TIME to RECALIBER the TRUTH: THE FRENCH IN WWII – COWARDS?

Quite the Contrary. Instrumental in the final victory? Totally?

How did the French saved the retreating British in Dunkirk

How did the Free-French saved the Anglo-Canadians and the Americans in Bir-Hakeim, Lybia against the Rommel’s advance.

How did the Free-French were instrumental in the Italy campaign and made possible the allied advance to the North

How did the French were instrumental in helping the Russian airforce fighting the nazis, sending experienced squadrons of Free-French pilots to fly with the Russians.

How did the Free-French Navy was instrumental in securing the safe transit of voncoys on the North Atlantic (and paid a stiff price for it).

How did the Free-French Fighters (Resistance) was FUNDAMENTAL in the successful execution of DDay and the Provence invasion by making German retreat impossible and attacking German convoys and troop from the interior of the country.

How did the Free-French Navy, then harbored in neutrality and unarmed in Mers-El-Kebir and Casablanca, was viciously attacked by the British under the pretext that the fleet might fall under German’s hands, and how the French sailors fought with a courage that to this day is unequal and costed thousands of lives, how some of the ships managed to restart engines and man age to inflict heavy casualties to the British…. How for example a French post WWI battle cruiser managed to force its way through the attacking British fleet, managed to severely damage British ships prior to escaping at full speed towards Toulon?

How the Free-French fighter squadrons were the most successful during the war, forcing the Germans to decreet that any French fighter pilot shot down if found on the ground would be immediately shot and killed regardless of their status as soldiers.

How by the year 2004 the Free-French forces were amounting to close to 400,000 people and were fighting on all the fronts.

So, friends, it is time to stop the stupid rightist and uninformed propaganda.

To this day, the French are not very proud of the actions of a few old and incompetent generals in 1940 which costed the country greatly.

But for us to continue calling them “cowards” and  “surrendering monkeys” is not only unfair, untrue and unfriendly. It is simply upward ignorant and undignified of us, Americans.

 
It has appeared that a favorite game of unaware or discriminatory Americans has been to bash on the French and that their favorite say is to qualify the French as “cowards”. The idiotic TV show “The Simpsons” went as far as discrediting the French as “surrendering monkeys”. This  comment has now been used, re-used and  over-used by  irresponsible, incompetent and idiotically xenophobic radio and TV show hosts. It is not for me to challenge their moral, mental, educational and professional competence. Any experienced intelligent listener will be able to discern  the propaganda from actual reality.
 

So now the truth: This incidentally is only for intelligent people who have the decency of checking facts and are even minded enough to see the real facts from some conservative fictional fantaisies.

WWI: The War between France and Germany claimed millions of deaths on both sides, wiping in the process an entire generation. The “surrendering monkeys” got killed by the thousands to defend their homeland invaded by the Germans who wanted to reconquer Alsace and Lorainne. The Germans suffered also humongous losses in the hands of the “surrendering monkeys” with both sides demonstrated pure heroism under impossible conditions. The British and Canadians also suffered major losses in heroic battles in Belgium. We, Americans only came at the end of the war, with soldiers equipped with horses and absolutely unprepared for the brutality of that war. Fortunately we learned the lesson for WWII.
 

November 18 1918: Armistice between  France and Germany. The French and the Brits humiliated the Germans with impossible surrender conditions including unralistc terms of war reparation damages and its incidence on the rebuilding of Germany.

Exhausted by this massive killer war. called "The Last of the Last", neither of the two major powers, France or Germany was ready for another war, each country having wiped an entire generation of able men from the map.

Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. France immediately declared war to Germany in accordance with an assistance treaty signed with Poland, and a general mobilization was declared. The mood in France was somber: no one was ready to fight another war. Nonetheless, people would fight if they had to.

French generals at the time would have been competent if it had not been for the fact that they were not fighting the same war. Modeling their defense mechanism to that of WWI, it had been decided in the years preceding the war to build a line of fortifications defending the border between Germany from the East all the way to Belgium. It is important to remember that WWI had been a war of trenches and forts where each foot of gained territory was paid with the blood of thousands of soldiers.

There were two problems with that fortified approach:

1. Belgium backed from its original commitment to extend the Maginot line to the cost, thus making the fortification vulnerable to a German attack through the Ardennes since the line was not a continuous line of defense.
2. The Maginot line illustrated a defensive posture assuming that tGermany as an agressor would attack the line in a frontal assault. However, if the Germans were to  overcome the defenses in  a flanking maneuver avoiding a frontal assault, the defenses were defenseless as explained below.

Then other mistakes were made in the planning process:

-         The French decided to mass all of their elite troops inside the line leaving less experienced troops to defend the front further North.

-         Since the line was a defensive position, no provision had been made to defend it from intruders coming from the "inside", the French side. Thus all canons and guns were oriented towards Germany and not towards France.

