Nowadays, a significant part of our communication is facilitated by memes, and, unfortunately,
memes relating to World War II, in particular, can almost dull our memories and foster unjust
stereotypes of its participants. This is the case for many participants, though France,
mostly for how rapidly it fell and surrendered, is subject to a disproportionate amount of mockery.
It just gets meme'd too hard, especially for how honourable and strong the French
people were throughout the war. In this video, we're going discuss French strength, resilience,
and resistance in World War II, with the aim of scattering the memes yet encircling
the country and reinforcing the battle to keep French sacrifice alive in our memories.
There is no better place to start than the Fall of France. In fact, let's refer to this
operation as the Battle of France from now on, as "fall" does not do justice to the ferocity of
the fighting. This less-than-a-month surrender is the bread and butter of French World War II memes,
though people tend to focus on the capitulation rather than the ferocity of the fighting. The
French did not throw down their guns at first sight of a swastika, and the sheer number of
French soldiers mobilized to contest the German and Italian advances speak for this, though not
as much as the casualties the French sustained. In total, some 3,450,000 Allied personnel fought
in the Battle of France, and to this number the French attributed the bulk, mobilizing three army
groups. During the battle, approximately between 50,000 and 85,000 French soldiers were killed,
approximately between 120,000 and 160,000 were wounded, and around 12,000 went missing.
In the words of French historian and author Dominique Lormier, "It was genuine combat."
Lesser operations and the stories of the soldiers offer more intimate evidence. A great example of
the former is the Dunkirk evacuation, in which French soldiers held off the advancing Nazis
and allowed many of their own and many British soldiers to evacuate. To put it in perspective,
some 16,000 French soldiers perished in the evacuation, while only around 1,000 British
were killed. This was an immense and honourable sacrifice, even if it was part of an Allied
withdrawal. A great example of the latter (a story of a soldier in the Battle of France) is that of
Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch, a French historian and First World War veteran with a Jewish
heritage who volunteered for the Second World War and the ripe age of fifty-three. After being
evacuated to Britain in the Battle of Dunkirk, he returned to France, where his family was,
that very same day. Circumstances later prompted Bloch to join the French Resistance, under which
he fought for about a year and a half before being arrested and executed by the Gestapo. Bloch was
not a man to run from a fight nor surrender. While he was being detained by the Gestapo,
he was tortured, though he claimed never to have given up any information to his interrogators,
and he even kept up the morale of his inmate by giving them French history lessons.
Dominique Lormier also said, "People have forgotten that in many places the French
fought hard and bravely and put the Germans in real difficulty," and German General Heinz
Guderian said, "Despite the major tactical errors of the Allied command, the soldiers put up an
obstinate resistance with a spirit of sacrifice worthy of the poilus (French troops) of 1916."
The suffering, of course, did not end with French capitulation in June 1940. German
occupation of France -- both before and after they occupied zone libre-- was not fun, though
that the French people endured and resisted it speaks for their strength and resilience and is,
again, an Allied contribution often excluded from the French World War II stereotype,
meme or otherwise. Before we discuss just how the French endured and resisted occupation,
as well as how they contributed to the Allied cause outside of occupied France,
it's important to have a feel for what life was like in occupied France.
The Nazis physically occupied the country, uprooting the French Resistance and generally
enforcing Nazi order. Propaganda was a tool for the latter, and Nazi propagandists took
control of French press and monitored and censored all publications, radio, cinema,
plays, and shows, while also subjecting the people to pro-Nazi public advertisements
and speeches. Nazi iconography draped everything, "disagreeable" books were burnt,
and other works of art were stolen and taken to Germany. Curfews were implemented and people
disappeared or were outright arrested or killed, sometimes in mass. The French people suffered food
shortages and, as a result, malnutrition and starvation. Transport and fuel were limited,
and international trade was basically murdered. The French had to pay their German occupiers
to keep occupying their country, as part of the armistice, and this was made even more difficult,
as hundreds of thousands of French POWs and French workers had been forcibly deported
to work in Germany. France suffered it's own Holocaust, with some forty-nine concentration
camps operating inside France and more than 77,000 Jews dying there during the war.
Others were transported out of France and killed in concentration and extermination
camps such as Auschwitz. On top of all this, France was bombarded, mostly by the Allies
in Operation Overlord, and almost 70,000 French people were killed in the shellfire.
While the political situation in France — before and after the German occupation
of zone libre and the prominence of the Vichy puppet government — is worthy of its own video,
the strength, resilience, and resistance of the French people was represented,
at least on a political level, by Free France, the French government-in-exile,
led by Charles de Gaulle. Basically, French army officer and statesman Charles de Gaulle rejected
France's surrender and fled to Britain, where he set up a government-in-exile to, eventually,
spearhead French fighting spirit both outside of and in occupied France. Those fighting for France,
the French colonies, and the Allies outside of France were called the Free French Forces,
while those fighting the German occupation accumulated to the French Resistance.
Resistances, by the very nature of that word,
evince, on an almost primal level, the strength and resilience of a people.
The French Resistance was a collection of organisations fighting German occupation
and the Nazi-puppeteered Vichy government. Among these organisations were those engaged in guerilla
warfare, such as the Maquis du Vercors, though others contributed in a more passive manner,
publishing underground press, providing intelligence, and maintaining escape networks.
Perhaps the French Resistance's most crucial role in all of World War II was providing the
Allies intelligence on German defences in the Normandy landings and the rest of
Operation Overlord. Parallel to this, the French Resistance sabotaged German-controlled power,
transport, and telecommunications facilities and networks, as well as German fuel and ammunition
depots and command posts. This was of major significance to Allied success and French morale,
as was the Liberation of Paris which followed on the 25th of August 1944.
It was a matter of French identity, of symbolism, and it must have been
such an elation to take back the city through which Hitler sauntered some four years prior.
American World War II veteran and author Ralph McAllister Ingersoll wrote about the French
Resistance's contribution to Operation Overlord, saying, "[...] [W]hen we came to France the
Resistance was so effective that it took half a dozen real live German divisions to contend
with it [...] [T]he Germans in central France were truly terrified, had to live under arms,
could not move freely, had lost all control in sizable sectors even before we came."
As for the Free French Forces fighting for France, the French colonies, and the Allies outside of
France prior to Operation Overlord, they fought Axis as well as Vichy-aligned French forces on the
land, sea, and in the sky in several theatres and on many fronts The Free French Forces'
greatest contribution to the Allied victory was in Operation Overlord and the Liberation
of France. Before the commencement of Operation Overlord, they had grown to over 400,000 strong,
and they fought alongside the Allies all the way through France and into Germany,
liberating their country from the Nazis, the remnants of the Vichy government,
and the French capital along the way. This was achieved in concert with the French Resistance.
Free France leader Charles de Gaulle led parades through a liberated Paris on the 25th of August
1944, and, once more, the elation must have been unreal, especially during the parades.
Charles de Gaulle gave a monumental speech just before the parades, saying,
"Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself,
liberated by its people with [...] the help of all France, of the France that fights!"
"It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up [...]."
The French defeat in the Battle of France will remain one of the most shocking in human history.
We cannot let it, however, cast forever its shadow over our memory of the strength,
resilience, and resistance of the French people, who, after getting knocked down
harder than almost any country throughout World War II, got back on their feet and
not only reclaimed what had been stolen from them but brought the fight back to their enemy.
You may have noticed we didn't try to analyse or justify France's defeat in the Battle of France,
and that was because France's defeat was due to many factors beyond the French people's
control. The people, after all, are what make a country, and the French are an honourable people,
deserving of respect and not just shallow memes... even if some of them are just a little funny.