Thread: France in ww2
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Old April 30th, 2005, 02:02 AM
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Quote:
Originally posted by Marechal Foch:
Hi, everybody, my english is not very well lol
Is France, for you, a winner of the WW2 ? Yes/No ? Why ?
No.

1. France lost her colonial possessions primarily as a result of WW 2.

2. France remained a military power only at the pleasure of the Allies and in particular, the US. Had the US and Britain decided that Vichy France was not worth bringing into the fold, so to speak, France would have been a conquered nation and liberated without significant participation on the Allied side post 1940.
It was only with US assistance that France was able to reestablish herself as a military force during the war. Without US aid France would have langusihed as a minor player in the war.

3. France's dilitance in politics post 1940 did nothing to increase her stability, stature or, trust with her allies. Personages like Petain, Darlan, Giruad and, de Gaulle did little but make the US and Britain wish they had never struck a deal with France to begin with.
These personages fought among each other over who would speak for France, made outrageous claims (Giruad demanded Eisenhower name him "Surpreme Commander of all Allied Forces in North Africa just before Torch as but one example) and performed self serving acts of military stupidity repeatedly (during Nordwind in Jan 1945 deGaulle threatened to use the French Army to attack Allied troops if the US withdrew from Strasbourg for example) throughout the war.

4. France remained politically fractured and weak during and after the war. If the US and Britain had not included them in the UN security council there was little France could really have done to change that. The same goes with the partition of Germany.

5. France's economy was largely wrecked by the war and post war socialism did nothing to restore it to anywhere close to being a competitive world power.

If anything, France came out of WW 2 a second rate power with little political clout in the post war world. By any measure, this was a defeat.