France’s Recent Military History: Awkward Parade of Lost Wars and War Crimes:
With his comments about French readiness to explore extending its nuclear umbrella over Europe and deploying troops in Ukraine, President Macron appears to be shooting for the title of Europe’s next Napoleon. But his bark doesn’t match France’s military bite when it comes to recent history.
WORLD WAR II
Despite considerable numerical superiority in troops, tanks and air power and the Maginot Line defenses, France after it declared war on the Third Reich (September 3, 1939) lasted just six weeks against the Reich, which had occupied northern France to deter a D-Day invasion by Britain. Oh, dear! France suffered a loss of two million (killed, wounded, captured).
INDOCHINA
1946-1954: France’s attempt to hold on to Indochina against guerrillas cost it 90K French troops killed, wounded or captured. France was also implicated in war crimes, from rapes of civilians to the torture of Viet Minh POWs.
Suffering a humiliating defeat to General Vo Nguyen Giap at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 1954, France left Vietnam, never to return, handing the conflict off to the Americans.
ALGERIA:
1954-1962: France’s war against Algeria’s National Liberation Front during the North African nation’s war of independence cost it up to 95K French troops killed and injured.
Up to 1.5M Algerians died in the conflict, which also saw French troops engage in mass executions, napalm bombings, and the destruction of 8,000 + villages, displacing 2M + civilians.
EGYPT
1956: A joint French-UK-Israeli invasion of Egypt over Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal failed miserably, triggering a humiliating retreat from the region.
NORTH AFRICA
1958-1961: French campaigns against anti-colonial forces in Western Sahara, Cameroon and Tunisia, killed up to 65K people, but failing to halt the drive toward freedom and decolonization.
CENTRAL AFRICA
1969-2008: French embroilment in an on-again/off-again civil war in Chad, with five major interventions over 40 years failing to bring lasting peace.
With up to 100K people killed, and allies accused of crimes against humanity, it’s little wonder that Chadians joyfully expelled all French forces earlier this year.
RWANDA
1990-1993: French troops actively collaborated with Rwandan forces that would be implicated in the murder of over 800K people, supplying them with training and equipment.
LIBYA
2011: French naval and air power deployed in Libya to help oust Gaddafi. The campaign succeeded, but turned Libya into a failed state with open air slave markets, with France continuing to fuel the conflict, which has killed up to 50K people, to this day.
SAHEL REGION
2014-2022: Thousands of French troops were deployed to the Sahel region, ostensibly to fight terror. The operation not only failed, but sparked anger among locals of a sufficient scale to kick France out of the region and create unprecedented new security and economic alliances. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
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The French military fiascos go all the way back to Waterloo in 1815. They were routed by Prussia in 1871 and were the main power working for a general war in Europe that resulted in WW1. They managed to be on the winning side of that thanks to the US intervention, but for the military ineptness they displayed and damage inflicted on France it should be seen as a pyric victory.
Your WW11 summary is inaccurate. They declared war in Sept 39 and did mostly nothing for 7 months waiting for the Germans to attack. When the Germans did come. France fell in 6 weeks. They were mostly out maneuvered and entirely outfought. France actually lost WW11 twice. They surrendered and were occupied in 1940, and from that point they were in effect part of the Axis Powers. The resisted the Allies in many sideshow theatres including US troops, in North Africa during the Operation Torch landings. There was even a battleship duel between the USS Massachusetts and the French Jeane Bart. I maintain that “Vichy” or Axis France fought harder against the allies than the 3rd Republic did against the Germans. There was even a French SS division “Charlamagne”.
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It should be remembered that France withdrew from NATO in 1966 and remained only a political member of the alliance for several decades
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