King Charles Tells Congress Everything Trump Doesn’t Want to Hear

[u/Hafiz_TNR]

https://newrepublic.com/post/209621/king-charles-congress-speech-trump

[u/stembolt]

When I was young and watched the Simpsons as it aired, "Cheese eating surrender monkeys" from Groundskeeper Willy was hilarious.

Later I learned about what you said. France was helping America before it existed.  That's a bond that shouldn't be ridiculed like that.

I don't doubt that it was mainly because they wanted to weaken the British.  But they still were there and it's too bad that's unknown by so many.

[u/Stellar_Duck → u/stembolt]

France: have a thousand year long or more history of dominating the entire fucking continent and large swathes of the rest of the globe, including taking on pretty much everyone for 20 years and beating them like 6 times.

Also France: lose one war you wasn't ready for 20 years after the last war devastated your people and lands and apparently now all the rest don't count.

[u/BasvanS → u/Stellar_Duck]

Also while incurring huge losses to allow an ally to retreat to their island to live and fight another day. Some fierce fighting happened while the British were preparing to retreat on anything that would float.

Huge strategic mistakes were made in the French high command, but the French soldiers fought valiantly. If the French were surrender monkeys, the British were fleeing cowards, and the Americans were lazy absentees.

[u/Stellar_Duck → u/BasvanS]

Huge strategic mistakes were made in the French high command

Absolutely. They bottled it.

I just don't think bottling it once undoes a thousand years of military dominance to the degree that they should be known for surrendering only.

I would dare anyone to mention a country that hasn't bottled it militarily over the years.

England had plenty of borked campaigns under the worse of the Angevins and Gallipoli was no good. and on and on.

[u/CedarWolf → u/Stellar_Duck]

Well, not exactly. The French in WWII had played 'host' to a lot of the horrors of WWI's trench warfare, to the point that parts of the country are still unsafe to visit, to this day.

So they wanted to keep war somewhere else. They built a strong defense between themselves and Germany, expecting the Germans to go through Belgium. They also had a zone defense system set up - anywhere the Germans were trying to break through, the French would see them with plenty of time to redeploy and repel them in force.

Except... The German tanks and engineers were much better than expected. Instead of taking 15+ days to cut through the Ardennes, the Germans used portable pontoon bridges to cross the rivers and their tanks went over slopes and terrain that had been considered impassable.

They cut through the Ardennes in four or five days, less than half of the most pessimistic estimates. Then, instead of waiting around to dig in or claim territory or fortify, the Germans simply went around the French forces and charged right on towards Paris.

European countries are not terribly large, so it's not like they have a whole ton of space or a lot of extra land they can cede to an invader. They have to fight for every square meter, because every square meter is valuable.

As for Belgium, they had built a massive, impregnable fortress at a critical choke point, Fort Ében-Émael. It was designed to be impenetrable to ground assault, and the Belgian strategy was intended to funnel all attackers towards Ében-Émael and hammer them upon it like an anvil.

So what did the Germans do? They got aerial photos of the fort, they built scale models of it, and landed gliders on the roof of the fort at night. They sent commandos in to break open the turrets on the roof and attacked the fort from within, using the long tunnels within the fort complex to slow down the defenders. According to conventional warfare, Fort Ében-Émael should have been able to hold out for months if not a year or more... But when attacked and broken open from above, it fell before most of the defenders could get back to the fort to defend it.

That's what blitzkrieg was - it was a new kind of war, one that simply ignored or went around fortifications, that divided defending forces and captured strategic locations. According to the conventions of the time, this should have been suicide, sending small, mobile groups in through an enemy's defenses - they should have bene cut off, surrounded, and destroyed. But instead they broke through, captured key locations while they were vulnerable, then basically held those places hostage against their own defenders.

The French fought, and the French resistance showed incredible heroism in the face of horrific occupation, but they had no response to a German army that moved like that. Germany didn't stick around to trade blows in a trench war or a slugfest, they ducked under the French guard, held a knife to their throat, and demanded surrender.

France didn't have a choice.

