Remember those French cowards?

Idle Words:

However dour the strategy of containment and attrition, the French did not hesitate to mobilize in 1939, and they did not shrink from fighting even in the face of overwhelming odds in 1940. In the space of three weeks, some 100,000 men died defending their country from the German invaders. From four to eight million civilians fled their homes; an unknown number died in the exodus.

In the end, the French endured four and a half years of German occupation. Between the initial carnage of the invasion, reprisal killings of civilians, and general Nazi atrocities, some 300,000 civilians were murdered. This is in addition to the 200,000 French soldiers killed during the initial invasion and in the many subsequent battles where Free French divisions saw combat.

Compare this to the total of 300,000 American military deaths, on all fronts, for the entire Second World War.

The people who fought Hitler fought bravely. The Poles, Danes, Belgians, British, Norwegians, Dutch and French were not cowards. The countries that survived German attack survived thanks to geography — for Britain, the English Channel; for the Soviet Union, the vast Eurasian steppes. And still those countries were nearly defeated.

There are many true and uncomfortable things you can say about France in the Second World War. Vichy was a criminal regime, and France has not fully come to terms with that painful part of its history. French political leaders in the 1930’s left the country passive and exposed to a German attack that could have been deterred. But to say that, when war did come, the French lacked courage, is to spit on the graves of noble people.

For shame!