French arms of the Great War - educate me
- Thread starter RangeRover
- Start date
"The most important single event in human history was the flooding of the English Channel." Dr. Charles W. Lightbody, Rhodes Scholar and Historian, 1969.
I was in the room and heard him say it.
Something to think about, especially as concerns the issues of INDIVIDUAL rights as opposed to COLLECTIVE rights. One tiny facet: one English idea which has spread from that little island is the judicial concept of being innocent until proven guilty. In many societies, starting with Rome and proceeding forward into the Code Napoleon, you are guilty upon accusation until you can prove yourself innocent. Might be there are a few nasty English ideas which are worth emulating.
And this carries forward as well. Harper is, at heart, a Libertarian...... and we need a LOT more of those. Support him and watch as he rolls Government back, one step at a time. Registry is first, then the Wheat Board (extraordinary powers stolen by the Feds in 1940: somebody told me the War is over..... but the bureaucracy is still here). All those hundreds of other Boards better watch out; they are "surplus to requirements" in a free society and, for the first time in 50 years, we have a Government which recognises this.
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I was in the room and heard him say it.
Something to think about, especially as concerns the issues of INDIVIDUAL rights as opposed to COLLECTIVE rights. One tiny facet: one English idea which has spread from that little island is the judicial concept of being innocent until proven guilty. In many societies, starting with Rome and proceeding forward into the Code Napoleon, you are guilty upon accusation until you can prove yourself innocent. Might be there are a few nasty English ideas which are worth emulating.
And this carries forward as well. Harper is, at heart, a Libertarian...... and we need a LOT more of those. Support him and watch as he rolls Government back, one step at a time. Registry is first, then the Wheat Board (extraordinary powers stolen by the Feds in 1940: somebody told me the War is over..... but the bureaucracy is still here). All those hundreds of other Boards better watch out; they are "surplus to requirements" in a free society and, for the first time in 50 years, we have a Government which recognises this.
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Oh my, Browneck, I wouldnt dare to argue with a specialist like you... I'm only an historian after all! Read read read, and not just from English or US historians but from all the sources available, that's the best advice I can give you...If you want to know a period well, its the only way. Of course sometimes it will mean learning french or german or another language, and having a more open mind. History isnt as easy as it looks... Also, take a look at the real numbers in WW2 (civilian and military casualties...) it will help.
no need to be aggressive
no need to be aggressive
By the way, the $17 repros are a STEAL. The are hand-made with manual munch presses in Australia. I have 5 original 3 round clips. None of them cost me $17 or less - more like $30 plus. And that was over a decade ago when they could still sometimes be found 
I don't think any nation has ever surrendered to air power alone. As for Vichy, all concered countries under Nazi control had a more or less similar deal. One thing is certain, the French had one hell of a resistance!
If it wasn't for the channel, the Spitfire and Sir Hugh Dowding Britain would have been crushed by the nazis. The British infantry was destroyed at Dunkerque!
Montgomery's division made it back to England and announced that it was ready to fight.
Pretty good for the sacrifice division that wasn't supposed to make it out.
They also had First Canadian Div, although not completed training. One thing I have never heard is that Canadians aren't willing to fight....... although I did once hear an SS trooper state flatly that "the Canadians were just as good as we were". Considering the source, I would say high praise.
But make no mistake: the Brits would have fought. They fought the Conqueror for 20 years after Hastings.... and they had MUCH less love for Herr Hitler and his goose-stepping buddies.
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Pretty good for the sacrifice division that wasn't supposed to make it out.
They also had First Canadian Div, although not completed training. One thing I have never heard is that Canadians aren't willing to fight....... although I did once hear an SS trooper state flatly that "the Canadians were just as good as we were". Considering the source, I would say high praise.
But make no mistake: the Brits would have fought. They fought the Conqueror for 20 years after Hastings.... and they had MUCH less love for Herr Hitler and his goose-stepping buddies.
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I'm pretty sure they would have fight, and probably very well... The Brits are/were tough. But, like others, they faced several defeats against the Germans at the beginning of WW2. I'm just wondering if they would have been able to hold against the blitzkrieg. We will never know for sure, but its a good thing that the Channel was there ! As for the value of Canadians troops... Well I cant really be objective on that subject, since I served in the R22R for a couple of years.
the Canadians were the only ones that were able to embark all of their equipment, the brits got their soldiers back, but that's it. A good read is about the emergency equipment the Brits came up with to defend the UK.
