Vichy apologist in 2024, nice.
Not a Vichy apologist. It's just that many people start this story in 1940-1941 as if nothing happened before.
If you want to truly understand what happened you have to understand the french sentiment at that time and get the full picture.
For the french people it all started in 1914 when the germans invaded France. There were a massive draft at the beginning of the War and dudes were sent in trenches wearing red pants and hat with a dark blue coat. Our doctrine at the time was way behind Germany's, we were stuck in Napoleonic doctrines.
The conscripts were ordered to get out of the trenches with their Lebel in hand and run on open terrain in front of machine gunners all the way to ennemy trenches. If they managed to get there they had to clean them up using their bayonet. Joined a picture of the average french infentryman at the start of WW1. Best close quarter tactical set up you have ever seen, I know.
French government also introduced a temporary tax that same year to help with the war effort. It was called the "income tax" (yep, still there in case you wondered).
Well, during these 4 years we lost 1'397'800 soldiers and we also had 4'266'000 wounded soldiers and I'm not even counting the civilian casualties.
Said like that it doesn't sound like much but just to put that into perspective it would be equivalent to the US loosing 11,7M soldiers (the US has lost less than 650k soldiers since its creation in 1776) and having 35,9M more wounded at today's populaltion.
It was the biggest massacre to known history at that time and the french got the most of it.
Just take my family name : AILLAUD
It's one of the least common french names with 1673 people born in France since 1890.
Yet 59 guys named AILLAUD died in combat (all in my region) during WW1. It's basically the tribute my enlarged family paid.
Now bear in mind, when WW2 broke the french guys in age to be drafted all grew up during the aftermath of that war. Not a single family got spared. They grew up seeing dudes like that everyday :
And you know what these kids also grew up to ? The french government telling them NEVER AGAIN. Nothing is worth such devastation.
Now we can move to 1939 when Germany invaded Poland after a few years of unsuccessful negociations over the corridor of Dantzig.
- French population : "Sounds like a you problem. Good luck with that"
- French government : "You remember when we were telling you NEVER AGAIN, well. We've just declared war to Germany with the Brits. But don't worry we have a plan".
Needless to say it didn't work as planned. We got flanked. The British troops were ordered to retreat and french troops were ordered to leave their positions to cover the British retreat. The french generals were so confident in their plan that these morons didn't even bothered preparing defensive lines behind the maginot line. Some even think that it was done on purpose but we won't go there.
French people : "Well, well, well, now that these damn brits returned to their floating piece of shit called UK and the german army is rushing to Paris what do we do ?"
"French government has left the chat..."
Petain took over and signed the armistice with the germans thinking he could negociate something, which was the only thing he could have done at that time given the mess he got to deal with. He got fucked over.
I know some Americans think that they would have fought to the last one and never signed anything but, really ? Look at the average Joes around you, look at your politicians, most of them are only interested in the number of digits showing on their bank statment (like everywhere else).