Personally, I’d like to see one dedicated to the French armed forces whether they be prior to the fall from 1918-1940, Vichy, Marquis, or Free French forces fighting under various auspices. There are some threads here on French equipment and various topics to start things off, and perhaps some relevant discussion points as it seems this era interests not only me…
I think so. When the Italian section was under debate I proposed a Franco-Italian section, but this would be nice too. 
I’m not sure! The Italian section is still fairly empty.
Hence the great idea of combining the French and Italian sections… :mrgreen:
A man Stole paintings from the Louvre, and sped off in his van, though in a few blocks he ran out of fuel and was captured. when asked why he had done it, he replied that he intended to sell the paintings as he didn’t have the Monet to buy Degas to make the VanGough, and he figured he had nothing Toulouse. The police were surprised he had de Gaulle to pull it off.
Nice.
Its lame, I know, but its the only thing French related i could think of…
Bravo!
It’ll do.
As my Grandfather (Dunkirk Veteran) used to say…
"10,000 French Rifles for sale - Only dropped once’.
The first topic of course would have to be on ‘French Flags of the 20th Century’ though how you tell all those white ones apart is anyones guess…
*I am only kidding by the way… Being English, its genetic that I have to rib the French military, despite its real performance.
The French suffered far, far more in both wars than their English speaking allies, and bravely bore the brunt of the German attack in both.
From poor memory, the French suffered vastly more and perhaps something approaching twice the number of casualties that the British (as distinct from Commonwealth forces) suffered.
The French didn’t have the luxury of pissing off at Dunkirk, being left to defend and live in inevitably surrendered France after the British and sundry French forces evacuated.
Meanwhile everybody who unfairly wants to portray the French as cheese eating surrender monkeys seems to overlook the Belgian surrender which was central to Dunkirk.
You are having a bad day today aint you?
You knew it was a joke but cant help yourself… Is it some form of post-colonial malaise? Are you having some sort of Australian backlash to the Motherland? Or do you just dislike me in general? I dont mind which to be honest…
I shant bother commenting on your disrespect to those servicemen who served at Dunkirk, other than your comment shows your true colours.
By the way, the French lost 1,385,000 killed servicemen in WW1 and 217,000 killed in WW2. British (non-Commonwealth) killed servicemen were 703,000 for WW1 and 383,000 for WW2.
Personally I dont like to use casualty rates for a pissing contest… Seems rather disrespectful and Im not sure what it proves.
If you had any respect for the fallen, you wouldn’t have made your stupid comments about unused French rifles for sale.
You’re the only one showing disrespect to the fallen, of any nation.
And if you think I could be bothered rising to your bait about Australian backlash to the supposed Motherland, you merely demonstrate a sad and overbearing attitude which expired in Britain with its loss of its Empire. Which is even sadder for someone in Ireland, where my proudly independent forebears came from to establish a nation based on notions of equality and democracy which attracted British migrants in their droves after WWII.
The comment came from my Grandfather, a Dunkirk veteran, who had a black sense of humour.
You take tongue in cheek comments way too seriously, Im surprised you didnt take issue with the other comments on the thread.
As for Ireland, just cos I live there, doesnt mean Im Irish… And its anything but equal and democratic at the moment.
I look forward to you explaining how my comments demonstrate disrespect to those who served at Dunkirk, and especially compared with the 10,000 French who dropped their rifles.
Which 10,000, exactly, of the French forces who provided the ring which enabled the British and French to evacuate from Dunkirk dropped those rifles?
Or were they dropped somewhere else?
If so, where, and by whom?
Those figures don’t support your disparaging comments about the French having 10,000 rifles dropped only once.
Why?
Because they don’t support your offensive and idiotic comments about the French being cowards who didn’t fight?
One of the worst types of arsehole is the supposed friend who makes offensive and unfounded disparaging comments and who, when challenged, says “I was only joking.”.
You find the 10,000 mothers of the French soldiers who dropped their weapons and tell them you’re joking about each of their 10,000 cowardly sons who refused to fight the Germans in preference for dropping their weapons and running away.
See if they find it funny.
I never made any comments disparging the French. You just want to make it out that I did due to your fondness for me. 
I merely offered a humourous comment that my Grandfather once passed on to me. As my caveat stated, it was tongue in cheek.
Incidently one of my closest friends is French. When I comment that the French always surrender, he comments thats its because “they always have to do all the hard fighting till the English turn up”. Its the good natured ribbing that has existed between Allies for a long time…
I posted the correct casualty rates as I know how hard the French fought in both world wars, from Belgium, to Norway, in France, North Africa and on their return to France they served well. As did a myriad of resistance groups. I could go on about the actions at Gembloux Gap and many others, the rebuttal of German attacks in the face of heavy odds or the fighting at Bir Hakim. Or we can just utter the immortal word ‘Verdun’ and leave it at that.
