I'm beginning to think wars are unwinnable

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Slade Wilson
Its easy to forget these nations like veitnam, middle east, etc, have long histories of foreign occupation. The USA isnt the first to try installing puppet governments in these countries. As in afghanistan 1980, the natives simply continued the war against the foreigners

I look to the nazi occupation of france to see how its done. The (french) population was not massacred and while there was some 'resistance', there was nothing at all like we see in iraq today.

A significant portion of France's soldiers were kept first as prisoners, then as forced labor by the Nazis. The Nazis also seized a large numbers of France's non-military military-aged men for forced labor. They made it very clear to the families of these men that they were using the French labor conscripts not only as labor, but also as hostages. The French knew very well from historical experience that the Germans would not hesitate to kill their hostages. Despite this the French managed to mount a credible resistence despite the fact that the families of over a million men had good reason to collaborate with the Germans for fear of the lives of their captive menfolk. We've never done anything even remotely resembling that in Iraq.

[Dis]

correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't France's resistance organized outside of France? They knew an invasion would be coming. Had there been no planned invasion, I would suspect they would be in the country harrassing the germans.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by GePap
Ghandi.

Who?

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Dis
correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't France's resistance organized outside of France? They knew an invasion would be coming. Had there been no planned invasion, I would suspect they would be in the country harrassing the germans.

A very large component of the French resistence were Communists and Socialists. I believe they would have attempted to conduct a guerilla war against the Nazis even without outside support. Furthermore I don't think there were any theaters of resistence to axis occupation that didn't receive some type of outside resistence.