Sarkozy snubs Queen over D-Day

There's gratitude for you. I'm speechless. He's not snubbing JUST the Queen! How long did they last before they rolled over? 48 hours wasn't it?

Posted by Anglo Manglo at 4:08pm on May 27, 2009

This is disgustingly typical of how the French treat everybody, and how they like to think that they actually did anything worthwhile in WW II. They should really be remebering what pathetic cowards they were in WW II, and, for that matter, any other war in which they fought. It also goes to show what a waste of life it was for anyone from any other country to fight for France, who really didn't have the guts or the stamina to fight for themselves. France would better have been left to being a complicit province of the Third Reich, and this latest snub is but further proof of that.

Posted by Douglas Smith at 1:00am on May 28, 2009

In fact, Anglo Manglo, from the initial invasion to the eventual fall of Paris took six weeks. The French suffered 90,000 troops dead and a further 200,000 wounded. It is a popular prejudice that the French fought badly or without spirit or courage. It is certain they could have been better led, and that they were let down by outdated strategic thinking, but why let facts get in the way of comfortable bigotry, eh? That aside, the French government's attitude is disgraceful .

Posted by Ian Onions at 10:19am on May 28, 2009

Here are a few of the things the French did: * The French fought in Africa, in Sicily, liberated Corsica, fought in Italy, took part in the invasion of Europe and fought through the battles of France and Germany -- from Normandy to Munich. * Units from the French navy participated in the invasions of Sicily, Italy, Normandy and South France. * Units of the French navy and merchant marine took part in convoying operations on the Atlantic and Murmansk routes. * On June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day, over 5,000 Frenchmen of the resistance dynamited railroads in more than 500 strategic places. * They delayed strategic German troop movements for an average of 48 hours, according to our military experts. Those 48 hours were tactically priceless ; they saved an untold number of American lives. * French resistance groups blew up a series of bridges in southern France and delayed one of the Wehrmacht's crack units (Das Reich Panzer Division) for twelve days in getting from Bordeaux to Normandy. * About 30,000 FF1 troups supported the Third Army's VIII Corps in Brittany: they seized and held key spogs ; they conducted extensive guerrilla operations behind the German lines. * 25,000 FFI troops protected the south flank of the Third Army in its daring dash across France: the FFI wiped out German bridgeheads north of the Loire River ; they guarded vital lines of communication; they wiped out pockets of German resistance; they held many towns and cities under orders from our commmand. * When our Third Army was approachiung the area between Dijon and Troyes from the west, and while the Seventh Army was approaching this sector from the South, it was the FFI who stubbornly blocked the Germans from making a stand and prevented a mass retirement of German troops. * In Paris, as our armies drew close, several hundred thousand French men and women rose up against the Germans. 50,000 armed men of the resistance fought and beat the Nazi garrison, and occupied the main buildings and administrative offices of Paris. These are some of the things the French did. SOURCE: Information & Education Division of the US Occupation Forces, published in Paris, 1945.

Posted by The3rdColumn at 12:15am on June 1, 2009

Quelle surprise! The French collaborated with the Nazis even in that half of their own country they were allowed to govern themselves following the surrender of 1940. Four out of five tip-offs to the Gestapo came from French sources. The much vaunted French Resistence was at no time before June 1940 greater than 5000, half of whom were under the age of 21. Over a hundred thousand legal execution of French citizens were carried out after the Liberation; and as many more 'illegal' killings, some to silence witnesses. Heavily penetrated by the Nazis, the Resistence was used by the British to pass false or misleading information to them. America had no intention in joining in the anti-Fascist war; in 1942 she had a smaller professional army than Rumania's. Despite what many American films and books claimed subsequently, the U.S.A.'s press (Heart and Luce) was uniformly anti-British and in December 1941 Congress was about to start investigating why so many Hollywood films were pro-British before events at Pearl Harbour intervened. I have seen for myself the graves of U.S., Canadian and British soldiers in Normandy and it is of them I shall be thinking in a weeks time. The rest is, as they say, history.

Posted by Barry Larking at 9:34am on June 1, 2009

From official US sources: General Patton cabled General Koenig, the French commander of the FFI, that the spectacular advance of his (Patton's) army across France would have been impossible without the fighting aid of the FFI. General Patch estimated that from the time of the Mediterranean landings to the arrival of our troops at Dijon, the help given to our operations by the FFI was equivalent to four full divisions. The Maquis who defended the Massif Central, in the south-central part of France, had two Nazi divisions stymied; they kept those two divisions from fighting against us. Perhaps some of us don't like to pass out bouquets - to anyone but ourselves. Perhaps we have short memories. SOURCE: â??Information & Education Divisionâ?? of the US Occupation Forces, published in Paris, 1945.

Posted by The3rdColumn at 2:29pm on June 1, 2009

Re Barry Larking's gripe: From the booklet published in 1945 in Paris by Information & Education Division of the US Occupation Forces. "That's the line Goebbels used. The Germans exerted every propaganda effort to make us think there was no real resistance in France. Nazi censorship and Nazi firing squads tried to stop our hearing about the resistance." Continued: Millions of French men, women and children put up a fight that took immense guts, skill and patience. The Fighting French never stopped fighting - in the RAF North Africa, Italy, and up through France with the US 7th Army. Here is how the French people inside France fought the Germans after the fall of France: * They sabotaged production in war plants. They destroyed parts, damaged machinery, slowed down production, changed blue-prints * They dynamited power plants, warehouses. transmission lines. They wrecked trains. They destroyed bridges. They damaged locomotives. * They organized armed groups which fought the German police, the Gestapo, the Vichy militia. They executed French collaborationists. * They acted as a great spy army for SHAEF in London. They transmitted as many as 300 reports a day to SHAEF on German troops' movements, military installations, and the nature and movement of military supplies. * They got samples of new German weapons and explosive powder to London. * They ran an elaborate "underground railway" for getting shot-down American and British flyers back to England. They hid, clothed, fed and smuggled out of France over 4,000 American airmen and parachutists (Getting food and clothes isn't easy when you're on a starvation ration yourself. It's risky to forge identification papers). Every American airman rescued meant half a dozen French lives were risked. On an average, one Frenchman was shot every two hours, from 1940 to 1944 by the Germans in an effort to stop French sabotage and assistance to the Allies. The Germans destroyed 344 communities (62 completely) for "crimes" not connected with military operations. Perhaps the Germans realized better than we do the relentless fight against them which the French people waged. An official German report, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor on December 26, 1942, stated sadly: "For systematic inefficiency and criminal carelessness they (the French) are unsurpassed in the history of modern industrial labor". Published in Paris in 1945 by the 'Information & Education Division' of the US Occupation Forces.

Posted by The3rdColumn at 2:38pm on June 1, 2009