posted
In any case, Hitler's WWII successes certainly weren't due to the military "unpreparedness" of his enemies. His adversaries had very powerful and well trained land armies, often with superior weapons. His own army was far less motorized than much of the competition, even though he was the one party planning on mobile warfare. The German navy was a joke, due to be elevated to unjokely status in 1944 at the very earliest. And the air force, while sporting mariginally newer hardware than the competition due to only recently lifted limitations, certainly wasn't "superior" to the RAF, either. From the purely logistic-technological escalation viewpoint, Hitler was very much the rabid underdog of the war in 1939-40.
There isn't much more the French or the British *could* have done in order to "prepare", except perhaps perform preemptive strikes. And read more of the books Hitler's generals read and wrote... It was actions and reactions more than preparations that counted in the end.
Thanks for the spellcheck. French surnames and their spelling is a war unto itself. It's ironic that Maginot was deciedly against the wall idea and as so vocal in his criticsm that he was put in charge of the project and the name just kinda stuck. Now he's associated with an outdated idea that was easily circumvented. Sucks (historically speaking) to be him.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Which was force the Germans to make a few miles' detour through a "buffer state."
For great containment.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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quote: And the air force, while sporting mariginally newer hardware than the competition due to only recently lifted limitations, certainly wasn't "superior" to the RAF, either.
Quite right; the main advantage over the RAF was the size of the Luftwaffe. Also German planes tended to carry heavier weapons, at least at the beginning of the war; Spitfire Mk.I/II and Hurricane Mk. II only carried .303 in machine guns. Fw 190 was a damn good plane though.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
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To further split hairs , the concept worked (block the Germans from crossing anywhere on the line) and the implementation worked (the Germans were stopped). Unfortunately, they didn't consider the consequences and result (the Germans don't have to go through the line, they didn't, and the French weren't planning on stopping the Germans where they did cross). This all reminds me of a quote that I have no idea where its from, and probably badly paraphrased: "The Maginot line was the perfect weapon for fighting a war. Unfortunately, the war was WW1".
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The idea was that the Germans would have to slog through Belgium, giving France and Britain plenty of time to meet them there. Not to mention all the horrors of war being visited on the Belgian countryside instead of the French. Thanks, neighbors! Of course, the Germans moved a bit faster than expected...
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The Germans were also not expected to be capable of getting armour easily through the Ardennes. They did.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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Procrastinating turns up the darndest things.
(Conveniently placed in a blockquote so disinterested/busy people can scroll right past it)
quote: The Case for the French by Ted Rall
LOS ANGELES--Who are we to be bashing the French?
The trouble began when President Jacques Chirac openly expressed the private beliefs of virtually every other world leader--that George W. Bush's desire to start an unprovoked war with Iraq (news - web sites) is both crazy and immoral. It has quickly disintegrated into a ferocious display of American nativism that would be hilarious if its gleeful idiocy wasn't so frightening.
"Axis of Weasel," howls the New York Post in reaction to France and Germany's U.N. stance. A North Carolina restaurateur replaces French fries with "freedom fries." In West Palm Beach, a bar owner dumps his stock of French wine in the street, vowing to replace it with vintages from nations that support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Well, there's always Bulgaria.) Also in Palm Beach, a county official is working to boycott French businesses from government contracts: "France's attitude toward the United States is deplorable," says commissioner Burt Aaronson. "It's quite possible that if we didn't send our troops there, the French people would all be speaking German."
Allied troops liberated the French in 1944. The least France could do, the French bashers argue, is show a little gratitude. They think that France should stand by--or better yet help out--when U.S. troops go to invade/liberate/whatever other countries. Sovereignty and self-determination are fine as mere words. But it just ain't right for a country we rescued from Nazi occupation to disagree with our policy 50 years later and threaten us with a U.N. veto.
To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn't even exist--it would still be a British colony.
Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis' forces at Yorktown, bringing the American revolution to its victorious conclusion. But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife's heads.
No two countries were closer during the 19th century. Americans named streets after the Marquis de la Fayette, Louis' liaison with the founding fathers. During the Civil War, France bankrolled the Union to neutralize British financing for the Confederacy. How many Americans remember that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from French schoolchildren?
Despite that long friendship, the French--along with Asians and overweight folks--remain one of the few groups Americans still feel free to openly insult. A recent Gallup poll shows that 20 percent fewer Americans view France favorably because of its unwillingness to go along with Bush's war on Iraq. Support for Germany, perpetrators of Nazism and the Holocaust (and which also opposes war), holds steady at 71 percent.
Some of the contempt dates to France's quick defeat in the blitzkrieg of May-June 1940. "Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?" joked Roy Blunt, a Republican who evidently represents the unfortunate voters of Missouri. "It's not known; it's never been tried."
