I seriously doubt that you will see many French ppl on the site. Especialy Parisian’s. The French dont like to talk about the war much. When i was in Sweden my friend from Northern Ireland and I loved to talk about the war and each time we did this guy from Paris would get up and leave the room. I ask my other friend from Lyon about it and he said the most French do not like to talk about it because they feel embarassed about the whole thing.
Yep… When I read the books of Mannstein, I miss a point where war with France was began… Germans take over so easy and without any strong casualties… The Mannstein himself called Ardenn operation like something like “week-end barbeque”.
HA! (thats funny)
Quite true for all english sites and forums. I didn’t saw any French. :oops: :oops:
Seriously, no one gives enough credit to the French for their efforts in WWII, it’s not the army that messed up, it was their leaders, during the Blitzkrieg, France had the troops, armor, and air to repel the German invaders, it was the military leaders of the French armed forces that messed up, a way the war could have ended quickly and saved millions of lives, would be if the French and British forces went on a counter-attack on Germany while the Wehrmacht was stationed in Poland. They could have probably reached the Rhine in a few days while the German army scrambles to counter-strike the attack.
french troops are great,but the morale was shit,the morale killed them.they wanted the nazism on france.
the foreign legion are one of the best troops
french troops are great,but the morale was shit,the morale killed them.they wanted the nazism on france.
the foreign legion are one of the best troops[/quote]
France have a great army ,1940 they waiting germans in wrong place ,germans first attack holland and then with north france ,french army been on east and germans suround them.
french troops are great,but the morale was shit,the morale killed them.they wanted the nazism on france.
the foreign legion are one of the best troops[/quote]
Exactly my point 
thank you Clauss, great army, suck ass commanders.
France have a great army ,1940 they waiting germans in wrong place ,germans first attack holland and then with north france ,french army been on east and germans suround them.[/quote]
Maybe the french been is right place germans will have big problems to conquer france.
i believe WW2 showed Frances military power - nil
and i see why modern day French ppl would b embaressed by ww2
even Yugoslavia was mroe of a pain in the ass for Germany then France
Please guys ! Don’t say things like that ! We had an army ! Ok, we had in fact two armies… So, I’m going to give you a little lesson about french history during WWII ! 
1939-1940, The funny war and the invasion
When WWII started in september 1939, all the french forces were mobilised. The bigger part of them were put in the french-german border, on the “ligne Maginot”, a long complex of tunnels, artillery guns and garnisons. Untill may 1940, nothing happend. This period was called “drôle de guerre” (funny war) because everybody was waiting for the german attack, the soldiers were playing cards, the life stayed like before the war. Hitler said after “if the french had attacked us at this time, we probably won the war…”. But in may 1940, the german attacked… through belgium ! With the Blitzkrieg, they avanced very quickly. We had a lot a tanks, Renault, stronger than the panzers. But they stayed in the garages. All the civil ones fled towards the south, that is called the “débâcle” (unfasten). Our Marshals wanted to fight like during WWI, so we lost thousand of soldiers, killing germans too. But their army was to modern and well-trained. They invaded north of France and Alsace-Lorraine came back to Germany.
The Vichy government and the collaboration
After the end of the invation, the Marshal Petain became the leader of the “Etat français”, an authoritative state, based on three master words: “travail, famille, patrie” (work, familly, fatherland). This state was antisemite. Hitler wanted the jews men and women. Petain gave also the children to the deportation.
Militarily, Vichy had the “Milice”, a political police, who arrested the jews, the resistants, people making black market… 4.000 french were in the french SS division “Charlemagne” fighting communism on the estern front.