It is generally accepted that at the time of the declaration of war, the French army was better equipped than the German army, although its moral was not very high. Again, no one wanted to fight a senseless second world war.

For months, the French waited for a German attack which never came (“La drôle de guerre”). Had the French attacked Germany at the time, they would have had measurable success early-on in the war. In fact, had the French moved against the Germans when Hitler re-occupied the Rhineland, WWII would not have happened.  The French political power  made at that time a huge miscalculation in not intervening against Germany to force it back into  its post WWI borders. That miscaculation costed millions of deaths.

One brigadier general called Charles de Gaulle was at that time in charge of armored divisions. He had written documents and books developing a theory about how a modern warfare would be won by tanks and armored vehicles. He especially explained how a mechanized German division could overtake the Maginot line, and running at the same time through Holland and Belgium, would overcome the French defenses in days. His theories were dismissed and his comments ridiculed. However, a German general named Guderian had read the books and had communicated to Hitler its conclusions: attack with tank divisions through the Ardennes and Holland and in doing so circumvent the Maginot Line and surround the French defenses from the back. Most importantly, Guderian was in charge of the German pantzer divisions. This is exactly the way the German attack happened as de Gaulle had proposed it or rather warned against.

The German tanks attacked at the most unexpected time and place, through the Ardennes and through Holland, threatening the French and British troops massed from the Maginot line to Dunkirk.  Holland fell, so did Belgium , not having the fighting power nor the will to resist such an impossible attack.

The British troops were ordered a retreat to the French port of Dunkirk, the French troops covering their retreat and evacuation.

England sent its navy, fishermen and others to rescue their troops in Dunkirk leaving behinh hundred of thousands French soldiers stranded. Many fought to their death, and French casualties (as German’s) mounted rapidly. Thousands were taken prisoners and what was left of their equipment was seized by the Germans.

With the collapse of the French and British armies to the North and the pantzer advance to the North and East, it was only a question of time before the entire French defensive system would collapse. The incompetence of WWI era generals and their lack of understanding of modern warfare added to the debacle and within days Germans were in the position to attack Paris. With the defensive line broken in the North and in the East, it was now obvious that the city would fall within days.

The French government collapsed. Old WWI hero Maréchal Pétain was asked to become head of state and despite intense opposition in the government, a cease-fire was signed with the Germans by Pétain. He naively believed that between soldiers the Germans would treat France in a honorable fashion. But nazis were nothing of honor. However they were pragmatists. The last thing they wanted was to see a France totally disintegrated in pure chaos and anarchy. They agreed to occupy the Northern part of the country including most of the Atlantic seafront. The Southern Zone occupying the area from South of Bordeaux to the Alps would be a new “independent French state” with the temporary capital set in the spa city of Vichy.

A minimal French police was maintained in the North to maintain civil order. The South was allowed to maintain a small army or defensive purpose only and with no real fighting capability.

The French fleet was declared free and never to fall into German hands.

Note: t is imporant to remember that France had large troops in its overseas empire, as well as important naval and air forces. Those would become instrumental in the allies plans for vitory.

Now a pause:

TRUTH No 1: THE FRENCH DID NOT SURRENDER TO THE GERMAN AFTER FLEEING TO THE NAZI ADVANCE: THEY COVERED THE BRITISH RETREAT LATER CALLED A “STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL”. IN DOING SO, THE FRENCH SACRIFICED THOUSANDS OF SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT TO THE BITTER END TO STOP THE GERMAN ADVANCE AND ALLOW THE BRITISH TO RETREAT SAFELY  TO ENGLAND.

 
The Germans made a big mistake in not pursuing the British all the way to England. Had they done it, the turn of WWII would have been totally different. But Germany was not ready to force an invasion of the citadel Britain.

 
The day the French capitulated to the Germans was perceived as an infamy all over the country. How could a great power be defeated so fast, so swiftly and so decidedly by an enemy who was not superior in arm and in number (but was in motivation)?

This is when DeGaulle sent his famous June 18 call (“Appel du 18 Juin”) calling on all French people not to stop the fight but to continue fighting the Germans wherever they were.

France at that time had a large empire, with allegiances to the official French power (which had by then become Vichy) but ready for revenge on the affront made to its dignity and to its territory.

Immediately, thousands of men in arms secretly left the country north and south to join DeGaulle in England and fighting units already put in place in England, America and other parts of the French empire.

THEREFORE TO SAY THAT, SINCE THE CAPITULATION THE FRENCH STOPPED FIGHTING THE GERMANS IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE AND IS A NASTY AND DANGEROUS MISINTERPRETATION OF THE HISTORICAL FACTS.

Some of the French war ships left French harbors and joined the Free-French forces in England and other overseas harbor.

 (To be continued)...