Perhaps Congressman Blunt should visit the graves of the Frenchmen who lost their lives for their country during World War I (the first two-thirds of which, by the way, the U.S. sat out). One of them, my great-grandfather Jean-Marie Le Corre, died in the muddy trenches of eastern France in 1915. His death plunged his family, never comfortable to begin with, into abject poverty. His name is engraved on a memorial near a small church in Brittany. They say that he was a handsome guy, popular with the ladies and always good for a joke. Because of him and 1.4 million other young men who sacrificed their lives for their country, Paris didn't fall.
France lost a staggering four percent of its population during the Great War. (Imagine a war that killed 11 million Americans today.) Twenty years later, in 1939, the French army still suffered from a massive manpower shortage. Demographics, lousy planning and equipment shortages--the Great Depression had also hit France--cost 100,000 French soldiers their lives during six awful weeks in 1940.
They failed to save Paris, but they died defending it.
The Bush Doctrine advocates invading weak states, imposing "regime change" and building an American empire composed of colonies whose dark-skinned races can be exploited for cheap labor. Napoleon Bonaparte, who terrorized Europe, had similar ideas. He easily outclasses our AWOL-from-the-Texas-Air-National-Guard Resident in the pure bellicosity department, but would we really choose Bonaparte over Chirac?
French-bashing is a nasty symptom of an underlying American predilection for anti-intellectualism: a society whose most popular TV show features smoky chatter between poets and novelists naturally threatens the land of football and Pabst.
The fact is, France is a good friend and ally trying to make us see reason, and it doesn't deserve to be treated this shabbily. The United States, as led by Bush and his goons, is like a belligerent, out-of-control drunk trying to pick a fight and demanding the car keys at the same time. The French want to drive us home before we cause any more trouble, so we lash out at them, calling them rude names and impugning their loyalty. Sure, we'll be ashamed of our behavior in the morning, after the madness wears off. But will we have any friends left?
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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The Maginot line was designed waaay before Airplanes could drop troops behind enemy lines. The line became useless once the paratrooper became a reality. That quote about it being perfect for WWI is dead on: it would've been great back then but WWII was the 20th century's race to kill itself and the French were behind in the practicality department. People tend to forget that the polish army supplied 80,000 troops to bolster France (afer Poland was lost) but nobody expected the Germans to advance through the supposedly "impassable" Arden forest. They were caught with their pants down.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: The Maginot line was designed waaay before Airplanes could drop troops behind enemy lines. The line became useless once the paratrooper became a reality.
Um, paratroopers don't conquer countries. Those planes that aren't shot down (because, you know, they did have those flying gadgets in France, too, and you don't mount an airborne assault without preestablishing air superiority) might be able to get men behind the Line, at which point they'd have been plastered by the several French divisions in position between the Line and Paris. Besides, the Germans didn't overwhelm the Maginot Line from the air anyway, so I fail to see your point.
The French expected an armour attack, and built a defence that everybody expected would have to be destroyed before German tanks could move on Paris. The only "clear" path would have been to go nearly all the way to the Dutch coast and work downwards through the coastal plain in Belgium, entering France near Lille, which would have been slow enough that France could mobilize to meet them. Tanks couldn't get through the Alps in the southeast and the Ardennes in the northwest without weeks of engineering work. Except they could. And so there was a rather loud exclamation of Merde.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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quote:Originally conveniently posted in a blockquote so disinterested/busy people could scroll right past it by The_Tom: To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn't even exist--it would still be a British colony.
Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis' forces at Yorktown, bringing the American revolution to its victorious conclusion. But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife's heads.
No two countries were closer during the 19th century. Americans named streets after the Marquis de la Fayette, Louis' liaison with the founding fathers.
One remembers the cries of "Lafayette, we are here!" by the AEF in WW1. To say nothing of the Lafayette-class of American SSBNs.
For my part, my problem is primarily with Parisians. I can understand being condescending for worthwhile reasons, but hey--I'm TRYING to speak your fucking language, but of COURSE I'm going to mangle it. Don't get pissed off or I'll go Bruce Banner on your beret-wearing cheese-eatin' surrender monkey asses.
Says the man who's descended of the worst of the French lot...the Qu�becois.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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quote:For my part, my problem is primarily with Parisians. I can understand being condescending for worthwhile reasons, but hey--I'm TRYING to speak your fucking language, but of COURSE I'm going to mangle it. Don't get pissed off or I'll go Bruce Banner on your beret-wearing cheese-eatin' surrender monkey asses.
Funny never had this problem in Paris, I was treated fantastically by everyone I met. The only ones I hear complain about Paris are Americans and Quebecois.
-------------------- "and none of your usual boobery." M. Burns
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