Would France sit out the War?

[Olefin]

Just for the record there are a lot of differences between V1 and V2 as to France. The details of areas in rebellion from the main government, the Corsican Mafia controlling much of Southern France and the fact that French ports and refineries got nuked dont appear in V1 at all V1 paints a France that is short of oil (and makes hints that its because the Middle Eastern oil fields getting nailed in the war are the reason - i.e. thats why they are there in the RDF module to make sure they get most of what is left).

V1 paints a France that seems to be in much better shape than in V2. Clearly the V2.2 France is in much worse shape than we had been led to believe in the original timeline - still vastly better than the US, Soviets or the UK but clearly not as powerful as the V1 France.

And this France takes severe casualties from nuclear attacks and definitely says that Paris took some kind of damage in the war.

The timeline itself isnt that much different in V1 and V2 - but when you get to the area that describes the world and its conditions it is really different.

By the way its the same with Japan - in V1 Japan sounds like an untouched industrial society that only saw damage from its oil being cut off - in V2 they are at war with the Soviets and Japan has taken quite the nuclear beating.

And the point Horse Soldier makes about HW and 2300AD is well taken - I have said it before that you cant have the HW uber drought that only leaves 12 percent or so of the US population left alive at the end of 2001 (and that doesnt take into account what kind of new plagues would strike the US from 3/4 of the surviving population starving to death and leaving that many corpses rotting away unburied most likely by the survivors) and the US being as described in 2300AD - just not possible for both to occur in the same timeline. Not to where the US has a space navy, colonies on outer space, etc.. after that kind of loss of population (i.e. to where she loses at least 88 percent of her pre-war population).

But that is a discussion for another thread.

One thing to look at is what cities are France's main refineries located in - that basically tells you the tale of who lived and who died in France during the 1997 nuclear strikes. And what ports would be the most useful to NATO and thus the targets for the nuclear strikes that the V2 timeline says happens.

Brest, Calais and St. Nazaire all come to mind as potentials and Toulon in the Med as well. However I am of the opinion that the Med ports may not have been as important to NATO as the Atlantic ones and thus may not have been touched while the Atlantic ones took quite a hammering (but not ones like La Rochelle - way too far south to be a viable supply port for NATO operations in Germany)