How must've German and French WW1 veterans felt after seeing France falling so quickly in the second war?
Are there any notes, letters, diaries, anything on it?
Judging by the fact that a shitton of Frenchmen joined the Free French Forces and the French resistance (very high number per capita, and they were voluntary), they weren't exactly happy.
You also gotta keep in mind that the fall of France doesn't have to do with the average soldier or equipment (most tanks were actually better than the German tanks), but by the horribly incompetent generals. They got a little Arab syndrome in that regard because they chose commanders and officers based on money and social ranking (brits chose officers based on skill).
>>30419069
>brits chose officers based on skill
How the fuck do you explain Montgomery then?
>>30419076
What's wrong with Monty?
A lot of the french forces were positioned on the Siegfried line which meant the germans went around the Siegried line through Belgium
You can mainly tell by the eiffil tower look at it
>>30419076
>Turned the African front around
>Led successful campaign into Italy
>Masterminded Operation Overlord
>Led successful campaign in France against some of the toughest groups the Germans had
>Has a failure in Market Garden that was as much rotten luck as genuine mistakes and is monumentally less imapctful than any of his previous successes, as big a failure as it was
>Suddenly he's perceived as bad
Guy was a wanker, but there's no denying he knew his shit. Market Garden was the exception.
>>30419121
what? Germany built the Siegfried line in 1938... youre probably thinking of the Maginot line
>>30419006
I'm pretty sure they were pissed
>>30420713
Why would the germans be pissed germany won
>>30420431
> mild autism
> made is career defeating the Italians
> market garden
>>30420786
I meant France mon ami
>>30419076
Monty was a cautious general,a meticulous planner and very conservative about his troops
but he's pretty good at maneuvering his forces and exploiting advantages,he's also quite sympathetic to the plight of a common soldier,even Market Garden couldn't be entirely faulted on him,since it was the civilian leadership who harass him into doing it
>>30419006
Hitler was a world war 1 veteran. I think he felt pretty good about it.
>>30419084
Everything in Overlord. And all he did in Europe in general.
>>30420431
He was getting kicked to the curb in north africa, and Rommel had him beat until fresh american troops showed up and scared the german brass into recalling Rommel back into europe.
He pushed into italy with American help in sicily and the rest of op Torch, and was the reason that most of the greatest airbourne losses occurred in that operation due to trying to push British glider tactics on American troops.
He pushed in on DDay, activley getting in the way of real strategic commanders, and unliked by his own command and the americans too. The only reason he stayed high up in the Overlord planning was because Churchill insisted a brit had to be included, and they wanted him off the feild for a bit so they transferred him back to england.
He gets ashore a day after dday after his troops meet some of the lightest resistance on gold and juno.
The allied brass lets him plan an op, and he completley drops the ball, completley underestimating german troops he had fought against before under rommel, and others that had been toughened by the rooskies to the east. Market garden fails, and he rides the coat tails of bradley and patton all the way to berlin.
The man was an idiot, and gained his noteriety merely by not eating a bullet given to him by a german sniper, or get his command car shot by a panzer.
I'm pretty sure they looked like pic related
>>30419069
the "french resistance" is wildly overstated
And most of them were just commies anyways
>>30419121
No, the Maginot line was designed specifically so they could economize their forces for the decisive fight everyone knew would happen in Belgium. The issue there was that the Allies had positioned all their forces in Flanders, assuming the Germans would go through it, and that they'd win this time because they'd spent the interwar period planning on how to refight WWI the right way. Of course Belgium shat the bed faster than they expected and then the German armored spearhead smashed through the Ardennes and fucked over the French who hadn't left much of a reserve to stop it.
>>30421076
>He was getting kicked to the curb in north africa, and Rommel had him beat until fresh american troops showed up and scared the german brass into recalling Rommel back into europe.
Monty took command of the 8th Army on August of 1942. Since then it was nothing but victory after victory against Rommel, including the 2nd El Alamein in October.
"Fresh American troops" showed up in Tunisia and Morroco in November, and promptly lost to Rommel at Kesserine Pass.
Read a book before shooting your mouth off like a dumb nigger.
French here, I have my great grandpa's war journal. He spent most of the war as a POW in Germany, planting and eating potatoes.
I'll look through it to see if there is anything on the surrendering of France. Can't remember from the top of my head.
>>30422191
For some reason i get more feels from this picture than from many fo the more, horrific, shall we say, ones.
>>30424480
So he was captured the 29 of may 1940. I'll translate this part if anyone is interested, it's pretty intense.
By the 22 of june he was in some POW camp, waiting to be sent to Germany.
Here's the entry from the 24 of june :
>Rumors say the armistice was signed between France, Germany and Italy. England may be continuing the war.
>What is true in all of this. We would have lost the war in 25 days. It may be true, but I have trouble believing it. We would be beaten, and I'm wondering about the life we will have in the future.
>But whatever, family life, even with many privations, is 100 times worth this dog's life.
>>30424754
He sounds sad and pissed at the same time
>>30423309
Not him but Montgomery did have a lot more equipment that was provided by the Americans then his predecessor did.
>>30421076
Monty's best skill was stealing the credit of his subordinates' successes.
>>30424754
>he actually surrendered.
In Glorious Motherland those who are captured by Nazis are traitors, I hope he was Executed for his cowardice.