Luckily the German plans for the invasion were almost laughable.
Luckily the German plans for the invasion were almost laughable.
There were no Cdn Army units to be evacuated at Dunkirk with or without equipment. A Cdn brigade was sent to France after Dunkirk and was very nearly captured without fireing a shot. A transport sgt received an MM for succesfully destroying all his regiments motor vehicles in this fiasco.
However there was a group called the Royal Navy which would have turned a German invasion onto a bloody shambles.
You are right about that one! I also believe the the British and Common Wealth infantry would have fought like the devil in hell, I just don't think any army (in 1940) especially the general staff was ready and able to stop the nazi ground forces and their CAS.
I wasn't clear, the Canadian were not at dunkirk but arrived at embarked at another port, they did get their gun and weapons embarked, making only the !st Div and the Scottish Division the only fully equipped units in the UK for sometime.
Lebel and berthier
Woshhhhhhhhhhhhh
Lebel ,Lebel
That was awfull to read then my rebuit Lebel was repaired in 1927 , so post world war one....
French refresh the rifles with new and old part to reduce cost
i own too much french rifles to say that, it's commun practice to keep just to the point to be not usable.
Please don't argue , read books , analyze , and think before to write insanity
WoshhhhhhhhhhhhhLebel ,Lebel
That was awfull to read then my rebuit Lebel was repaired in 1927 , so post world war one....
French refresh the rifles with new and old part to reduce cost
i own too much french rifles to say that, it's commun practice to keep just to the point to be not usable.
Please don't argue , read books , analyze , and think before to write insanity
As was mentioned the Line did actually hold, and the fixed fortifications later used extensively by the NVA/VC forces in Vietnam proved their worth in the face of much heavier firepower than what the Germans had.
Anyway I agree about the rot in 1940 French society, the effects that WW1 had on French national moral can't be overstated, they really did lose most of a generation of their young men.
One thing I remember vividly about travelling through the French countryside when I was younger was that there were few very old men of the generation that would have fought in WW1, but lots of women of the same age. When I asked about this I was told so many men never came back from the war that most of those women weren't able to remarry. Spooky.
Also along with the effects of the Great War I suspect that communist agents were successful at undermining the country from within as well.
French society was bitterly divided ever since the Reformation and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. 1789 added social conflict to the religious conflict, Napoleon added Bonapartist vs. royalist conflict, 1848 added more to the mix, the Paris Commune and it's suppression (Those beautiful avenues built right through the slums were created so artillery could be fired on crowds and districts more easily - where Napoleon I got his start after all: firing on crowds) French society and the French army was bitterly divided before WWI between Catholic (aristocratic or pretending to be) officers and non-Catholics (Dreyfus scandal etc.)
Read somewhere that of the 1914 class at St. Cyr, only one was killed in WWI. I guess they all had jobs on the staff.
The ordinary French soldiers fought bravely until the 1917 mutinies when they got fed up with being slaughtered by idiot generals. The Australians got a bit fed up that year too IIRC.
France was bled white by WWI even worse than Britain and that was bad enough. This after Napoleon had bled her white a century earlier.
So, you kill off the best and you're left with the rest; and their kids, and their kids. Keep repeating that and you're left with a genetic and moral deficit that usually leads to national extinction, if not partially reversed by a long period of peace. But can you ever replace what was lost?
In 1940 much of the French left didn't want to fight, except for socialism or communism; the Germans and the Soviets were allies remember. The French right was divided between those who were conservatives and those who were basically fascists. The fascists mostly wanted to collaborate with Germany and felt that a disaster of some kind was needed to purge French society of the "rot" of left wing ideas.
The Germans had tens of thousands of agents at all levels of French society. A British agent in Germany in the 1930s was shown a thick book listing them by one of the Nazi leaders.
But, let's end with some humour:
Someone in England said to me: "I love those French truckers and how they block the roads in protest. I just wish they'd done it in 1940!"
I think it's the other way around. The chapel at St. Cyr had a single entry for "the Class of 1914" on its WWI memorial tablet, which would imply that all, or at least most of them, were killed in action.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=ELc...v=onepage&q="st cyr" "class of 1914""&f=false
