Why are the French so bad at wars?

No mention of New York rugby league and how you'll compete against the Catalans, who rivals were eliminated through French collaboration? A missed opportunity.

 

Not interested enough history on the other hand....

 

Simply because it's false.

Why we lost so many wars.

A few hints :
It's simply false, the statistics are rather good.
Our history is 1500 years long, not 250, even longer if you take in consideration the gauls.
We had to fight german, not some outnumbered and much less equiped native american.
We didn't got 18 millions slavs to die for us before attacking the nazis.
We knew war at a degree american couldn't imagine, during WW1, we lost 1,3 million people (without counting colonial troop), I don't even count people which got psdr or were heavily mutilated. That's 30 % of the male population in age to fight. That explain why french people weren't that happy for war after WW1. We basically lost almost as much population in a single war than the american during their whole history, considering that you are much more populated.
There is a bunch of arabs and subsaharian african not very happy we won against them.
Our generals were regulary complete idiots and made major tactical mistakes.

We had a lot of success during the revolution war because a lot of officer were picked from the common people. That ended with some interesting fate, like Napoleon a member of the small corsican nobility becoming emperor, or Bernardotte, a man born as a commoner becoming King of Sweden (the nowodays king of sweden are still descendants of said Bernadotte), or Dumas father which was half black.

For 1870, I heard that generals tended to pick line tactical when german got more modern strategies.

For 1940, as far as I understand things, I'm not a big expert on military history, our military leaders reparted the tanks within the infantry division, wishing to use the tanks as in WW1, as infantry support. German at the opposite made whole tank units, enabling them to move extremly fast. De Gaulle tried to convince the military leader that we should create full tank division, they didn't listened him.
Some german generals were rather young, for Instance Rommel, that was 40 at the beginning of the war. When most french general were elderly. WW2 German general during WW1 were on the frontline. WW2 french general were behind the line, with the general staff.

I discussed that with some friends of mine (also french), they were considering that our generals were always from a tactical point of view "one war late".

The german lost however during the battle of France the advantage they had against us : surprize. However they still slaughtered 18 millions of soviet citizen before being annihilated during the battle of stalingrad. The battle of Normandy didn't enabled german to loose, the soviet had already won agaisnt them, but it prevented the whole europe to become communist.

 

If the criteria is "winning the war" then America has lost a great many since WW2.

1. Korea - Draw!
2. Vietnam - Lost!
3. Gulf War - Win!
4. Iraq - Lost!
5. Afghanistan - Losing badly!

There there are asinine "Wars On..." which is even more abysmal.

War on Drugs - Lost!
War on Education - Lost!
War on Terror - Lost!
War on Women - Lost!
War on Immigration - Lost!
War on the Working Class - The Wall Street Casino is WINNING that war.

 

I think perhaps the socialist mindset has existed there for a long time, and combined with spinal/mental instability, has created a situation which pre-disposes them to a lack of fortitude and commitment.

 

The French sent tactical reserves into action. They had no strategic reserve.

Having Matildas means nothing when those tanks are engaged in Belgium and need to be France. The allies had no serious armor reserves.

 

Didn't they beat back the Muslims at Tours in 732AD. They held their own until recently.

 

Yes, but there was other battle. Tours battle was itself not that much exceptionnal, but it's still there than the muslim invaders were stopped. I tend to suppose there was a massive ptsd in 1914-1918 caused by the loss of 30 % of young men after WW1 + a mass culprit because of slavery/colonization + absence of religion which explain why french people now answer to terrorist attacks with "you won't get my hatred" or hashtags like "no amalgams".
However, Russia knew something similar with the loss of 30 % of their population and has no problem with war. They probably feel no culprit about their history and have a religion (orthodox religion).

 

Really, if you don't know something do really think resorting to the ridiculous will make you look more intelligent on the subject

 

I agree. But Garyd is already having a difficult time with the concept of changing battle strategies and changing meaning of battle flags! So I'm limiting the examples to what I recognize as the posters limits.. If that day comes where some basic understanding of the multiple uses and orders a flag can represent, THEN I might introduce trumpets, drums and even signal fires..

I'm a patient man, I can wait

 

I do know something. I've been through more books on the campaigns of Napoleon than you likely know were written. Hell I used to table top Napoleonic miniatures back in the day. Regimental and battalion flags were colored differently to differentiate the regiment and battalions even the uniforms were done that way. A typical regimental flag in Napoleons army was rectangular with a diamond in the center featuring the regimental number and any unit awards printed in gold around it. The corners would be the Units regimental color. Battalion flags were slightly smaller and the diamond in the center would be the regimental color and the corners were the battalion facing colors and the cavalry are even gaudier. A Napoleonic military parade was a riot of color. The pants might all be white except for the voltiguerres which were blue, and the jackets predominately blue but the cuffs and lapels might be any color under the sun.

Lord knows I painted enough of them.

 

Oh it shows too

 

They were in Belgium because that's where the Brits had been forced to retreat to after the Crossing of the Meuse and the French had expended there reserves so wastefully and far to late in the day. German stukas made a hash out of much of the French Reserves just as british Typhoons and Hurricane tank busters and US P-47's did to German armored reserves on D-Day +

 

Well Dumas was a bit earlier but one hell of a character none the less And Duc D'Enghein and Maurice De Saxe are still celebrated as great captains of the first water.

