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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 22, 2017 7:20:58 GMT
......France surrendered. It may have been the darkest day of the 20th Century. If anyone can nominate a darker one, I'm listening. France was reputed to have the toughest, most modern, most scientific, most well-trained and well-equipped army in the world, and the Germans basically rolled them up like a carpet. Many reasons can be cited for the French inability to forestall the Germans as they had done in the previous conflict of 1914-1918, and this tactical defect may not have been the deciding factor, but I think it was still a factor. Enjoy. EDIT -- Sorry. The surrender was on June 22, not May 22.  |
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Post by FilmFlaneur on May 22, 2017 9:24:29 GMT
Is this point to tell everyone why French streets often have trees down each side?
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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 22, 2017 9:41:13 GMT
Is this point to tell everyone why French streets often have trees down each side? There's a French shameful capitulation of 1940 joke here, isn't there? Okay, I'll bite. Why do French streets often have trees down each side?  |
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Post by FilmFlaneur on May 22, 2017 9:56:38 GMT
So that that the Germans can march in the shade.
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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 22, 2017 10:02:06 GMT
So that that the Germans can march in the shade.  I'm glad Ishisha isn't here to see this. Maybe someday France will live it down, but not yet. |
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2017 10:03:29 GMT
So that that the Germans can march in the shade. How many gears does a French tank have? 5. 1 for forward and 4 for reverse😃 |
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Post by Jonesy1 on May 22, 2017 10:30:12 GMT
Erjen, if you're prepared to spend 2 hours watching it this is a more in depth documentary about the battle of France.
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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 22, 2017 10:43:14 GMT
Thanks, jonesy1. I'll check it out. Can't stay awake two more hours, but maybe I can watch the first thirty or forty minutes and catch the rest later.
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Post by phludowin on May 22, 2017 10:58:47 GMT
It may have been the darkest day of the 20th Century. If anyone can nominate a darker one, I'm listening. I can think of several, but especially this one: 10th of January, 1920. On that day, the Versailles treaty was implemented. Without the Versailles treaty, Hitler and the Nazis would never have risen to power, and the world may have been spared World War II and the Holocaust (which happened, by the way). |
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Post by Sulla on May 22, 2017 11:33:06 GMT
I don't think the types of turrets made that much difference in the big picture. The superior French tank quality was certainly helpful in contests between individual tanks. But Germany overcame that inferiority with the doctrine of 'combined arms'. German ground support from the Luftwaffe was much better coordinated than the French. The best tanks in the world couldn't stand up to Stukas.
The French high command just didn't grasp the changes in mobility and communication between the world wars. Once the shooting began, events unfolded too quickly to make adjustments. De Gaulle was among the few who understood Guderian's ideas but he wasn't in a position to update the antiquated French thinking.
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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 22, 2017 11:33:31 GMT
It may have been the darkest day of the 20th Century. If anyone can nominate a darker one, I'm listening. I can think of several, but especially this one: 10th of January, 1920. On that day, the Versailles treaty was implemented. Without the Versailles treaty, Hitler and the Nazis would never have risen to power, and the world may have been spared World War II and the Holocaust (which happened, by the way). I suppose that's a valid point, but by the same token one could argue that if not for the absurd policies FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama the United States would not be in the horrible mess that it is now, thus providing the environment for Donald Trump to claw his way to the top. To jonesy1: When you said in-depth you weren't kidding. Lot of stuff there I had never heard before. I guess part of the blame should go to the Dutch and the Belgians for not coordinating with the British and the French prior to the German invasion. Watched the first thirty-seven minutes. Must sleep now. |
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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 22, 2017 11:46:29 GMT
I don't think the types of turrets made that much difference in the big picture. The superior French tank quality was certainly helpful in contests between individual tanks. But Germany overcame that inferiority with the doctrine of 'combined arms'. German ground support from the Luftwaffe was much better coordinated than the French. The best tanks in the world couldn't stand up to Stukas.
