re: #266 HappyWarrior
People who call the French cowards have no idea about places like the Somme, Ypres, or Verdun. Or that entire villages in France lost their entire young male population due to war. I mean yeah I’ve joked about the French too but I respect them far more than the Keyboard Warriors who hated on France for not supporting Iraq.
About 10 years ago, I ran the numbers of French casualty figures from WW2, from the opening of hostilities to France’s surrender; I can’t remember the exact numbers now, but in a nutshell, French forces were taking pretty much the same rate of daily casualties during WW2 that they were taking during WW1.
This was simply unsustainable - the French had been bled white during WW1 and as you pointed out, some villages in France lost their entire young male population during WW1. By the time WW2 came around two decades later, the French were already at a serious numerical disadvantage.
There was a whole variety of reasons behind France’s capitulation in WW2 - but cowardice isn’t one of them.