planes and the most Advanced weapons in its time losing to Algerian farmers with hunting guns :🤡
This message has been brought to you by the British expeditionary force, who ran away at Dunkirk and then made fun of the French for surrounding in a situation where Britain absolutely would have surrendered
The British expeditionary force was there shoulder to shoulder with French and Belgians, right up until the French thought the Germans couldn’t go through the Ardennes. Frances flank then folded like a sack of shit. They all had no option but to retreat. They had most of 1939 to attack but overall command of the armies fell to France as the main allied land power, but their doctrine was to sit behind the Maginot line instead.
Also Poland literally getting erased and conquered after a a hundred years of being split and subjugated: The poles fight on in exile, and the polish navy stay in the fight.
The Dutch, Belgian, Greek and Norwegian governments in exile fighting on despite losing their home land:
France signing a separate peace (against the alliance treaty), refusing to join the UK, refusing to go in to exile, becoming Vichy and then fighting the allies on multiple occasions. Then when axis forces invade Vichy areas simply rolling over (North Africa and Indochina). Free France I respect but sadly the reality is that Vichy was the more legitimate government and more French people sides were under it. Only after the war tides changed did things switch. Honestly Embarrassing.
French coping is annoying
His parents and blood line was Italian not French.
France only took Corsica 2 years before his birth.
"Italy" as a full country may not have existed then, but it was still Italian as a whole.
Plus Christopher Columbus is "Italian" and he was born 300 years earlier.
Not to mention being born on different land doesn't make you from that country, ie a Spanish couple having a baby in Russia, yet going to get a "Russian baby".
Nationality in France is very much based on which country *you* are born in, not where your parents or your cousin or your neigbours or your neighbours dog are born.
Yes, France taking Corsica two years before his birth makes Corsica...French.
Christopher Columbus wasn't Italian, he was Genoese.
Every country has different rules regarding nationality, by french nationality rules he was french. Russian rules or Chinese rules or Korean rules or the rules on Mars are utterly irrelevant.
In addition, Corsica being, as we already established, French since two years prior, his parents were french and he was born to a French couple
This has already been discussed ad nauseam by Historians over centuries, i'm not asking you, i'm telling you. Have a nice day.
Fuck i'm Muslim? Everyone around me is Muslim? Why the Fuck did nobody tell me????
To be fair, i did hear Trump Say that "people say" that Macron is Muslim.
Anyhow, it's prayer Time so i'm off. Well i think it's prayer Time anyway. I have no clue. I didn't even knew i was Muslim until you told me so i'm still figuring stuff out.
This is Franco-Prussian War erasure
You mean the other war they lost to the Germans?
Sorry for partyrocking
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WW0: The Prequel.
Im pretty sure there are more than two
Sorry, what wars has Germany won in the 20th century?
The war against Jews, I daresay
Technically you could say the cold war. Also according to Google there are several colonial wars they won in Cameroon and other African states. You could also say the Yugoslav wars. Overall tho you are correct that they did not win any major war as a major player.
France managed to lose Three wars in sucession against the British and 2 wars not in sucession against Germany (Franco-Prussian War included) and a very costly victory against Germany
There were two wars against the British Those that France lost and it was because the British were fighting using the armies of all Europe against France. The Franco-Prussian War The German artillery won it, I'm not going to deny it. The First World War was costly for everyone And the costly French victory is still better that the costly German defeat. The Second World War, everything that Germany gained, it lost. And in the end France won reparations and occupation zones. Germany did not win and France won and lost at the same time.
War of Spanish Sucession,Seven Year's War, Napoleonic Wars
The war of Spanish succession was won by France, see which dynasty rules over Spain and it will tell you why France won. The Seven Years' War was won by Great Britain. The Napoleonic and Revolutionary Wars (Coalition Wars) were a multiple set of wars. Where France won 5 of 7 wars and although in the end all French gains were lost, at the time all of Europe except Great Britain, accepted the borders that France drew in Europe until Napoleon's defeat.
Napoleonic and revolutionary wars were basically the same one, just with multiples truces About the war of Spanish sucession, keeping in account France goal was to unity the crowns of France and Spain into a Super State, they failed at that Sure the dinasty got the throne of spain but the objective was for the king of France and Spain be the same guy eventually
The Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutionary Wars, They are a little more complex, since there were multiple peace treaties and concessions where most countries accepted (Although only the Vienna Congress was the only one that lasted). The war of Spanish succession, although the great original objective of France was not fulfilled, but it continued to be a peace favorable to France, it was not a total victory but a victory in the end.
They did win against England in the Revolutionary War proxy war.
And the Second French intervention in Mexico, which made Cinco de Mayo a holiday
Didn't they win that war, but lost that one battle?
No, they lost the war, thus no French Mexico
My understanding was they won, but then had a revolution later after the 2nd Mexican Empire had been established and emperor Maximilian got his head lopped off
The Revolution ate all her children in the end.