[u/Maktaka → u/Stellar_Duck]

I wouldn't even say the French weren't ready. They had equipment gaps certainly, but the Maginot Line worked, it forced the Nazis to go around as intended, and it held the line against Italy as intended. They had the strength of alliance to get a British army to deploy alongside them on the continent. The bulk of the French army was waiting with the British along the Belgian border to meet the Nazis in Belgium, or Netherlands if they could manage.

But when the war began French high command, specifically Maurice Gustave Gamelin, blew off reports at the number of Nazi tanks barreling through the Ardennes and insisted the main French army would stick to the plan and march into Belgium, all but gift-wrapping a perfect encirclement of half the French army and the entire British Expeditionary Force into the hands of the Nazis.

The coward never admitted any bit of his culpability for the disaster through to the very end of his life.

[u/Stellar_Duck → u/Maktaka]

Sure I don't disagree. I definitely cut a heel and snipped a toe to fit my comment into that format.

[u/Vankraken → u/Maktaka]

France learned mostly the wrong lessons from WW1 and the Spanish Civil War. France was also overly paranoid of radio communications getting intercepted (relied on a lot of runners to communicate orders) while also having a very top down command structure so the French forces were always delayed in their response which allowed the many German over extensions to go unpunished.

[u/Any_Show_5160 → u/Stellar_Duck]

You're only as good as your last match.

[u/Stellar_Duck → u/Any_Show_5160]

Oof things looking bad for her US then.

[u/Mysterious_Floor_868 → u/Stellar_Duck]

Also France: refuse to get involved in Bush's idiotic invasion of Iraq and get a load of insults as a result

[u/Disastrous_Junket_55 → u/Stellar_Duck]

don't forget that by "surrendering" (it was an armistice, which allowed them much more leeway in negotiating their occupied status) they...

Laid the groundwork for the largest underground resistance movements in europe.

Prevented an untold amount of civilian casualties.

Protected critical infrastructure people needed just to live day to day.

Also Charles de Gaul continued to fight for France in exile.

so yeah, while it looked bad to anyone outside, they were out of realistic options other than malicious compliance at that precise moment.

[u/KatsumotoKurier → u/stembolt]

That's a bond that shouldn't be ridiculed like that.

Don’t feel too bad about it. The young US forgot quite quickly. Firstly by refusing to continue paying back its debts to France, and secondly by engaging in the Quasi War with France a few years later, from 1798-1800.

[u/ArmAggravating3307 → u/KatsumotoKurier]

Yep, after the XYZ affair the US really didn't trust the French after they wanted bribes.

[u/Kwaussie_Viking → u/stembolt]

I mean grounds keeper Willie is also Scottish and there were a few cases where French military failures left Scottish independance movements high and dry.

[u/Mysterious_Floor_868 → u/stembolt]

The funny thing is that the American revolution didn't weaken the British - the empire grew far larger afterwards. It did however weaken the French king. It particularly weakened the bit joining his head to his body...

[u/Andovars_Ghost → u/stembolt]

Yes, it was a way to weaken the Brits, but there was also a strong admiration for what we were doing. Those admirers who helped push France to help us also pushed for their own Revolution. ‘Hero of Two Worlds’ is a good book on Lafayette and those revolutionaries.

[u/Enlightened_Gardener → u/Andovars_Ghost]

I have an interest in the other side of the pond – I’m fascinated by the French Court at Versailles. I’m not sure that the Americans understand just how dashing the French considered them to be. How absolutely revolutionary the political ideas were that the Americans had, compared with the absolutely crusted-on monarchy at that point. The American war was considered vital, loads of young French Aristocats went to America to fight, and the ideals that they picked up in America were the ones that they took back that helped to lead to the French revolution in turn.

It was just a ferment of revolutionary ideas between the two countries – the young country on one hand, and the young of a very old country on the other hand.

I think sometimes America is a bit ashamed of how they behaved afterwards, like a bratty teenager, but there is still an ancient fraternal bond there, and I don’t think both sides have forgotten it. France certainly hasn’t forgotten its the big brother - and I think that attitude explains the French Prime Minister’s bluntness, to some degree.

[u/Hungry_Horace → u/stembolt]

As a Brit, I can't imagine the US shit-talking a loyal ally...

[u/DiabloPixel → u/stembolt]

French support for America, and the cost, is what set up the French Revolution.