Resistance and Free Forces
More than 4.000 people fought in the “maquis” or the resistance organisations. But thousands gave help, hiding pilotes, stilling german munitions, giving tracts… The “francs tireurs partisans” were the communists and the “forces françaises de l’interieur” FFI, people under the general De Gaulle. The “forces françaises libres” FFL and the “forces navales françaises libres” FNFL were in England, and fought in Syria, Northern Africa, Russia (normandie-niemen) in Italy and then in france. There were french SAS, and there is still a french SAS regiment (1st RPIMa). Only 177 french commando from the 4th english commando landed in Sword beach the D-Day, because Eisenhower didn’t trust at all in the french, from De Gaulle or Petain. The 2nd DB (division blindée) took Paris, with the help of the parisian population. They took the “Horten” in Berstesgaden (So the movie Band of Brothers make a terrible lie saying it was the US troops who took Hitler’s house !).
Finally A FRENCH PERSON JOINS THE FORUMS!!! and some of you thought this day would never come And he also proves my point, the french army was powerful, its commanders were dumb as hell.
either way they were embaressed by with such a quick surrender
they wanted it to b another trench war when the Germans could so easily bomb the trenches now
Ok, now to get a bit into the details:
After the debacle of the 1871 Franco-Prussian war, where the French government got suckered by Bismarck to declare war on Prussia (Emser Depesche), without being ready for it (they still had to mobilise, which took them several days, while the Prussian and other German Allied troops were already waiting to be deployed by train with all plans ready), the motto of the French command was that any war should be won by intimidation and offensive agression, leading to suicidical frontal attacks ordered by the French generals in WW1 against fortified German machine gun positions.
France in WW1 lost almost a whole generation of men (the never born sons of this lost generation were btw badly missed during the mobilisation in WW2).
While on one hand, due to the incompetence of French generals during WW1 and the resulting huge losses, miliotary became a dirty word in France in the interwar period, the Generals were preparing to fight WW1 all over again. They looked at the well equiped German positions of this war and decided, in a total reverse of their WW1 ideology, tthat offensive operations in the face of modern weaponry would be suicidical and a thing of the past. So they concentrated on the Maginot line. The Germans on the other hand looked at what the British used to crack German fortifications, the tank and decided to improve on it.
Then the Maginot line had a big fault. Virtually all German attacks on France so far came through the north-east, up at the Belgian border. Now this is also the main industrial centre of France, badly needed in case of war, but virtually indefensible, also, unlike the border areas around the Rhine and Luxemburg, the landscape doesn’t lend itself to static defense, the soil is wet and muddy, so that you can not dig in without constantly pumping water and there are not natural obstacles, like big rivers or mountains.
What would have made sense was to continue the Maginot line northwards into Belgium and then add it to the Grebbe line in the Netherlands, but both Belgium and the Netherlands insisted on their neutrality, especially the Belgians refused any cooperation.
During the Drole de Geurre, the French and British expected the main thrust to come from Belgium, as under the original Schlieffen plan, or across the Rhine from southern Germany, but the area bordering the Ardennes was considered to be relatively safe. The French generals figured that, like in WW1, any attack would be preceeded by massive artillery bombardments, which took weeks to prepare by moving guns and large amounts of ammunition. They considered the narrow curvy roads of the Ardennes impassable to heavy artillery and armour. Furthermore due to planning errors, the French army, while big on paper, was understrength. It was divided in so called class A and class B units, class were regular units, motorised and fully equiped, which properly trained soldiers, while the class B units consisted of middle aged conscripts, with little transport and heavy weapons. Then there were still the fortress units, which consisted of soldiers, who had failed the fitness and health tests for regular soldiers and were not considred fit for marching, so only suitable in static positions.
There was also intense interservice rivalty, a nightmare logistical and chain of command system and lack of modern communications equipment. Heavy weapons, armour and aircraft were not concentrated but distributed piecemeal along the front line.
Another problem was that in the beginning of the war, France overmobilised. So many men were drafted that armaments factories and other factories had to close due to manpower shortages. The military were forced to sent tenthousands of skilled workers back home, which was not great for the morale of those who had to stay and soldier on.
Now theFrench Armydecided to deploy their best troops to thesectors they considered the most dangerous, e.g. along the Belgian border.