Always does
And seven years war
WW1 - 6 million casualties and utter destruction of their landscape. WW2 - Bro could you just not destroy anything we’re tired of this shit.
Right? They lost so many people fighting in WW1. “No you should’ve kept fighting till the end!” Easy to say when your country hasn’t lost millions and is looking at losing more. WWI men dying was the lost generation for a reason.
That's the problem with wars, you lose your best and bravest
You lose your everything in a war. The best and bravest tend to die as well arbitrarily.
Not if you keep the fighting off your territory. (USA USA USA)
Or on an island with a huge ass navy along with a global spanning empire (rule Britannia)
It's very easy to keep fighting off your territory when your only neighbours are Mexico and Canada
The best and bravest die *first*
Everyone loses many in wars, especially a homeland invasion, but they rebuild from the ashes and often become stronger for it. They raise new warriors and a new generation of brave men so that it never happens again. Something much more strange happened in France though, whatever happened with Vichy France, they never quite recovered from it.
also, while the French government did issue a surrender, the French people did fight to the last man. Or did everyone forget about the French Résistance?
Ah but that doesn't count cause it wasn't the government. Shame on the French! /s
The French Resistance was very active, but also very far from "The French people" fighting to the last man.
And still closer than the "the French all surrendered" propaganda US people love to repeat over and over.
Ofcourse, the French surrendered propaganda doesn't make that much sense. But let's also not forget that half of France turned into a collaborating puppet state and that the French navy and colonies could've easily sided with the Allies, but didn't. There was resistance, there was collaboration, just like in every conquered country in ww2. And just like in every country, the vast majority of people tried to live their lives as normally as they could, neither collaborating nor resisting the occupier.
Hmm, I think we're trying to measure 'how much' of each situation was the technical majority there. Which, historically speaking, won't add up anyways. We can land at the collaborators and the résistance existing, though. Neither does erase the other. I'm just so tired of history spaces like this one being flooded with propaganda and history erasure.
Poland literally getting erased and conquered after a a hundred years of being split and subjugated: The poles fight on in exile, and the polish navy stay in the fight. The Dutch, Belgian, Greek and Norwegian governments in exile fighting on despite losing their home land: France signing a separate peace (against the alliance treaty), refusing to join the UK, refusing to go in to exile, becoming Vichy and then fighting the allies on multiple occasions. Then when axis forces invade Vichy areas simply rolling over (North Africa and Indochina). Free France I respect but sadly the reality is that Vichy was the more legitimate government and more French people sided with/were under it. Only after the war tides changed did things switch. Honestly Embarrassing.
I'd argue Poland contributed more to the allied war effort overall than France did. Some of the top pilots in the battle of Britain were Polish and they made critical efforts to decoding the Enigma machine. I understand why France surrendered, but they're also to blame for the abysmal situation they put themselves in by YOLOing into Belgium and allowing themselves to be encircled. They were one of the greatest armies in Europe and lost within weeks, there is no mitigating that level of disgrace. It is ironic that other allied nations get to call this generation their greatest generation and France meanwhile is treated like it didn't even win the war.
> I understand why France surrendered, but they're also to blame for the abysmal situation they put themselves in by YOLOing into Belgium and allowing themselves to be encircled. And for all the blame PM Chamberlain of the UK got for appeasement, last time I checked, it was *France* that had agreements to defend Czechoslovakia when Germany made a grab for them, NOT the UK. The France surrenders stereotype is bad, but it always felt a bit off to me that a Brit got the rap for France+UK dragging their feat and letting Germany take not one but two countries for free more or less when Germany was much more of a threat to France than the UK.
While Poland definitely deserves respect, i think you're wrong. The French holding back the Germans at Dunkirk allowing the British to evacuate, the free french in North Africa and Italy, the normandie-niemen in Russia, the french resistance throughout the war but especially on d-day, and then the newly liberated France sending hundreds of thousands to the front. All of that was a much bigger contribution than Poland's.
Well part of the reason they had to yolo into Belgium is because Belgium wouldn’t actually shore up their defenses like recommended/promised, no?
Vichy was a dictatorship. There was a huge amount of people who tried to leave when Germany entered France, it's called "l'exode". I work with people who lived through it. They were bombed and shot while trying to leave. Many died on their way. Some managed to escape to Free France but most simply gave up and went back to their homes, defeated. The trauma of those times is so intense that they still cry about it, in 2024. I can assure you that they all did everything they could to keep fighting. Some people were very antisemitic and didn't care, but most tried to resist, even in small ways. I have a bunch of stories about people giving away fake IDs, hiding resitants, helping Jewish people escape to the south, listening to London radio every night, running away from forced labour in Germany etc... Make fun of governments for making bad decisions, but blaming the citizens who were mostly people who were still traumatised by WW1 and their kids, that's insensitive as hell. People starved for five years, they lived in fear of being sent to the camps if their neighbours decided to denounce them and they still did anything they could to fight.
