Hi Neocon; Re: "Overall,France lost 1,357,600 persons, with a total of 6,160,800 casualties, during the war. Only the Russian Empire sustained more losses,among the Allies, and it was far more vast."
I know this. But you're still missing the point. The original post that I responded to was this one:
Gina Vener
The French damn near bled to death at Verdun, and never got over it. They don't have the will to fight as a nation anymore, Charles DeGaulle was their last gasp. But they like to keep their illusions. #reply-18129366
I do not deny that Verdun was a bloody piece of territory, nor do I deny that a lot of French blood was lost there. Hell, the French army went into mutiny near the end of the war. This is all very well known to anyone who knows a single thing about military history. They are undeniable facts. I have not denied them, LOL.
What I do deny is that "they don't have the will to fight as a nation anymore".
To disprove the notion that the French do not "have the will to fight as a nation anymore", I showed that long after Verdun, the French took more deaths in Vietnam than the United States did.
While the combat deaths in Vietnam were a lot less than that in WW1, Vietnam is a better measure of a country's willingness to fight. In the case of WW1 France was defending its own territory. It's natural that countries will accept much higher death tolls when defending their own territory than they will in trying to exert political authority over unimportant chunks of territory thousands of miles away. (Which is something that the neocons are ignoring in the case of Iraq.)
Vietnam is about as far from France as it is from the United States. The United States was at least as worried about Communist world domination as the French were worried about having to give up that bleeding wound of a piece of useless territory. Yet despite this, France was willing to take considerably higher deaths in that war than the United States was. I don't call that evidence of a lack of will to fight.
If the French activity in Vietnam is indicative of a nation that has lost its will to fight, then the US figures indicate that the US had an even lower will to fight.
Further, let's talk about WW2. The French defeat in 1940 could be used to suggest that the French had no will to fight. So let's look at the casualty totals and compare the French to the US figures:
Soldiers Civilians
France: 199,000 400,000
US: 293,000 --
euronet.nl
So France took a lot more casualties than the US did, on an absolute basis. Even ignoring civilian casualties (some part of which occurred after the French armistice), the French took considerably larger casualties than the US did, on a per capita basis.
This whole concept of "France lost its will to fight at Verdun and that is why the French are not supporting stupid US military action" is another simplification of history that is part and parcel of the inadequate understanding of history that permeates neoconservative thinking.
This historical record is that even after Verdun, the French, as a nation, lost more men in combat than the United States did, on a per capita basis. Some "lost its will to fight".
If you want to make these polemical arguments about how weak other nations are, at least pick nations that do not have the long and continuing history of proud military traditions that the French possess. Go pick on the Italians instead. (I'd also argue against the simplistic concept that the Italians lost the will to fight, but my arguments would not be nearly as good as the arguments about the French.
It is a fact of the universal character of human nature that nations do not permanently lose the will to fight. Every new generation (i.e. 20 years or so) is capable of fighting to great extremes. This is the way the human race has been for thousands of years, and it is the way the human race will remain until it finally dies out. We're natural born fighters, all of us. What distinguishes between nations willingness to take casualties in particular conflicts is not the ancient history or racial makeup of the nations, but the particularities of those conflicts and their importance to the nations.
-- Carl |
