French make their own "ultimate army" game, ultimate surrender!

[Dan Severn]

Originally posted by Stefu
French have achieved many glorious victories in the 20th century! They sunk the Greenpeace boat and... hmm... well... hold on, something will come to mind...

That incident made me think they just may not be completely worthless.

Damn grenpeace. "We don't want oilspills, and to prove it, we'll sink this oil tanker!"

[Ned]

Originally posted by faded glory
Boy why do the french get such a bad rep for world war2. Why did everybody else get off scot free? (Poland, Norway, Low countries..etc)


France is cool.

IIRC, France declared war on Germany, waited for the German invasion, and then surrendered. She suffered five years of occupation. Many of her citizens were killed. There was a tremendous amount of physical destruction.

Some of this was not forseeable, of course. Perhaps France envisioned another WWI - a nightmare for France. If this was the vision, the declaration of war made still no sense.

There is a rule of thumb, one never declares war unless one has a likelihood of prevailing. France, even by her actions in 1939, had no hope of prevailing. Their declaration of war was lunacy.

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Ned
Some of this was not forseeable, of course. Perhaps France envisioned another WWI - a nightmare for France. If this was the vision, the declaration of war made still no sense.

There is a rule of thumb, one never declares war unless one has a likelihood of prevailing. France, even by her actions in 1939, had no hope of prevailing. Their declaration of war was lunacy.

France envisioned a alternate ww1 where the nice Germans would simply attack through Belgium and come straight at the French army and the BEF for a good ol' honest fight.
Meanwhile the Allied navies would blockade Germany until mr Hitler came to his senses. Naive, of course but we humans tend to think that things will work out for the best.

[Ecthy]

We will always win against France.

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
We will always win against France.

Pretty big talk from a country that lost two world wars.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Ned
There is a rule of thumb, one never declares war unless one has a likelihood of prevailing. France, even by her actions in 1939, had no hope of prevailing. Their declaration of war was lunacy.

If you are losing the peace, declaring war even when unlikely to succeed is not lunacy. It is making the best of a bad lot.

I find it amusing that the French actually had more combat ready troops and equipment at the end of the battle of France than they did for the whole 6 weeks of the campaign. They lost because of tactics, not because of manpower.

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
I find it amusing that the French actually had more combat ready troops and equipment at the end of the battle of France than they did for the whole 6 weeks of the campaign. They lost because of tactics, not because of manpower.

True, true. The manpower was there. Just not where the Germans were.

[Ecthy]

Another generic EU2 reply...

Maybe they had a lot of manpower but lacked the money for troopbuilding?

[Pekka]

Hmm.. joke about Dien Ben Phu (or how ever it's supposed to be spelled) is not funny in my opinion.
I've read about it and it was a massacre. Was it the french army there, or just foreign legion, or both? Not sure, but FFL got the poop kicked out of them.. bad tactics cost the lives of many brave fighters, and I can't find anything funny about it. Not even if it was 300 years ago.
They knew at some point they're going to get wiped out, and still they fought.. and got wiped out. Brave souls in a desperate situation, can't appreciate the joke.

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Pekka
Hmm.. joke about Dien Ben Phu (or how ever it's supposed to be spelled) is not funny in my opinion.
I've read about it and it was a massacre. Was it the french army there, or just foreign legion, or both? Not sure, but FFL got the poop kicked out of them.. bad tactics cost the lives of many brave fighters, and I can't find anything funny about it. Not even if it was 300 years ago.
They knew at some point they're going to get wiped out, and still they fought.. and got wiped out. Brave souls in a desperate situation, can't appreciate the joke.

I think FFL and paras. Who made a joke, btw?

[Pekka]

Pavlov, the original link. They hardly surrendered.
I can't remember how it was put, but it was mentioned in it as an example or something.

[Pekka]

Here's the quote from the page:

"Marketing tests show that "Ultimate Surrender" is a big hit with French teenagers and young adults who are too young to have experienced France’s lightening surrender to the Germans in 1940 or its defeat by the Vietnamese in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. "

Well.. it wasn't as bad as i remember, but i still think it's not funny, considering the context it's put on.

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Pekka
Pavlov, the original link. They hardly surrendered.
I can't remember how it was put, but it was mentioned in it as an example or something.

Oh, of course. If I remember correctly the French soldiers were pretty much told to stay in Dien Ben Phu and wait until the enemy came and then shoot him down. Heck knows if they weren't even supposed to be supported from the air too. Brilliant plan.

[Pekka]

Yeah.. and the way they went there.. uh oh.. i remember it was like a valley of death at some point, enemy just crushing them from the top.

[Ecthy]

Very Stalingrad.