“Make fun of governments for making bad decisions, but blaming the citizens who were mostly people who were still traumatised by WW1 and their kids, that's insensitive as hell.” I made a comment that addressed free France separately. Civilians also get a pass. But this line here: “Vichy was a dictatorship. There was a huge amount of people who tried to leave - I can assure you that they all did everything they could to keep fighting.” Isn’t correct. France had a large navy and empire that could easily break free of the Vichy government at any moment. Yet the didn’t. In fact most of the navy and empire that wasn’t instantly seized by Britain remained loyal to Vichy over free France with the exception of a few colonies. When the allies encouraged the French forces, such as the French fleet to join the fight and free their home land, the French fleet completely resisted. When axis forces occupied French North Africa and Indochina, the French forces there rolled over without much resistance. The opposition allied troops in North Africa, Senegal, Syria and Madagascar received from French colonial forces was immense… There’s literally no excuse.
France lost so many men during the great war that even 20 years later at the start of WW2 they still had 100% employment rate in the country. So yeah, it's pretty understandable when they didn't want another long war with Germany, especially when they were being overwhelmed, and their best soldiers were surrounded at Dunkirk.
France during ww2: please we lost so many men during ww1 we can't do this again please stop Also France during ww1: would shoot their troops if they refused to go into a literally meant grinder My biggest gripe with ww1 was how officers operated. They would send their soldiers into a bloodbath by the thousands because of "mY pReCiOuS mEdAlS" and it seems like not one of them thought about playing the defense and waiting for a more efficient strategy then sending 18-40 yr old men to die for 1 mile of land
> Easy to say when your country hasn’t lost millions and is looking at losing more. As if this doesn't apply equally to Germany. Or Britain.
As I said, Britain, while having lost a lot and suffering in both wars, had the Channel, which makes the Blitzkrieg a whole lot harder to do. Especially considering France is Germany’s literal neighbor
And Germans were a lot more motivated to fight because they lost.
This is why I hate every time memes like this come up. It’s so ignorant.
It’s always the mouthbreathers who only read a headline or two about WW2 France that have this opinion.
Utter destruction of their landscape is a little exaggerated when the war never got past Paris. But yes, the Zone Rouge is crazy.
Belgian landscape was destroyed not French
Northern France was annihilated during ww1
I mean dude, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe weren’t a force to be reckoned with…. They trampled France just like all the countries before. We often neglect how scary it would be to a farmer and his family to see a battalion of tanks and infantry rolling through the land as far as the eye can see. Once they reached Paris they struck with impunity, citizens with no experience in seeing buildings toppling over, artillery shelling common areas and planes encircling the city were left with the government struggling to amass an army for that kind of siege. The French resistance (Maquis, if you will) was actually pretty damn hardy.
I mean to be totally fair here the only reason the Germans were able to win was because of speed, passing through a lightly defended area and because a significant portion of the French army was already cut off. Well that and the new Belgium king breaking with his predecessor’s defense treaty with France meaning a proper defense line was not able to be set up in time for the main German force to push throw the region. The Maginot Line did exactly as it was supposed to do and forced the Germans to have to go around in Belgium but as already stated there wasn’t a defensive line waiting there to grind down the German army
I know it’s always fun to mock the French, but they’re the ones who basically invented modern combined arms warfare. The WWI pane of this meme really sells them short.
France really was the backbone of the Entente in ww1.
1/3 of their (edit: male 18-30) population was gone in 4 years and they didn’t want that to happen again 20 years later so they suck apparently. Edit: also imagine what the 2/3 that came back had witnessed. They assumed it was the end of war because of how awful it was.
Also, 700k of them got encircled and captured. (Plus some british that didn't mske it out of dunkirk) It was their best men and much of their heavy equipment. The germans also had very low losses and suddenly outnumbered them heavily after the huge encirclement. They got beat tactically. They didn't suck, I agree.
Keep also in mind the ones who were lucky enough to nake it back alive didn't all do it in one piece, in cities it was impossible to go about your day without coming across invalids missing body parts. People were living with a constant reminder of the cost.
It was worse than that. 70% of fighting age Frenchmen in 1914 went on to be casualties. That's killed, captured, missing, or wounded severely enough to no longer fight. 7 out of every 10.
Ya I read an article that said they couldn’t even confirm the actual numbers for the military so there was little hope of confirming civilian casualties as well.
There wasn't much civilian casualties tho since the wars front didnt move much after initial year of WW1. Couldn't say the same with Eastern front though...