>>30422280
i remember an Arte documentary (the only good one they make are about world wars) quoting the diary of a german soldier writing "What just happened? Where are the soldiers of verdun?" orsomething the likes.
Each time i look at it, it must have been unbearable for any who foughtduring WW1 on the french side, even more during such battles as verdun and the chemin des dames.
>>30426888
The Americans provided equipment to everyone, it doesn't make the 'monty was a shit USA all the way' meme any truer.
>>30419006
Iconic pic sums it up nicely.
>>30429817
Except that was taken in 1941. He is not crying at the sight of Germans, but actually at the sight of the last regimental flags getting loaded onto boats toward Africa to avoid being seized by the Germans.
>>30419069
> yfw more French fought for the SS than in the resistance
>>30424754
Tu viens d'où? Il était sur la ligne ton grand père?
>>30419069
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the_British_Army
it too longer for the navy to abandon this
>>30420431
>genuine mistakes
>dropping fucking airborne on panzer divisions
>>30420431
>montgomery masterminded D-Day
How to trigger americans 101
>>30430431
> Nor did the Royal Navy ever practise the sale of commissions
>>30430331
>>30430331
>7000 at peak in the SS
>More than a million strong French army participation in the 1944 liberation
Sure thing buddy
>>30430331
they weren't the brightest of the bunch tho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7cd2YAi_hk
>>30419069
Nah, it's not that simple. French officers weren't exactly stellar, but the French army had much bigger, systematic issues. Off the top of my head:
1. An obsession with defending the frontiers. Not the military's fault, but France's resources and industry are all pretty much on the borders with Belgium and Germany. Caused a lot of problems in WWI, and they didn't want to repeat that. So, they planned to at all costs keep the war off French soil.
2.Preference for the "methodical battle". French doctrine and training was centered on two ideas: That firepower is king, especially artillery, and that the best way of properly employing firepower is through a tightly-controlled top-down command structure. One thing that really sticks out about pre-war maneuvers and training with the French is that strict timetables show up fucking EVERYWHERE. There is no freedom of maneuver for lower units or commanders - the high commanders, to provide the best artillery coverage, have the control. This meant that once communication was cut, control was useless, but also that the whole system was not good for turning around when things went south or exploiting gains when things went good.
3. A weird dismissal of the Ardennes as a passing route. It's definitely not some walk in the park to move a Panzer corps through the Ardennes, but the French for some reason kept an assumption that it would take the Germans around nine days to push through the Ardennes. This is despite the fact that when they revisited the idea in, I think it was 1939, they concluded that a mechanized corps would be at the Meuse in 60 hours. It took the Germans 59.
4. The Dyle plan and Breda plan. Connecting with the previous desire to avoid fighting in France, Gamelin pushed for a riskier move to move almost all of France's mobile forces through Belgium up into the Netherlands. They got cut off after Sedan.
cont.
>>30431541
5. Conscription and mobilization. French army units lost virtually all cohesion after full mobilization. Training in peacetime for the reserves was very limited due to budgetary constraints, and also the peacetime professional army was quite small. This meant that the professional NCOs and officers had to be sent all over the place in order to somewhat properly retrain the reservists, many of whom hadn't actually seen training over a decade. Reservists weren't called up into set units, either, which further led to a decline in cohesion.
6. A lack of a proper armored force. While it might not have saved France, proper armored divisions would have at least helped. Instead, there were the cavalry divisions, which, while armed with tanks were expected more to provide screening and reconnaissance - the high command saw their utility more as light cavalry than heavy cavalry - the bulk of French armor was sent out quite piecemeal until far too late. A couple of divisions were made in 1940, but the French had no time to learn how to use an armored division, so they pretty much just kept to treating them as big, heavy infantrymen. There was really very little foresight in the command structure (well, outside of DeGaulle) as to how much mobility tanks could bring. In fact, many thought that the tanks were too fast. They were worried that the tanks would outrun the artillery, so, coming back to the fucking timetables, they put REQUIRED HALTS on tanks in the advance so that the artillery could displace. There was a startling lack of imagination beyond how many tonss of shells can we land in one grid square.
7. Mines. The one technological one that I think could have really changed the tide, the French strangely didn't have many mines, especially antitank mines. If they really meant to slow the Germans in the Ardennes, they should have mined the shit out of it. With that a fairly light screening force might actually have delayed the Germans the required nine days.
>>30430912
A whole buncha people who declared they were "the resistance" after the Germans are gone
Then they go about murdering tens of thousands of "collaborators"
Just scum
>>30431645
One final thing: French tanks were.... pretty meh. They look great on paper, with much better guns and armor than the Germans had, but they generally had very short driving range (keep in mind the methodical battle - the French didn't see the need to send tanks very far), incredibly poor visibility and a massively overtaxed commander. They took the wrong lessons from the FT-17, and thought that the commander was doing just fine in there. They also were obsessed with thick, cast armor, which meant that it was incredibly difficult to make a larger turret, so hey, guy, you do the whole job. Radios were also in short supply.
>>30431657
>1st French Army
They were uniformed soldiers, dumbass.
>>30419006
There isn't much about it, OP. The way I understand, the surrender in WWI was a national trauma for France. I've run across an account of the national sentiment at the time in "The Vintage Book of War Stories", but I'm sure others here can provide better much sources than this.
>>30432398
*surrender in WWII
>>30432398
Any more
Bump for interest
