Why are the French so bad at wars?

Don't be too hard on them, they helped us beat England.

 

You contradicted yourself. You said surprise meant that you could concentrate your forces. That is true, but that also implies that you are only attacking part of the defending force.

You are reinventing warfare. Practically everything favors the defender. Force availability, hardened positions, logistics.

 

The French had radios. They didn't have radios in every tank like the Germans did.

 

Force availability did not favor the allies in 1940. They had no forces available.

 

Gamelin didn't and relied on courrierd "on the hour". Radio were isuued at the regimental level not lower which meant they were static for the most part.

 

Bingo! Without the French, there is no victory at Yorktown and, consequently, no United States of America. This can't be emphasized enough although it is convenient to bury this little tidbit of history . Yorktown simply doesn't happen without the French army & navy. Also, there is no American victory without the supplies and armaments France sent to the American rebel colonies. And without Napoleon needing to finance his ongoing wars against Great Britain and others, there is no Louisiana Purchase, a doubling of US territory in one fell swoop - and at a bargain price. The US has much to thank France for....and France has much to thank the US for. I'd say it was a reasonably good relationship except for trolls and miscreants always looking to throw some shade here and there........

 

Why would I leave?

I would actually like to discuss the issue I made this thread for.

That France sucks at wars.

Why do they suck, is that even accurate..that is what I would like to debate.

Not the finer points of Germany rushing through the forest.

Make your own thread for that.

 

That really wasn't the problem either both sides had large mobile reserves. The French in forty and the Germans at D-Day. The problem was in both case, that the opposition controlled the air and therefore real time battlefield information and denied the same to the other side. It doesn't matter how good your reinforcements are if you don't know where to send them and they are taking thirty forty percent casualties on the way in they won't be of much use even if they do find the proper place to go.

 

Not talking about the allies. Talking about Germany attacking France.

 

If you'd followed you'd seen that I also discussed Quebec. Do you want to honestly discuss the subject or do you want to keep on trolling and flamebaiting? I can discuss french history starting at the coronation of their first king, Clovis the first to unite the Franc.

 

The problem is that the French do not suck at wars! They fought a heroic and costly defence in WW1, came out on the right side of WW2 in the end and since 1945 the fact is that European powers fighting for their colonies has been largely unsuccessful.

 

3 part answer. Part number one command and control issue you can only command those troops within the sound of your voice, and if your thirty man platoon is scattered all over hell's half acre, most of them won't even here your commands let alone obey them.

Part number two the equipment in play. It is an .8 caliber smooth bore muzzle loading musket. It's all but impossible to load the thing in the prone position. The accuracy is at best dubious under the best of circumstances. By way of example the Prussian army conducted a series of experiments in 1757 in which an infantry battalion in line would fire at a sheet of cloth 6ft high and a hundred yards long, representing the front of an infantry battalion, at various distances. At two hundred yards barely 5% of the shots hit the target. Not until the range dropped to 60 yards did as many as 2/3s of shots hit the target. This sort of accuracy trained the norm until the minie ball and the rifled musket became standard issue during the Crimean war.

3. In what was then called skirmish order you infantry plstoon was going to get slaughtered by the other guys light cavalry before they could form square.

 

Wrong. Between them the French and Brits had more tanks than Germans and the Somua S38 was as good as anything in the German army, and the British Matildas were all but invulnerable to German MK II and MIII and MIVf1. They didn't lose because they were out numbered and ill equipped. They lost because their tactical doctrine was horrible and the German doctrine was not only vastly superior there level of training for the style of war that was to be fought was infinitely better. Virtually from the minute the Germans crossed the Meuse the French were lost.

 

They were pretty good at war up until Napoleonic times.

 

Well not exactly they went on the offensive early on and got their heads handed to them. They were thrown on the defensive almost entirely by the von Shliffen wheel through Belgium that caught them entirely by surprise. Foche's inspired use of the Paris taxi service to transfer troops to the front and the Brits mad minute in Belgium in the early hours of the attack barely saved the day but it meant most of the remainder of the war would be fought in northern France All though it can be claimed that the primary thing that saved France was the fact that no one had even come close to estimating the prodigious quantities of ammunition the new weapons and artillery pieces could consume and by mid October everybody's ammo was in short supply and this effected the German now more extended supply lines worse than it did the allies.

 

By the way one of the real oddities in western warfare was how little tactics and formations changed between The glory days of the Roman Legion and 1914. While the power of the defense had increased drastically infantry tactics in the assault had changed very little. While no one still advocated marching up within a hundred yards of the enemy before deploying what they were doing -the so-called thickened skirmish line -wasn't much better. I would be another year Before von Ludendorff worked out the .Storm tactics that would become the text book for the modern infantry assault and incidentally introduced the flame thrower to the battlefield. (Some might quibble and say reintroduced but the byzantines seem to have only deployed the weapon at sea.)

 

Would the USA as we know it today exist if not for French help in our Revolutionary war???

 

NOt the subject of the debate.

 

The Complete Military History of France

* Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian (Julius Caesar).

* Hundred Years War - Mostly lost. Saved at last moment by schizophrenic teenaged girl, who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare: "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."

* Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars to the Italians.

* Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots

* Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

* War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.

* The Dutch War - Tied

* War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.

* War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

* American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare: "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."

* French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.

* The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.

* The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

* World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States.

* World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.

* War in Indochina - Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu

* Algerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French.

* War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador, fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

 

They have a history of poor leadership.

 

Those tanks were committed to action already. They had no reserve forces available.

 

Really? I thought that's what the different colored flags were for, visual commands

 

Not since Korea we aren't. 12 years in Nam, 17 years in the mideast. Both utter disasters for our country and the invaded countries.

 

Nonsense. The French sent their reserve at Germans repeatedly and unfortunately in piece meal fashion and the were shot to pieces. The matildas were available for the only serious counter attack the allies made outside Arras they were cutting through the German Army like a hot knife through butter until the ran into a battery German 88 and were in turn shot to pieces. After that the Franco British Armored reserve were gone. The French foreign legion managed to hang on for a short while after Franco British evacuation at Dunkirk but a shortage of at weapons and their own armor doomed their defense.

 

Nope but nice try anyway. The flags were simply rally points, regimental battalion and occasional company standards the dudes carrying them were also primary targets for the other side.