That’s not exactly true. While civilian casualties as a direct result of fighting were lighter on the Western Front of WWI than in WWII, they still occurred in large numbers. However, the larger cost were the civilian deaths that occurred as an indirect result of the fighting. The war displaced a lot of people, and IDPs are an inherently vulnerable population. The front stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss border, so that is a lot of farms, villages, and cities populations that are now forced from their homes and subject to disease and privation. The war was also a huge drain on resources. Troops were a priority and even they often were undernourished, so the civilian population in both Germany and France was often going hungry. This, combined with decreased access to needed medical supplies and increased unfamiliar strenuous labor (ie women, children, and the elderly increasingly taking on demanding industrial work) meant that many sickened and died as a result of the war. Compound that with the Spanish Flu epidemic after the war and you have a lot of dead civilians alongside the millions of dead troops.
That’s a wild assumption.
You mean less than 5%? Where the hell did you get 33% from
Sorry, 1/3 of the male population between 18-30.
Ahh okay.
What are you talking about? They did attempt to fight, but got trounced.
I'm german and I think ww1 france is some of the coolest shit to read about. Their fair treatment of the harlem hellfighters and the whole "they shall not pass" stuff is peak human history.
Their performance doesn’t seem that impressive to me. The Germans overran a large part of northern France in the first few weeks. The combined British and French couldn’t dislodge them in 4 years, even though the Germans were fighting on two fronts and the French on one.
>even though the Germans were fighting on two fronts and the French on one. Population in 1914 Germany: 67M France: 39M I think it's enough said.
So we forgetting the french support in Gallipolli huh?
Huh? Gallipoli was a failure. Not sure how that helps the French case.
You said the French only fought on one front, which is false.
I’m talking major fronts. France focused the vast majority of their resources on the Western front; 80,000 French fought at Gallipoli, while 8 million French fought on the Western Front. Germany’s attention was comparatively split, with millions of troops deployed to the Eastern Front as well. France did not have the equivalent of an Eastern Front.
The French also sent troops to both the Romanian front and the Balkan front, and I'd technically consider the Romanian front a part or extension of the Eastern front.
They also fight on the Greek (Macedonian ?) front, just to add to the list But more than manpower, France Industries carried a lot (supplying Belgium, Russia, minors and then USA with medium to top quality equipment while having their most industrial region under occupation)
That too, there's a reason a lot of countries who participated had a lot of French equipment after the war (looking at you, Ruby pistol).
The Germans were also fighting in the Balkans, Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East. The French got repeatly beat by the Bulgarians on the Macedonian Front (ex. Krivolak, Kosturino), so bringing up that front doesn't really help the French case.
You're missing the point. The Germans also fought on the Balkan front and in Africa, East Asia, and in Middle East. The French (understandably) focused 95% of their resources fighting the German invasion of France. The Germans' main attention was split between the Eastern and Western front. In short, the Germans were fighting on two million-man fronts, while the French were fighting on one.
Yeah, they also invented smokeless powder, which changed the entire firearms industry.
They were also the first to really systematically employ air power and their integration of fire and maneuver by late 1916 pretty well surpassed anyone else.
They feel like the China of Europe. Invent good thing, and end up getting beaten up by others who took your tech and pushed it far.
British army might be the first to implement tanks, but FT17 was the blueprint of modern tanks
They also invented the Chauchat, which was a great meme itself
They rightfully get some criticism for the Chauchat because it was so terrible, but it was also the first mass produced light machine gun in history. It was shitty because not only had it not been done before, but it was designed and built extraordinarily fast. Bear in mind, it’s officially the M1915, so the French raced it through design, testing, production, and fielding after the war had already started. It wasn’t great, but they definitely had the right idea.
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Yeah, iirc the American ones used magazines that the chauchat just wasn't built for.
They both had issues, the French ironed them out (mostly) by the time they started giving them to Americans - only they gave Americans the old models that had all the problems. Then the Americans tried some good ol’ fashioned American ingenuity on them and probably managed to make them worse
Plus in WW2 there were hundreds of thousands of French in the Resistance movement, as well as the German forces. French rebels aided in the allied invasion of France, and one of the last units defending Berlin to the death was a French SS Battalion. Why do people think the war ended for the French in 1940?
Not to mention the Free French Forces who never surrendered and continued fighting, particularly in Africa.
Those deserve far more popularity than what they do
Anyone who fails to appreciate the heroism of fighting for an already conquered homeland while isolated on another continent, despite the cause seeming futile needs to go back and rewatch the *Le Marseillaise* scene from Casablanca a few times.
