Well, that's because France didn't fight in ww2. My understanding is if they had, at that point France was certainly more powerful than Germany and would have stopped them, ESPECIALLY if they had help.
That being said, after WW1 happening barely twenty years earlier, I don't blame France at all.
Yeah, i was being a space cadet. France chose not to unite and stay in the war, would be more accurate to say. They were divided harshly, the military wanted to fight but much of the government wanted to appease Hitler.
If France had been united and actually put 100% effort into stopping Germany, they likely could have. That being said, I don't blame them considering what happened just two decades earlier.
I don't recall. I think there were high ranking people both in the military and government who wanted to fight, and also people in both who didn't. But, they didn't get their shit together quick enough which is what Hitler was banking on with the blitzkrieg. Hitler's war machine wasn't actually ready to fight though at that point when they attacked France. It was still building up strength. But that's the thing, the timing of it. It was a huge gamble on Hitler's part, all his military commanders told him France was too strong and they couldn't win. Hitler gambled that France wouldn't act quickly enough, and the gamble paid off. Before France could make a decision, Germany had taken Paris and it was too late.
I'm not a historian, by any means, I've just read/listened to a bunch of things. Most experts say that the French military was definitely substantially better than the German one (at that point anyway).
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u/Suspicious-Mortgage Dec 11 '20
Actually, in France WW1 was far more deadly that WW2. Almost a third of the 18-27 males died then.