I want to thank Yves, Laurent, Ruy and Graham for continuing this discussion... I find this to be extremely valuable, and I greatly appreciate the continued input on this topic. The reason I asked the original question was to begin gaining a more thorough understanding of the French MILITARY position... I've always had a sense that they were not the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" that postwar rhetoric would have us believe, but rather were a strong and proud fighting force handicapped by poor or outmoded tactics and completely inept political "leadership", such as it was.
One interesting point raised in "Strange Victory" was the abundant overconfidence exhibited by both the British and French- to them, it seemed positively inconceivable that Germany could possibly represent more than a large nuisance. France's political leaders were unable to recover from the shock of having that theory blown out of the water in a matter of hours ... they had fallen victim to a "bunker mentality", and now the enemy was in the bunker.
Anyway, thanks again to all concerned, I'm really enjoying this discussion.
Lynn
24th February 2005, 16:28
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