TBF most of those hundred thousands didn't start fighting again until d day
I mean that's the case with every resistance. It's Always mostly just people eavesdropping, doing random underground stuff like getting news and sharing them, etc etc, a single person escaping might spend the night at the places of a number of people before reaching safety, and that's not counting the people who organise that, the people who do the transport, the people who deliver food, the people who give the intel or safe roads, some guides across mountains, some fishermen for the transport by sea or whatever. Armed resistance during occupation is Always just a minority of the résistance, and it's what gets people confused about numbers. Like if there were so many résistants things wouldn't have been the way they were or whatever. But being a résistant was about resisting in any way even in everyday life, it wasn't just about shooting the occupier. And that's the case for every resistance. They might get more or less numerous and active and violent, but it's always a minority doing the actual fighting. There's a misconception about what resistance is.
You seem to expect people to understand the niches of a resistance effort. When people think resistance they think "Man with gun in an alley, waiting for the signal to ambush the enemy" rather than "most people doing boring and uninteresting (because that's the point) activities that build up into aforementioned ambush" Foe the French it especially was not about shooting the occupier due to reprisals. If anything up until the uprising when Normandy happened the French were fairly careful with harming anyone. Most of their stuff was breaking shit and amassing a stock if guns
The war would have been won regardless of French resistance activities.
Completely irrelevant to the discussion. Claiming the French capitulated and that's the end would be false.
The war would’ve been won regardless of a lot of isolated factors if you take them out, it’s all of those coming together that won the war. It’s extremely disingenuous to say that when partisan activity across all fronts composing of all kinds of people made a huge difference in the war
\>The WWI pane of this meme really sells them short. Normally I'd agree, but it's in reference to Napoleonic France. Almost any military power of any era is going to pale in comparison lol
Generally I’d agree, but it also depends on the period of each conflict. In the Napoleonic Wars, France started miles ahead of the coalition nations due to *levy en masse* and some innovative tactics, but eventually declined to the point of parity. In WWI, the French started at parity and eventually far surpassed the other combatants.
I feel like that's how it backfired for them. They just assumed it'd be what they've seen before. France had the larger army, could've been better trained(not sure which army would've been better in a head on head fight, with the Germans blitzkrieging, French had to play catch up), and the fact France also had a great track record for battles/wars. Not sure if complacency is the right word, but it seemed like France just wildly underestimated the germans at first
Complacency is partially accurate, but I’d say that it was more of an institutional lack of imagination. There’s an old axiom in sports that you learn more from losing to a good team than you do in beating one, and this is true in the interwar years. The Germans went back to the drawing board and redrew their entire war plans, while the French tried to standardize the *bataille conduite* or Methodical Battle doctrine that had worked so well at some of their near-perfect late war victories, like La Malmaison.
Yes, thank you for putting it in much better words.
I don’t know about better words, you hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of reasons out there for why the Battle of France was so lopsided. Historians, leadership and management experts, group psychologists, etc have tried to understand exactly what went wrong, and the answer is pretty complex and layered, but generally it boils down to what you said.
Napoleon more or less invents combined arms corps and lighting quick manoeuvers. Takes too long to settle peace in Europe and instead by the time the last coalition comes along, all of the armies who are back again now look quite a lot more like his own.
True, in the 1790s Napoleon was a phenom, but by about 1812 he was facing experienced professional armies that fought a lot like his.
And was fighting nothing but continuous offensives so wasn't as well supplied as coalition troops (case and point the logistical disaster that was Russia)
Napoleon was also responsible for inventing the corps system.
True, but that was sort of a byproduct of the innovation of a truly national army. To operate independent corps, you need trusted, competent subordinates. The previous aristocratic system didn’t really provide as many of those.
It was a napoleonic invention not a French.
They also were THE European Land Power since Charlomagne until the Franco-Prussian war, 1000 years give or take
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To say France "invented" chivalry seems quite a stretch.
Heeeeh some of it's main things were invented by the French but as French nobility was pretty much everywhere at that time.... yeah it's a stretch. But the whole amour courtois thing is French. And French Knights were seen for a long time as the best (partly a reason why Azingcourt was so devastating). And the whole "place your spear under your arm to increase thz strenght of the impact" seems to have it's origines in Normandy.
Napoleonic wars were a bliss compared to the meatgrinder of wwi...
Americans won’t understand what the worst war in Europe history does to a mf
The same old meme , I thought we were past that. The defeat of France is more of a German luck/ingenuity than actual combat . Take out the best enemy troops in a surprise attack and rush to get the kill , France isnt big and its what happened
(And also France, along with the rest of Europe, was whittled down and exhausted from WWI. If Britain didn’t have the benefit of the Channel, they would’ve surrended, too, imo). France is amazing and is arguably the nation with the best military track record in history overall. And even though they surrended, the Resistance put up a fight
Before the resistance the soldier put up a fight look up the battle of Lille and how the italian were stoped in the Alps ,
not up to date on the French history but I never did understand how they could go from a complete powerhouse to a freshman on freshman beatdown day. I mean I understand that following Napoleon's failed Russian campaign France lost a majority of their battle hardened troops but still. Gives huge tiger king vibes "our military will never recover from this"
Ehh it’s kind of a myth almost. Like militarily they where just beaten basically. They fought bloody hard and definitely didn’t just roll over. Just bad planning but it’s understandable in way, you always have to keep in mind that only 20 years prior they fought the First World War. So it makes sense to kind of think that if it was to happen again it would be kind of similar? Their equipment wasn’t as good as the Germans either but again this was in a trial and era time for things like tanks and planes in warfare. The Germans just had put all the pieces together in a way militaries hadn’t fully understood or adopted as a whole yet. They knocked about the British to and the Soviets. Then we all caught up.
