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You're right, the reasons for the French surrender weren't talked about in my US history class. But it seems unreasonable to expect the government wouldn't sur

by csense 8y ago

You're right, the reasons for the French surrender weren't talked about in my US history class. But it seems unreasonable to expect the government wouldn't surrender, once the Nazis were in Paris holding guns to their heads.

gumby 8y ago
> But it seems unreasonable to expect the government wouldn't surrender, once the Nazis were in Paris holding guns to their heads. That's very true, but there are further interesting subtleties. To over simplify in the name of brevity: The French army was likely the most powerful in Europe in 1940 -- certainly everyone believed so. The German general staff prepared for a long difficult invasion (Blitzkrieg notwithstanding) and in fact ran past their own supply lines and had to slow down shows that they didn't expect the invasion to go so quickly. I don't consider this one particularly relevant to the US, though you could make a case. The unprecidented loss of French youth in WWI (IIRC multiple entire years of graduates of St-Cyr were wiped out to a man) had a serious toll on willingness to fight. Again, I don't consider this particularly relevant. Like I mentioned above, significant welcome on the right for national renewal and anti-communist purge through the agency of the Germans. I see this point to have the most relevance to the US. If you can get beyond the lazy tropes of "racism" and "idiocy", the core of the current republican message and of "MAGA" is at its core a revanchist belief in a return to some sort of prelapsarian time of harmony and moral clarity. This is, at its heart, the core of many right wing (which I would distinguish from "conservative") parties today. Yes, there are of course racists and idiots among the right wing supporters, but certainly idiocy and other pathologies are rife among the Democrats and the left, mixed in among the reasonable folks. You can see a parallel to the French situation with the

by csense 8y ago

gumby 8y ago

> But it seems unreasonable to expect the government wouldn't surrender, once the Nazis were in Paris holding guns to their heads. That's very true, but there are further interesting subtleties. To over simplify in the name of brevity: The French army was likely the most powerful in Europe in 1940 -- certainly everyone believed so. The German general staff prepared for a long difficult invasion (Blitzkrieg notwithstanding) and in fact ran past their own supply lines and had to slow down shows that they didn't expect the invasion to go so quickly. I don't consider this one particularly relevant to the US, though you could make a case. The unprecidented loss of French youth in WWI (IIRC multiple entire years of graduates of St-Cyr were wiped out to a man) had a serious toll on willingness to fight. Again, I don't consider this particularly relevant. Like I mentioned above, significant welcome on the right for national renewal and anti-communist purge through the agency of the Germans. I see this point to have the most relevance to the US. If you can get beyond the lazy tropes of "racism" and "idiocy", the core of the current republican message and of "MAGA" is at its core a revanchist belief in a return to some sort of prelapsarian time of harmony and moral clarity. This is, at its heart, the core of many right wing (which I would distinguish from "conservative") parties today. Yes, there are of course racists and idiots among the right wing supporters, but certainly idiocy and other pathologies are rife among the Democrats and the left, mixed in among the reasonable folks. You can see a parallel to the French situation with the