"Paul J. Adam" wrote
Alan Minyard writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
Perhaps French troops could be excused for a lack of conviction that US
troops were coming to bring liberation and freedom, given the US's
disinterest so recently before. They were wrong, but the US had done
nothing to earn their confidence.

And their German friends had?

Oddly enough, the German occupation of most of Vichy France wasn't
hideously onerous or oppressive as long as you weren't blatantly Jewish,
gypsy, gay or retarded.

Why should young Frenchmen believe that the US was going to bring
anything better?

The US had seen the europeans
fight WWI, and we then realized that it was NOT a US problem.

Then why did the US fight?

And where do you get your fantasy about the number of French
vs US military casualties?

John Keegan, "The Second World War".

I was slightly off in one regard: the French lost 600,000 dead of whom
only 200,000 were military, as compared to 292,000 total US fatalities.
In terms of total deaths the French didn't shy from fighting: in terms
of relative casualties they put up far more of a fight than the US.
Trouble is, they didn't have any oceans to hide behind.

A lot of Americans are under the impression that we Won The War (with a
little help from the Brits) and everybody else got a free ride. While the US
produced amazing amounts of material, in many catagories, the USSR produced
as much and in terms of mobilization, according to Keegan (from memory), the
USSR raised 600 division equivalents, the Brits 300, the US 100.

Richard Overy's invaluable "Why the Allies Won" has the data: in artillery,
the USSR outproduced the US every single year of the war, by close to 2:1.
In tanks, the US outproduced the USSR only in 1943 and the aggregate
production of the USSR is much larger than the US. The US outproduced the
USSR in aircraft, logistics support and in major naval vessels.

Overy's book points out that defeat of Germany (never mind Japan, that was
never in doubt) was not a forgone conclusion. In fact if the Germans had
done any of the following: pinched off the Dunkirk perimeter prior to the
evaculation, mobilized the industrial production of occcupied Western
Europe, fully mobilized Germany in 1940, not attacked the USSR in 1941, not
driven the Ukrainians back into Stalin's arms... They likely would have won.

The French fought bravely but badly in 1940. The French have lost wars but
not because of lack of valor. _No_one at all familiar with the French
experience in WWI can call them a nation of cowards. They are misguided, as
many Europeans are, that the price of peace is perpetual negotiations and
that fighting is likely to be disastrous but that's a product of a century
of warfare. Remember the effect of minimal casualties had on the US in the
thirties or for that matter the much greater butcher's bill effect on the
British at that time. I may think the French and Germans are wrong for many
reasons regarding the present danger (I do) but I won't make them out to be
fools and cowards.