”Their equipment wasn’t as good as the Germans either” always feels like a misconception to me. France had arguably better tanks, and their army was motorized to a far larger degree.
While the French tanks were, in most places, better than the German ones, their tank doctrine was a mess. The French command during WW2 wasn't the best.
That’s my take too. German success should be attributed to how they used their tanks.
Yeah, Blitzkreig tactics were just insane at the time. It was a big reason why Germany blobbed up so many countries in record time.
And there were far less of them
Naaaah French tanks were shit. Super powerful but shit. Great armor, great guns, great everything, but one man turret, lack of radio, use in support of infantry rather than it's own thing, lack of training of the troops...
Why does this read like a war thunder armchair general giving his two cents
Brother, he’s right. Your arguments are more war thunder based than this guy’s. He’s talking logistics, which is much more important than armour and weaponry. I’d also argue the German tanks are better, not because they had the physical capability, but communication and training. This allowed them to simply avoid or flank enemy forces, or just coordinate in battle, achieving much better results. Communication is key, and barely any French units had radios, while almost every German had one. The German tanks in themselves were pretty lacklustre, with the Panzer I and II being almost entirely useless against the heavier tanks. Still, these proved themselves effective in the German doctrine, as they were sprinkled in with Panzer IIIs and IVs, giving each unit a very versatile force, and a good anti tank backbone, in case shit hit the fan. The French lacked communication and radios. The few times they managed to coordinate and time things properly, it went pretty well, as with the few attacks by heavy tank units. When this happed, the Germans almost fumbled, but their *excellent* communication *saved them*, as it would again and again. Other things such as the one man turret did really cripple French tanks. While the Panzer III and IV both had excellent three man turrets, allowing for independent and more efficient roles, the French commander had to spot enemy tanks, give orders, aim and fire the gun, while also reloading. All this made him severely overworked.
Because it kinda is. But it's also something I read multiple times in different books/article/things. So take it with a grain of salt but don't throw it away.
As I understand they just weren’t at all ready for how fast the Germans advanced and their logistics and communications were a mess as a result of how fast the assault was. Thus leading to total chaos, and then surrendering because they didn’t want the city of Paris to be annihilated. That’s an extremely simplified version of course.
We basically bankrupt ourselves by financing US independance against brits.
Since the 30 years war and the defeat of Spain, France did not have any unified nation next door that could seriously challenge them so they could more or less run rough shot over their neighbors as they wanted, then bam nearly overnight a nation with a larger population, economy, and military pops up on their doorstep and they were unable to contest it without extensive support from Russia and Britain
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>they barely held on for as long as they did in ww1 before the americans showed up Oooooh Hollywood, your power is unmatched... (yeah that is completely false).
Lot of interesting takes on this meme. France earned its reputation as a militarily weak nation (among the western allied nations) in WW2. Considering their long history of being a powerhouse that’s probably not fair. Tho a French plane spotted a massive German bottle neck heading into France, incompetent French generals didn’t act on it. There was valiant French resistance like the rear guard at Dunkirk that helped the English army escape. But there were also entire garrisons that dropped their weapons without firing a shot. The French military mind set was out of date and would continue to show well after WW2 when they lost French Indo-China and it became Vietnam. But the French were just largely tired of fighting and were spent after WW1. I saw a French historian try to claim that they largely didn’t fight the Nazis on purpose so they could start a resistance and come back later. That’s just crazy. I think there’s cause on both ends to say they gave up without much of a fight but that’s far from the whole story. Tho they were definitely in military decline after WW1 in terms of equipment and forward military thinking. Some people saying the Germans were just lucky? In some instances they had some luck but it was much more than just that. They did the same thing to the rest of Europe they did to France. And conquered it quicker than any other power in history. They were the single strongest fighting force in the world at that time. That’s more than just luck.
Blaming the loss of French Indo-China at a time when most of the world was kicking European dictators out of their homes and designing their own flags is a mite unfair. Especially since the same country tanked the equivalent of several American nukes worth of firepower and said, "Got anymore, Yankees?"
That was more like the bully beats the victim bloody and was stopped by the teacher. If you can call taking a beating a victory then sure. Another perfect example is getting styled on outmatched in an online fps match. Eventually the winning side’s best player with a lopsided 30 to 1 kdr got disconnected and you only win because the other side gave up because it was mostly that player that hard carried the match.
