"Phil J" wrote in message
...

Yeah, the collaboration is part of it. But I think the French had an
extra-embarrassing surrender because they had invested so much in
their "impregnable" Maginot line. When the Germans simply went around
it, it really made the French look like fools.


Why does that make the French look like fools? If the Germans had gone
THROUGH their "impregnable" Maginot line the French would surely have looked
like fools, but forcing the Germans to circumvent the line was one of the
reasons for building it. The French expected the Maginot Line to be
bypassed and had therefore massed the majority of their army on the Belgian
border. The Germans rolled over those troops rather easily. The few
Maginot fortifications which were actually attacked by the Germans held up
rather well.