Lets also not forget the British troops that landed in France after Dunkirk to do their duty and try to support the French. We left at Dunkirk because the Germans cut us off and we had little choice…
I hate to add gas to the fire, being both English and French, and wanting this useless bickering to stop, but the real people who see the French as cheese-eating surrender monkeys, are the Americans, whose casualties pale in comparison(talking about WWI and WWII combined for both).
The way most of them see it is that they had to come in and gallantly save the day, even though WWI had turned against the Germans by the time the States got in France in any number big enough to do serious damage(only a matter of time, I suppose…), and in WWII the Soviets were turning the tide, and the English/Commonwealth forces we pushing Rommel back by the time the Americans entered in great numbers.
(both of those are IMHO)
The French suffered anywhere from 94,000 to 130,000 war dead in only six-seven weeks of fighting. The higher figure counts the Frenchmen who died of their wounds – a number which was quite high as the French medical system was wholly unprepared for a war of movement, so I think the number of fatally wounded in the campaign was around twice the number of Americans who died after reaching the aid station or hospital…
Only in relatively recent times. Strictly IIRC, I think a certain animosity started between the Gaullist French and the U.S./NATO after the French decided to partially withdraw from active planning with the alliance largely because of what she perceived as American hegemony in Europe. I think this spilt over into a cultural backlash and the perception that the French were ‘rude’ to tourists (but this is mainly associated to Parisians rather than French as a whole if I’m told correctly) and this represented something of a collective ungratefulness that devolved into French-bashing jokes on American late night television (David Letterman once had a ‘Top 10 List’ of things France was doing in Anticipation of German Reunification: one of the things on the list was, “installing speed bumps to slow down the panzers”).
I think the “cheese-eating, surrender monkey” rhetoric again reared its ugly head politically in response to what our fearless leader Bush termed “old Europe’s” (France and Germany in this case) refusal to go along with the American misadventure in Iraq. It was rather annoying debating ignorant people over this by simply stating that the U.S. wouldn’t exist without France as they largely bankrupted their national treasury to support the American Revolution. And French infantry were also fighting at the last effective British colonial redoubt in American at Yorktown in 1781. Or that the Frenchmen were dying in Afghanistan after 2001–largely on behalf of an ungrateful American political establishment. However, I would take issue with your overall characterization.
The fact is that much of the historical literature regarding the fall of France was written by British conservative males such as Alistair Horne and Len Deighton, who often, despite writing overall great works, often over focused on the societal problems, and social/political divisions within France to perpetuate the “moral failure” theory, while at the same time sort of overstating the omnipotence of the ‘Blitzkrieg’ German military machine. It is a notion that plays to the wartime interests of the British Allied command, and post-war epitaph --by deflecting away from their own incompetence of the 1939-1940 time-frame and giving the French generals, especially the more conservative ones who actively collaborated after the fall, a pass. It also ignores that fact that the French actually mobilized and put far more of her resources into defeating Hitler than their British allies did up until that point. And available evidence presented even by Horne contradicts the ‘moral failure’ idea, at least when it comes to the French Army overall, when in fact it was an intellectual failure by the upper echelon of the French military and their disregard of much intelligence (Belgian intelligence accurately predicted much of Fall Gelb, and the French G2 was also aware that something was afoot that the command hadn’t anticipated) and dissent.
…whose casualties pale in comparison(talking about WWI and WWII combined for both).
The U.S. did suffer far less casualties overall. But for the individual Americans who fought in Europe in 1917-18, it would have been a bloodbath as the American military arrogantly disregarded all advice from their allies on how to keep casualties down in a modern war, and used many of the same idiotic infantry assault tactics of 1914. Secondly, the U.S. (in both wars, but mainly the second one) was able to compensate for the need to suffer heavy casualties with its massive industry and the use of firepower. However, I would point to instances where American forces suffered statistically about as heavy as anyone, on Okinawa or in the strategic bombing campaign. The overall numbers certainly weren’t as high as suffered by the Red Army for instance. But for individual marines or soldiers who were actually there, they were as likely to get killed as about any other combatant in WWII…
The way most of them see it is that they had to come in and gallantly save the day, even though WWI had turned against the Germans by the time the States got in France in any number big enough to do serious damage(only a matter of time, I suppose…), and in WWII the Soviets were turning the tide, and the English/Commonwealth forces we pushing Rommel back by the time the Americans entered in great numbers.
(both of those are IMHO)
Some good points. But although things were turning against Imperial Germany, there’s little doubt that the successful integration of U.S. ground forces in the theater assured the final defeat of Germany far more quickly and certainly helped lead to the collapse of the Kaiser’s gov’t. And I might point out that the Soviets and the Commonwealth were turning the tide in no small part with help of American aid and production…