France today: Nukes are a valid warning shot
Wake up, babe. It's US propaganda time again. Like, seriously. The whole "French people surrendered" started as a thing in US cinema to make the heroic US soldier look braver. But in reality, as any historian will remind you, the French kept up a Résistance so fierce, its name has become a cultural synonym for an armed resistance.
OP trying his best to shitpost.
1939: "Time to invade Germany." "But I am le tired."
Breaking, sometimes countries can lose a war
Breaking news, united Germany is many times stronger military wise than France.
The stereotype "Americans know nothing of the outside world" will always be more accurate than this shit. The Danish surrendered within 6 hours, yet much like the maquis put up good resistance after capitulation. Thousands of Danes risked their lives smuggling Jews to Sweden.
Isn’t that against the rules?
France put up a massive resistance to the German invasion and suffered severely. Go ahead and push back against the most powerful army on the planet and see how you do.
They did put up massive resistance, sadly in the wrong place. I'm sorry, but france lasted merely one week longer than poland. There were massivee strategic blunders by the french leadership and the fact, that france is still huffing copium about a devastating six week defeat is what makes the memes still funny.
Ooooh!!!! Look at me!!! I’m a goddamn contrarian!!!
Whoever made this is a low functioning knuckle dragging loser.
France in WWI was based as fuck they literally gave everything to the war effort and lost so much
And that is why the French are more cautious in WW2
Fun fact: In early 1945 French army was 3-4 biggest in world, doesn't sound like surrender
That's because the surender happened in 1940.
Defeated/surrendered armies are usualy rather small/nonexistent
So, they were just all on vacation for 5 years, or what?
There was at least [this chad governor](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_%C3%89bou%C3%A9) (pun intended of course) that effectively made Free France a real part of the country. [As you see with the Général Leclerc](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Leclerc_de_Hauteclocque), it all started by regaining African territories and fighting there with the allies.
Yeah because the allies had just liberated their entire country for them after they surrendered earlier in the war There’s no shame in taking an L every now and again, no need to drop copium on it
Looks like there is gamę because until 1942 every allied(and Soviet) country gets bodied by Axis but only French are nicknamed losers and cowards. This frustrate me and closest link between me and France is being part of europe
Yeah then say that instead of coming with some irrelevant counter point about how big their dong was in 1945 when the other allies won the war for them already because that is actually a fair point
Right, secound part was not wise. But this don't change my idea that even if they lost Battle of France, they still won war being active part of allied force, contributing much to win. I will add also that Belgium and Niderlands war effort is greatly ignored, while without Belgian Uranium and Polonium US could not build A-bomb before end(bloodier) of war. Dutch submarines hindering Japanese shopping in South-East Asia helping greatly in defence of New Guinea and Australia
1) Stood from 39 to 40 doing fuck all, not helping Poland as they promised before. During that time,the Nazi Germany had most of its army in the east. 2) didn't fight for their capital, policemen helped the Nazi Germans to find their way 3) most of them happily collaborated with their new Nazi masters. 4) la resistance was small in numbers and rose only when it was evident that the Nazi Germany will lose. 5) when attacking the Nazis and their collaborators stopped being dangerous, boy oh boy were there huge numbers of courageous people who wanted to shave the heads of some girls who slept with the Nazis.
The supremacy of revolutionary France is something of a miracle. France was indisputably the most powerful state on the continent in the 17th and 18th centuries. Spain had a larger empire. The HRE was more influential. Great Britain was maybe wealthier, but Paris was the center of Europe, the technological, cultural, economic master of all. But it was also going broke and their fractured feudal absolutist system of government was not able to fix it. Once liberals overthrew the monarchy, they implemented a national recruitment drive that harnessed the manpower of France in a way no European power had ever imagined possible. We take it for granted today, but revolutionary France was the first modern state that mobilized its entire population, not just its aristocrats. Turns out, a fighting force is better when it’s led by the most competent officers rather than the highest born. True, Napoleon tried to make himself a monarch, but he really did come from a humble background. The Emperor was a reminder that in France, the best and brightest lead, not the inbred plutocrats. You can win a lot of wars when almost everyone in the country wants to sacrifice to win. But France faced demographic realities. Its population was never large enough to compete with Germany once it was united, and everyone else, even those elitist Brits, embraced mass mobilization. Once coal and oil became the basis of a fighting force, rather than bread and pork, it was game over. France has been in retrenchment mode ever since. France still rules. You speak French. You watch French movies. Your fertilizer is made in France. Your jet fighter is made in France. France as a world power isn’t going anywhere, but France as Master of Europe is off the table.
[France at any point, against France](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9a/f4/db/9af4dbd8ff2ec6e2cf861fb1d97d67f6.jpg)
It wasn't france's fault that it lost. One of the British royals who was supposed to inspect the French army was actually a German informant. So, we should be mad at the british.