Very few Generals in WWI actually distinguished themselves. Foch is one of the few exceptions all though the taxi move seems to have been but a momentary inspiration. Part of it was that no one anywhere quite understood how drastically things had changed since the days of Napoleon. If you can find it somewhere catch the British comedy Black Adders WWI sketches.

There is one scene in particular in which a bunch of British officers are standing about a small sand table on which one says is a model of the land they'd captured during the last offensive, and one of the officers asks, "What's the scale" and a colonel say "one to one..."

 

They were in Belgium because that’s where the British and French battleplan called for them to be.

 

The biggest flaw of french army during WW1 was the uniform in 1914. But then french army was the first to get for everyone helmets, even if the german design would be the best, and it's the one used by most armies today.
In 1917, the invention of the Renault FT 17 tank became one of the biggest strength of french army. It's the grandfather of all modern tanks.
Unfortunatly, WW1 remain for me a genocide of the european people on itself. The versaille treaty was stupid, but considering how much every side suffered in 1916-1917, I suppose there couldn't be any more "smart" peace.

 

What the US people can be proud of is that we did not go to mass hangings after our very bloody civil war but took the southern population back into the union.

In fact we went too far in my opinion an allow the southern whites to find means to once more place the blacks into semi slavery for a hundred more years.

 

I don't care if Korea is better off
I served in Nam, we did not win.
The first Iraqi war, what did we win? I know we won the battles but what did we do, oher that precipitate the greatest eco disaster.
Gulf war two so we spent 6 trill and thousands of lives for what?
Things are not going to improve for the 1/2 mill iraqis who died other the 10 fold who were injured and bombed out of thier homes. And please Isis never would have formed under Saddam, both males and females members would have been raped, killed and then raped again.

 

Yes we did.
We kept Saddam from seizing Kuwait and dominance of world oil, had we not stopped him in Kuwait he would almost certainly have gone for Saudi next.
For the only strategic choice we had if we were going to do anything at all about the Taliban and Al Qaida. Saddam was not and is not immortal and his two crazy sons, the heirs apparent had already blown of the support they could expect for trying to make sado-masochistic porn stars out of whatever young women were available. Iraq was going to explode in the near future no matter what. And lets not forget that almost all of those 500k were killed by other Iraqis many of them after we left. Isis formed in Syria.

 

And who cares if some of those 1/2 mill died after 2012, they died due to the carnage and the strife our war caused.

Who cares if he dominated the world oil market. He never was a driver in opec price increases. He was a great counterbalance to Iran. Unlike SA his secular regime trampled on islamic fundamentalism. SA endorses and exports radical islam. If they were going to explode any way ( and I don't think they were or why did bush want to go) why help them at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of american boys dead. I served in Nam in a war for no reason at all. We been in the mideast now 8 years longer than we were in Nam in another war that just caused more misery for the people. When you kill 1/2 of a million people in a war that you attacked them is how you give birth to millions of terrorist sympathizers. And we did the same in syria, we even armed al qaeda in the fight against Assad!!! WTF!

The US has no reason to get involved militarily in other nations affairs. I am not talking counter terrorism strikes, but boots on the ground for more than one mission. We got men there that have served 3 deployments or almost 6 years! What damage have we done to those men- 6 years of war - two more years than we fought WW2.

 

How many have we been on the winning side in since WW2?

 

If you served in Vietnam first of all thank you for your service. Secondly, after Tet of 68 the Viet Cong were destroyed as a fighting force and they proved themselves to be evil, corrupt and murderous.
Their treatment of civilians at Hue should have been a green light to congress to go after the North Vietnamese with everything we had. By that time in the war we knew the Chinese were more interested in trade with America than supporting the NVA.

Had we mined the harbors, and destroyed the rail lines out of China, had we bombed the hell out of SAM sites aling with the Soviet personnel doing the training, had we bombed the dikes in the north to flood the rice fields.
It would have been as easy win but Johnson and his advisors were *******.

Then Nixon comes along and thankfully ruined the peace negotiations, sonething the north never took seriously.

Had we done the work up north properly from 64-68 the VC would have been mal nurished and unequipped for battle. There would be a lot fewer Vietnam Veterans today and the Monument in DC would be a lot smaller.
Like Robin Olds said," the way to win this war was to win it."
Nixon tried but congress told him no, mistakenly in my opinion.

Point blank you cannot win a war of interdiction by attacking one truck at a time. You have to kill the ship or train with all the trucks still on it.
You cannot win a war of attrition with a rifle on the battlefield you do it with an air strike long before he gets to the battlefield.

 

They, of course, do not. Germany was just really good at "military stuff" during the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries. They were, without a doubt, the single most powerful European country from King Clovis to the Battle of Sedan, unless you want to count the Ottoman Empire as "European," and you could make an argument that the Byzantines or Spaniards had them beat here and there.

Clovis to Sedan. Pretty good run, really. Beats the Romans, even... unless you want to count the Byzantines as "Romans," even then it's pretty close.

 

I think after our two 10+ year multi-trillion dollar wars, we should not be criticizing any other country

 

Back in the 60's my father would bring home whole sheets of ethnic jokes, Italians had the same sort of jokes as the French. I haven't heard of that first joke, the 2nd one is an oldie. I know the jokes are at the expense of others, but I laugh at jokes about American's too if they aren't mean and nasty. The French are probably no better nor any worse than most any other country when it comes to war.