From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Feb 21 2003 - 21:43:00 MST
Mike Lorrey writes
> [Spike wrote]
> > I have noticed lately on Leno, Letterman etc that France
> > is the butt of all the jokes. To this I object. France
> > should be the butt of only those jokes which involve an
> > actual country.
>
> Nah. When I think of butts, I automatically picture a beady eyed beret
> clad fellow with a thin moustache and a sneer. Besides, there is so
> much more than just the country to make jokes about: their military,
> for instance,
I think that the bad reputation of the French military
is mostly undeserved. Their biggest mistakes are
usually said to be
* losing to the Germans in 1870, a fiasco
of Napoleon III
* the quick defeat in WWII by the Germans
* Dien Bien Phu
The latter was just quite difficult, and a nation ten
years later---and with much more advanced fire power
---cannot be said to have had an easy time in a far
away country in Indochina either.
France's inferiority to Germany during 1850 - 1950
is mostly attributable to the 3 to 2 numerical
superiority of the Germans.
But it's World War II that every one thinks about when
they sneer at the French. Well, know this: when war
was declared in September of 1939, France put
FOUR MILLION MEN
on the line against Germany. That was one-tenth of
their population. (It took the U.S. several years to
mobilize to that degree.) Moreover, most of the French
units were first rate. Individually, they even had
better tanks than the Germans. But neither the units
nor the tanks got much of a chance to fight because
after the Ardennes breakthrough, the situation was
hopeless strategically.
Yes, there was Vichy, and the generalship in World War
Two wasn't good. But they fought quite well in the first
world war. I'll also concede the truth that their
methods and strategy (perhaps by bad luck) did overly
absorb the lessons of an earlier war, and failed to
be properly innovative.
Lee
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