The Ardennes front was guarded by a Class B division, because it
was thought that in case of the Germans moving heavy artillry through the mountains, there would be enough warning to move better troops from other sectors.
What the French generals didn’t realise was that the Germans didn’t need heavy siege artillery. They used their Luftwaffe, especially the Ju-87 Stuka as flying artillery, so the attack through the Ardennes at Sedan came as a total surprise. Theyalso undersestimated the speed with which a motorised armoured division can move, bypassing enemy strongpoints for later mopping up.
The locally deployed 55th Infantry division was a B-class division. Out of 450 officers only 20 were regulars, most of the soldiers were elderly civilians. One false rumour passed by a French artillery commander which triggered a panic. He claimed in a message that German tanks had broken trough the lines, which was totally untrue. Another artillery colonel, also quite far behind the fighting also declared that he had to move his command post due to being encircled. The Artillerymen abadoned their guns and started to run for it.
The men of the 55th, which held the line came was suddenly met by panicky artillery men who claimed that they were running for their lives because German tanks were behind them, and got similarly infected. The tanks those soldiers had seen were in fact French tanks, Guderian hadn’t crossed the Meuse by then.
This way through rumours the panic spread and the soldiers ran from their positions or were odered to retreat by their superiors.
This created a gap in the French line through which Guderian’s troops could push and atttack the flanks and rear of the neighbouring units.
By then the Germans could still have been stopped by a counterattack, but communications within the French Army were poor. Most signals were still carried by messenger, the headquarters didn’t have teletypes and the commanders refused to use wireless, because it would give the HQ’s position away, also in many cases responsibility and chain of command was unclear. So due to chaos a counter attack never materialised, which permitted the Germans to cut the Allied supply lines in half by pushing through to the Channel.
Another thing is that the French upperclass secretlyadmired Hitler’s government and prefered it e.g. the socialist government of Leon Blum, as was seen when they forced Blum to stop supplying the Spanish Republic in their fight against Franco’s troops in 1936.
Jan
The french didn’t wanted nazism on France ! Petain wanted to stop the war and have the power for is own. He made everything to being aproved by Hitler and have a good rank in the “new europa”. But he was totaly wrong, the germans didn’t forgive the french for the umiliation of the treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI. During the war, and that’s where we have sometimes problems to talk about, thousands people denouced their jews neighbors. A lot of anonymous letters were send to make the gestapo come and deport the jews. Then, they sold the house, or made their family come in the empty apartment. So today, when someone talk about plans to make the people help the police, for exemple “anonymous calls” (like in England) everybody remember Vichy…
But in general, we haven’t any problem to talk about this period with our grandparent for exemple.
Ok, we don’t like to talk about 1940, because it was a total defeat, and we could have escape this defeat if we had use all our material and if we hadn’t silly marshals and political leaders… 
I do think that it is difficult to try and put yourself into the situation of 1940-44 in occupied France. For a start you would want your family to be as safe as possible, and I think most people would be inclined just to get on with it rather than joining the resistance.
An example of this that I do know a little about is guernsey. The old boys and girls that Ive spoken to about their experiences reflect this. They didnt try and help the Germans more than necessary, but they didnt go out of their way to annoy them too much either.
I dont honestly know what I would do in such a situation…
Yes many french’s sceard for own lives and lives their family ,nazi kill people who been is resistance and kill their family ,you have been very very brave to joining resistance.
On the bright side (and this is a bit sick so you might want to look away now Leclerc) the RN got to relive happier times and sink yet another French fleet. :oops: :roll:
having the Greek spirit in me id fight till death like all Greeks did
they had the Spartan spirit in them, where your mother would rather have you died in battle then come back from battle alive but facing you’re back to the enemy
Alot of Greeks has this spirit in them, which is why the Greeks had some of the fiercest resistance in ww2 (along with the French [wont deny that] and the Yugoslavs)