Why are the French so bad at wars?

That is most likely the must singularly screwed up Viet Nam History I have yet seen and given the competition for that award is extremely intense that takes some doing.
1st the usual number given is 63k
2nd at no time did anything in the entire war hinge Diem's 'election. 1st he was a catholic convert as was much of the leadership not a communist. 2nd he was a cheap thug and borderline incompetent, removing his sorry ass from power was one of the smartest things we ever did.

 

Maybe too many of then actually really believe in the "sanctity of life" and that killing innocents ( which ALL wars do) is a bad thing....

 

The statement was that The destruction of BEF and the French forces also present would have almost certainly forced Britain out of the war. No Britain no Amercans in Europe no second front, no need to keep upwards of 300 k troops in France.

Worse yet no liberty ships and no 2.5 ton trucks. Note 2.5 ton trucks were still appearing in Russian supply ecelons as late as the 1960's.

 

I don't care about Diem, I just don't want the US sticking it nose where it don't belong.

 

You’re referring to a fallen empire, the same can be said about the Romans and the Mongols.

 

To be fair, without the french resistants, Germany would have easily won WWII.

 

@Spooky

Napoleon was unique.
He introduced a "New" style of warfare including mobile artillery.
However, he could not adapt to "the line" as opposed to "the column" infantry.
Generally, The French think in tactics of the previous war, and not a future war!

Question answered.
Gimmie a "like".

 

A lot of it is politics.

When we look at recent French expeditions in Africa against muslim terrorists they have been quite effective.

Historically, the US had modeled itself on the French military structure, armament, etc.

And going back further, France was a major world power surrounded by other major world powers.

War was inevitable at many times.

 

I am on the side of trying to keep people from being subjected to tyranny and/or murder, often both one and the same especially when communists are involved on the othe rside.

 

Generally I agree, however there are a lot of people who criticize the US for not getting into WW II and maybe some other wars sooner. They said we should have known what a threat Hitler was to the world and we should have acted sooner which would have caused his defeat much sooner. During the cold war communism appeared to be just as dangerous to us as Nazism. We watched as Stalin broke all his promises and took over the governments of eastern Europe and the Baltic states. We watched as it took over China and as it tried to over take the entire Korean peninsula. The goal of communism is world domination and the further it spread, the more of a threat it became. Sure, in places we fought back lots of people died, but no where near as many as when communism took over a country. No where near the number of deaths in Vietnam would have happened if the war was fought to win. Instead it was fought as a war of attrition with the hope that we could kill more soldiers than the north could replace. We didn't do what was needed because they were afraid the Soviets would start sending troops there. In what war is one country allowed to send all their soldiers into your country but not the other way around? It's an unwinnable war. I think we would have been better off if we held the south while the ARVN sent all their soldiers north.

 

The colossal mistake was believing
these Communist, and those Communist
were all one big happy Red Family.


Yet occasionally Communist China and Communist USSR
had "hot" border skirmishes now and then during those
idiotic containment years.

I always thought it was cute one of Communist "United Vietnam"
earliest military experiences was to punch a hole
in their border with Communist China.
If I remember correctly it took China some months to mobilize and push them out.

Moi's Better approach:
"You're Communist! How about that.
Now shall we do some business?"



And speaking of the French
Degaulle threatened to take France
into the Soviet camp if
did not support French claim to Vietnam.

 

Did it matter if Chinese communists or USSR communists were trying to take over your country? I no longer remember the cause for the split, but China became red with Stalin's help. So it all starts there.

 

As opposed to Standard Oil.


How come the Reds didn't get Thailand?

 

I know we still had military stationed there, but is there something you can enlighten me about on that subject? I'd love to hear it.

 

What? No he didn't. Mobile artillery was key in the victories of Gustavus Adolphus, for example, nearly two centuries before.

Napoleon was a brilliant military thinker, but he did NOT introduce a "new style" of warfare. But Lazare Carnot did. Not in terms of different strategic or tactical approaches, but in logistical approaches. It was Carnot who really practiced the idea of national mobilization.

 

I thought Austerlitz was the example of Napoleon using more
mobile tactics that the coalition he faced

 

Napoleon was brilliant because he introduced a new style of LEADERSHIP that enabled him to win 60 battles while losing only 8. Not many other military leaders come close to him.

https://www.cleverism.com/11-leadership-lessons-from-napoleon-bonaparte/

 

Austerlitz was Napoleon duping the coalition into believing his army was much weaker than theirs and providing them with a dummy "weak point" for them to attack. He then plugged the weak point with a forced march and attacked the allies in their now weakened center which divided and routed them. It was a brilliant deception strategy.

 

Let's understand something here, no one wins every war they've ever been in. For one thing war is a damn bloody minded business that requires one to kill a hell of a lot of people in the shortest possible time to win it. We in the West aren't really willing to do that any more. Instead we wind up killing twice as many people as we would have had we gone in and got it over with as quickly as possible but taking twenty years to do it and in the end we accomplish nothing.

 

Not exactly no. Napoleon was not much of an innovator almost everything he used was already there when he came to power. Napoleon won because the French military organization he had control of was far better organized and trained than any of it's competitors save the Brits and because of that they moved faster and hit harder. At the heart of it was the infantry division Of two to three regiments and one or two batteries of field artillery. No one else had anything like it which meant when one of Napoleon opponents needed a force he had to send an aide to collect the necessary resources get them all together and send them forth hopefully in the right direction and by the time this was done the moment when it might have successfully intervened might well be gone. It did not help matters that the aides might well be ignored. Atop the Division was the Corps. A corps as a general rule consisted of three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry plus several batteries of artillery of varying sorts though there were corps purely of cavalry light for scouting and heavy for delivering the finishing blow to an enemy on the verge of collapse. There was also an artillery reserve corps.

Napoleon's opponents were still using the command structure left over from the middle ages two wings and a center and occasionally a reserve. There was no intermediate levels between the Army commander, he usually held the Center command, and the regiment. Not only was there no intermediate levels of command above regiment but the regiments themselves often did not understand how to work together. Note all of this was there at least in nascent form when Napoleon took power.