The French high command just didn't grasp the changes in mobility and communication between the world wars. Once the shooting began, events unfolded too quickly to make adjustments. De Gaulle was among the few who understood Guderian's ideas but he wasn't in a position to update the antiquated French thinking.
The French tank commander in 1940 had to observe the terrain, tell the driver where to go, spot the target, move the gun, load it, and fire it. Not very demanding in 1917, but it wasn't just about that. It was also the way the French deployed their tanks, scattering them all over the place. The Germans used their tanks en masse or not at all......but yes, the Germans were fighting the next war, and the French were trying to do a replay of the last war. At that time the US had almost nothing in the way of armored forces, and the British weren't doing so well either. As the war went along they made up for it though. |
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Post by Cinemachinery on May 22, 2017 16:08:15 GMT
The French catch way too much hell for the WWII surrender. They'd lost around 5.7 million casualties in the first World War, they hadn't really recovered and, even though they surrendered on paper, the French underground opposition is probably one of the most famous and enduring symbols of anti-Nazi resistance in Europe. Edit: went to do a search to verify the casualty number and there's a whole article on this on "Cracked".  |
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Post by cupcakes on May 22, 2017 18:05:45 GMT
tpfkar It's the apperception-retarding chemtrails that have been regularly and comprehensively dispersed over red America since the nineties. The GPTB really didn't think the whole chemical dumbing-down of America for pacification purposes thing though.
By the same token, I'll never understand the people who deny that she is a transgender. Joan Rivers blabbed it on TV two months before her death. |
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Post by OldSamVimes on May 22, 2017 18:07:14 GMT
June 14, 1946.
That was a pretty bad day too, although the full ramifications are yet to be felt.
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Post by Jonesy1 on May 23, 2017 7:35:03 GMT
The problem with the British army at that time is that in many ways they were unprepared, there are stories that when the German offensive began they were so desperate for reinforcements that men were sent across to France that hadn't finished basic training. It didn't help that a lot of the senior commanders were what David Lloyd George described as 'fox hunting fools'. Also a lot of them lived in the past, some senior officers based their strategy on tactics learned in the Boer war, and even though we had a few half decent tanks many senior officer didn't like them as they considered tank warfare to be 'ungentlemanly'. The opinion of the commanders in the field when working out the defence of France was that the Germans wouldn't come through the Ardennes as it was believed that it was impassable to armour and so there was a huge gap in the front that was undefended. The Germans proved that it wasn't impassable. Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo was a very hard learned lesson and Churchill realised that the armed forces had to change if we wanted to win, so a lot of the top brass were replaced with officers who were forward thinking, so out went the fox hunting fools and in came men like General Montgomery (not as overrated as Steven Spielberg would have us believe) and the army was reorganised into an effective fighting force. |
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Post by The Herald Erjen on May 24, 2017 18:13:56 GMT
The problem with the British army at that time is that in many ways they were unprepared, there are stories that when the German offensive began they were so desperate for reinforcements that men were sent across to France that hadn't finished basic training. It didn't help that a lot of the senior commanders were what David Lloyd George described as 'fox hunting fools'. Also a lot of them lived in the past, some senior officers based their strategy on tactics learned in the Boer war, and even though we had a few half decent tanks many senior officer didn't like them as they considered tank warfare to be 'ungentlemanly'. The opinion of the commanders in the field when working out the defence of France was that the Germans wouldn't come through the Ardennes as it was believed that it was impassable to armour and so there was a huge gap in the front that was undefended. The Germans proved that it wasn't impassable. Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo was a very hard learned lesson and Churchill realised that the armed forces had to change if we wanted to win, so a lot of the top brass were replaced with officers who were forward thinking, so out went the fox hunting fools and in came men like General Montgomery (not as overrated as Steven Spielberg would have us believe) and the army was reorganised into an effective fighting force. Have you noticed that there aren't a lot of films dealing with the Battle of France? Years ago I saw one called "Eagles over London" and there is the recent "Dunkirk" movie, but mostly it's about the Germans getting pushed back from their earlier conquests. Even the history books concentrate mostly on that, it seems. |
