Quote:
Originally Posted by ChalkLine
If you have any mistaken beliefs that the French didn't fight hard, prepare to lose those myths right now;
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Who ever said the French didn't fight hard? I simply said they were defeated in 1940 and, unlike the Commonwealth accepted that defeat, establishing a perfectly legal government known as Vichy France.
Your account is perfectly right and I can give you hundreds of similar accounts to prove that the French did fight hard even after defeat (Bir Hakeim, Monte Cassino, Air group Normandie-Niemen in Soviet Union, Commando Keifer, 2e DB...). In 1940 you get Narvik, the troops isolated in Belgium, Dunkirk, the sacrifice of the artillery officer school in Paris (go and visit Paris, you still see the bullets impact on the walls).
They fought also against US in Algeria and at Madagascar against the British not to mention Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar.
However, they have done that as units or people, not as a country. The Belgian, the Poles, the Czech, the Dutch, the Jews had done so as well... They were all, however, never recognized as prime contributors to the War (but they were praised for their military achievements).
Then, France betrayed (from 1960 onward), no less than a third of those who had fought for the country, freezing their pensions and recently accepting to raise them only and solely for those who died (one more insult to their memory). Often, the people of France didn't follow their government on that ground and on occasions, they fought and still fight the government on that ground. An entire village in Savoie (local authorities included), opposed by Force the French police in the early 1990's hiding a French soldier from Senegal who was holding the Legion d'Honneur but who had been ordered expelled (And I'm not talking here of the Harkis who had fought for France and Algeria and still live under awful conditions).
Chalk as I'm French as such I'm more than allowed to judge my own country and government. If you want to challenge me on that, feel free but do it at the political level (and state level). Don't bring the people and the troops into it. We perfectly agree on them.
I can see the political reasons behind the choice to raise France to the status of prime contributor but I disagree with them and find them illegitimate (Possibly instrumental in starting the Cold War). In addition, the French governements after 1942 and after the War (de Gaulle in the first place) built an historical lie around the political choice of this country and and about its military achievements (actually stating that the French didn't fight well in 1940). They are still often doing so and, in the meantime, trying to correct it. Over the past two years our government took two initiatives on that ground (one was successful, the other was challanged and they had to back up).
- Sarkozy asked that the letter by Guy Mocquet to be read in classes as he was a hero of the resistence. (Oops, the guy was never part of the resistance but wrote a letter. He was however a communist distributings paper explaining how responsible the French government of 1940 was in the defeat. Finally, he was executed as an hostage by the German).
- Sarkozy wanted every school children to remember the 10.000 jewish kids deported and killed during the hollocaust. That was challanged and defeated as Simone Veil (a deported kid at the time) declared the proposal outrageous, unfair and monstruous (I cite her). In the meantime, it was never made any mention of the jewish kids saved by French families all over the country by our government (thanks to Yad Vashem as they did mention that 80% of the Jewish kids in France had been protected and saved by the population).