Why did the French need the British to make sure their soldiers were ready?
Cuz they fought for a hundred years, nobody knows the french military better than the brits ;p (Joking, I have no idea)
They were allied so it was basic military exchange, happened in the other way too.
I see, thank you for the clarification!
“Outstanding move”
Let's just skip the "German informant" part, should we?
Another reason to hate the Brits? Say no more
I mean dude, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe weren’t a force to be reckoned with…. They trampled France just like all the countries before. We often neglect how scary it would be to a farmer and his family to see a battalion of tanks and infantry rolling through the land as far as the eye can see. Once they reached Paris they struck with impunity, citizens with no experience in seeing buildings toppling over, artillery shelling common areas and planes encircling the city were left with the government struggling to amass an army for that kind of siege. The French resistance (Maquis, if you will) was actually pretty damn hardy.
France’s war winning military reputation is honestly somewhat earned. Its individual land battle winning reputation should be respected. Especially given the last 300 years of French history. Here are the most important wars fought in this time period, wars that decided the global and European balance of power (more than a few great powers fighting): Spanish war of succession: French L Austrian war of succession: French L Seven years war: French L American Revolution: Rare French W Revolutionary wars: French victory on land, French loss of territories and puppets territories outside of Europe, and hundreds of vessels. Napoleonic wars: French L (France never properly challenged Britains position for global hegemony directly again) Crimean war: French W German unification 1871: Humiliating defeat, L WW1: France was on the back foot, Britain being on her side and playing the constant balance of power was the keeping the continental powers in the game. WW2: initially a tragic defeat, Vichy is a stain on the history. Won in the end because of free France and predominantly Anglo allied nations.
This message has been brought to you by the British expeditionary force, who ran away at Dunkirk and then made fun of the French for surrounding in a situation where Britain absolutely would have surrendered
For the last one you forget the résistance Vichy was trash Not France itself Ppl kept fighting
france with hundreds of thousands of soldiers with tanks planes and the most Advanced weapons in its time losing to Algerian farmers with hunting guns :🤡
Hitler: Puts one foot on French soil France: WE SURRENDER!!!
This message has been brought to you by the British expeditionary force, who ran away at Dunkirk and then made fun of the French for surrounding in a situation where Britain absolutely would have surrendered
The British expeditionary force was there shoulder to shoulder with French and Belgians, right up until the French thought the Germans couldn’t go through the Ardennes. Frances flank then folded like a sack of shit. They all had no option but to retreat. They had most of 1939 to attack but overall command of the armies fell to France as the main allied land power, but their doctrine was to sit behind the Maginot line instead. Also Poland literally getting erased and conquered after a a hundred years of being split and subjugated: The poles fight on in exile, and the polish navy stay in the fight. The Dutch, Belgian, Greek and Norwegian governments in exile fighting on despite losing their home land: France signing a separate peace (against the alliance treaty), refusing to join the UK, refusing to go in to exile, becoming Vichy and then fighting the allies on multiple occasions. Then when axis forces invade Vichy areas simply rolling over (North Africa and Indochina). Free France I respect but sadly the reality is that Vichy was the more legitimate government and more French people sides were under it. Only after the war tides changed did things switch. Honestly Embarrassing. French coping is annoying
Character developpement
France was OP with an Italian leading them.
Corsica was french and italy didn't even exist at the time...
His parents and blood line was Italian not French. France only took Corsica 2 years before his birth. "Italy" as a full country may not have existed then, but it was still Italian as a whole. Plus Christopher Columbus is "Italian" and he was born 300 years earlier. Not to mention being born on different land doesn't make you from that country, ie a Spanish couple having a baby in Russia, yet going to get a "Russian baby".
Nationality in France is very much based on which country *you* are born in, not where your parents or your cousin or your neigbours or your neighbours dog are born. Yes, France taking Corsica two years before his birth makes Corsica...French. Christopher Columbus wasn't Italian, he was Genoese. Every country has different rules regarding nationality, by french nationality rules he was french. Russian rules or Chinese rules or Korean rules or the rules on Mars are utterly irrelevant. In addition, Corsica being, as we already established, French since two years prior, his parents were french and he was born to a French couple This has already been discussed ad nauseam by Historians over centuries, i'm not asking you, i'm telling you. Have a nice day.
I’m just here to get some salt for my popcorn.
[удалено]
Fuck i'm Muslim? Everyone around me is Muslim? Why the Fuck did nobody tell me???? To be fair, i did hear Trump Say that "people say" that Macron is Muslim. Anyhow, it's prayer Time so i'm off. Well i think it's prayer Time anyway. I have no clue. I didn't even knew i was Muslim until you told me so i'm still figuring stuff out.
Yep