More on the "Surrender Monkeys, The French"

I've often made the point that France does not fight wars but achieves peace by collaborating with her enemies instead. For example, Germany marched unopposed around the "impregnable" Maginot line in 1940, and then easily defeated France in only six weeks. What is seldom mentioned is that the French army was twice as large as the German army at the time.

But the French national character wasn't the only thing that led her to ignominious defeat again. Like in World War I, it was the French general staff who were the real cowards. Churchill had to fly to Paris just before the French gave up in 1940 in an unsuccessful effort to put some spine into a general staff already defeated before the firing began. He found the French generals in a fatal self-imposed paralysis of reorganization.

General Gamelin, whom everyone in France looked upon as the Commander-in-Chief, the worthy successor of Joffre and Foch, simply lost interest in defending France against the German attack until May 19, the very day he was relieved of his command! During that time, Gamelin gave another general the power to conduct "his" battle without interference from himself. As for Gamelin's responsibility for the liaison between France and her other Allies, Gamelin gave that job away too, handing it to yet another General and that General turned around and did the same, passing to another general. All of this happened in two days!

And so, with dizzying speed, the French General staff flew round and round, in ever decreasing circles, until they finally they flew up their own assholes. Small wonder that the poor frontline soldier never have the stomach for the fight.

After this humiliating defeat, France was divided into Nazi-occupied France with its capital at Paris, and unoccupied or "free" France, with its capital at Vichy. Though "free" in name only, Vichy was a collaborationist government and totally controlled by the Nazi's. Yet that was just fine with the French people, who for the most part did not mind the arrangement at all. In fact, Hollywood notwithstanding, the French strongly supported all of the goals of Nazi Germany and would themselves have put them into effect if it could be done without too much effort.

By supporting "all" the German goals, I mean the French people dearly desired the defeat of the Anglo-Americans, the Soviets, and eagerly supported the total annihilation of the Jews of Europe. Previously I have written about how in 1942, and exceeding the orders from its German occupiers, the Paris Police crammed 13,000 Parisian Jews into an enclosed sports stadium and left them there for five days without food, water, toilets or any needed facility whatsoever, and caused the deaths of many very young children under terrible circumstances.

With that as a background, another interesting fact just came to my attention which demonstrates again how sympathetic the French were with the Nazis. When France fell to the Germans in 1940, her colonies remained intact and were unaffected and beyond German control. Overnight, each colony had the freedom to choose with which to become allied, the German puppet government (Vichy) or the "Free French" government-in-exile headed by Charles de Gaulle in London. Almost all the colonies chose to stay under German rule, administered by Vichy. This had far reaching effects elsewhere which harmed the West greatly.

For example, French control of Syria-Lebanon overnight became German controlled through Vichy. And German control of Syria overnight spread and became German controlled Iraq. The pro-Nazi regime set up in Iraq prepared the way for the long range Nazi war plan to exploit Middle Eastern oil, after supplies from Romania came under severe American air attack.

It seems that France never loses an opportunity to attack her allies in the back, just as long as her allies are busy fighting Germans in order to free France. In another email I mentioned how it was French artillery, fired by French soldiers, which killed almost 2,000 American and British troops in Operation Torch, the allied invasion of North Africa in 1942.

Of all the treacherous acts of that dishonorable nation, one French act stands out alone and above all the rest. After her ignominious defeat in 1940, France was about to turn her entire navy over to the Nazis, intact. Naturally this would have had devastating effects upon Allied naval power. But since no French ships had been captured yet, the French fleet was free to sail into allied ports and was invited to do so. However, the French navy was very pro-Nazi, and indeed it was probably the most pro-Nazi sector in all of France, and so it refused. Very soon, it became obvious that the French fleet, intact and with all her crews, would defect to serve the Nazi cause. That being the case, the British Royal Navy took the only decisive action that the French understand. The British sank the entire French fleet in 1940 as it lay at anchor in Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria.

Yet despite all of its perfidy and lack of support of the war aims of the West, French troops were given the honor of liberating Paris after the defeat of Germany, and France was given full status as an co-equal member of the victorious Allies after the war. Not only that, but France participated in a place of honor in all of the surrender ceremonies and later on became a permanent member of the UN security council, one of a group of only five nations commonly regarded as the victors of WWII. All this despite the fact that France was regarded as the next best thing to an enemy, by many of our highest ranking allied officers.


Here are some links of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France

http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Battle_of_France

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWarmedforces.htm

http://www.feldgrau.com/stats.html

http://open-site.org/Society/History/Wars_and_Conflicts/World_War_II/Dunkirk/

http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/