The remilitarisation of the Rhineland was a test by Hitler and he had his generals ordered to retreat if any resistance was met. The remilitarisation was in breach of the Versailles treaty. The French could have stepped in here and maybe prevented the war?
Of course, had the French wanted to risk war. You have to understand they were not aware of the German willingness to retreat. The French wanted to avoid war at all costs. And who could blame them? Of the Allies in WW1, only Russia suffered more than France. North Eastern France had looked like the moon after WW1, and 1.6 million French soldiers were killed in the fighting alone (not including injured people; this number is, I think, equal to about the amount of Americans who died in all wars we were involved in combined). A great proportion of France’s manpower was diminished to nothing, and, unlike Germany, France was never able to recover. Germany had a population double that of France at the start of WW2, and had made almost a complete recovery from WW1. France was still reeling from the blows of WW1 (a bittersweet victory; not even with the regaining of Alsace and Lorraine had the manpower wasted in the war been replenished). The French populace wanted to avoid another war as much as possible; that’s why they avoided chasing the Germans from the Rhineland and, like the British, had a policy of appeasement to Germany.
In any case, the Versailles treaty was a waste. Not only did it succeed in nothing but to tick off the Germans, but France and Britain didn’t even follow its terms that well either. The United States never even ratified it, hence a factor of the extreme weakness of the League of Nations.
They would have four options:
Run
Hide
Surrender
Collaborate
:lol:[/quote]
you forgot the 5th option…
kick your ass 
They would have four options:
Run
Hide
Surrender
Collaborate
:lol:[/quote]
you forgot the 5th option…
kick your ass
http://www.exile.ru/2003-October-02/war_nerd.html [/quote]
There is, of course, a sixth option, the one I took (I’m American, but quarter French in descent…mother is French-Italian, father was Thai-Chinese, though I was raised entirely by my mother and use her last name.):
The sixth option is to offer up real historical facts to counter the misconceptions that spawned those pointless jokes (though even I sometimes make use of them; you have to be able to poke fun at yourself!).
As for that article: I’ve seen it before, and while I agree with the guy’s basic idea (France is not cowardly), I disagree with his method of pulling it off. First off, he’s a tad, well rude. But that’s okay, everyone has a voice. The primary problem is that, in the defense of the French (and with the exception of WW1), he focuses on the valiant efforts of individual battles as opposed to looking at the wars from an overall perspective. In WW2, he focuses only on the initial French “fear” of the Wehrmacht instead of studying the real reasons France fell, as well as the contributions of the Free French afterward. In fact, the idea of “fear” is kind of an overstatement. The old senile French officers in charge of the French Army were not afraid of the Germans until after the Germans had dominated them and the situation turned hopeless. They were afraid of another war, but not the Wehrmacht itself. In fact, a lot of those senile officers were over-confident in their static defense strategies; a large number of them thought the war would be a cakewalk.
I think youve hit the nail there. The French arent Cowards, nor were they. Throughout history the French have fought and bested many valiant foes, including british ones.
The fact is that the Germans were forced to invent the Blitzkreig because they had essentially only had 6 years to build up their armed forces. They actualy had less armour than the allies in 1940 and less aircraft too. It was the new application of fast/light mobile forces that enabled them to win over France. If they had used the same old tactics the results would probably have been similar.
In fact the first planned assault on France was to be an almost exact re-run of the ww1 plan, it was only because this plan fell into the hands of the Belgians that Plan Yellow was adopted for May 1940.
After Dunkirk, when the Germans moved south again, the French fought just as valiantly.
They would have four options:
Run
Hide
Surrender
Collaborate
:lol:[/quote]
you forgot the 5th option…
kick your ass
http://www.exile.ru/2003-October-02/war_nerd.html [/quote]
:lol: :lol: :lol:
Get real laddie !
Why would I bring a donkey anyway ?
Just noticed, two posts, both with the same gen - you got a stutter ?
Out of curiosity, what is a “gen”?
“Gen”, normally means information, “duff gen” is bad information.