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Post by Jonesy1 on May 24, 2017 21:44:57 GMT
The problem with the British army at that time is that in many ways they were unprepared, there are stories that when the German offensive began they were so desperate for reinforcements that men were sent across to France that hadn't finished basic training. It didn't help that a lot of the senior commanders were what David Lloyd George described as 'fox hunting fools'. Also a lot of them lived in the past, some senior officers based their strategy on tactics learned in the Boer war, and even though we had a few half decent tanks many senior officer didn't like them as they considered tank warfare to be 'ungentlemanly'. The opinion of the commanders in the field when working out the defence of France was that the Germans wouldn't come through the Ardennes as it was believed that it was impassable to armour and so there was a huge gap in the front that was undefended. The Germans proved that it wasn't impassable. Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo was a very hard learned lesson and Churchill realised that the armed forces had to change if we wanted to win, so a lot of the top brass were replaced with officers who were forward thinking, so out went the fox hunting fools and in came men like General Montgomery (not as overrated as Steven Spielberg would have us believe) and the army was reorganised into an effective fighting force. Have you noticed that there aren't a lot of films dealing with the Battle of France? Years ago I saw one called "Eagles over London" and there is the recent "Dunkirk" movie, but mostly it's about the Germans getting pushed back from their earlier conquests. Even the history books concentrate mostly on that, it seems. Yes I have noticed that. I've seen trailers for the recent Dunkirk film, I'm not sure if it looks any good or not. I did enjoy the 1958 'Dunkirk' with John Mills and the 2004 BBC docudrama (also called Dunkirk) with Benedict Cumberbatch and narrated by Timothy Dalton. In 1995 when I was still in the army I was seconded to the navy for a 2 week exercise (Exercise Dynamo 95) and I was part of the crew of a sail training craft that escorted the 'little ship', or at least most of the ones that were still seaworthy, from Dover to Dunkirk and back again for the 55 anniversary commemorations and I met a lot of British and French veterans (and one German) and they were great guys. I joined a few of them for a drink (or several) and I felt very humble around them. I thought I had the photographs on photobucket, if I remember this weekend I'll upload them. |
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Post by mikef6 on May 25, 2017 3:26:04 GMT
But Conan O'Brien has told us why France is so cool: because their extreme right-wing candidate lost by millions of votes but didn't get to become President anyway.
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Post by progressiveelement on May 25, 2017 12:14:00 GMT
The problem with the British army at that time is that in many ways they were unprepared, there are stories that when the German offensive began they were so desperate for reinforcements that men were sent across to France that hadn't finished basic training. It didn't help that a lot of the senior commanders were what David Lloyd George described as 'fox hunting fools'. Also a lot of them lived in the past, some senior officers based their strategy on tactics learned in the Boer war, and even though we had a few half decent tanks many senior officer didn't like them as they considered tank warfare to be 'ungentlemanly'. The opinion of the commanders in the field when working out the defence of France was that the Germans wouldn't come through the Ardennes as it was believed that it was impassable to armour and so there was a huge gap in the front that was undefended. The Germans proved that it wasn't impassable. Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo was a very hard learned lesson and Churchill realised that the armed forces had to change if we wanted to win, so a lot of the top brass were replaced with officers who were forward thinking, so out went the fox hunting fools and in came men like General Montgomery (not as overrated as Steven Spielberg would have us believe) and the army was reorganised into an effective fighting force. Have you noticed that there aren't a lot of films dealing with the Battle of France? Years ago I saw one called "Eagles over London" and there is the recent "Dunkirk" movie, but mostly it's about the Germans getting pushed back from their earlier conquests. Even the history books concentrate mostly on that, it seems.
Battle of Britain (1969) briefly touches on it at the beginning. But mostly it's about Brits and the occasional Poles, Canadian, etc, kicking Jerry ass when they try their shit with the UK.
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