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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (53092)	10/18/2002 9:54:22 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

France lost 90,000 KIA in Algeria and Vietnam. Since France is 5x smaller than the US, that's equivalent to 450,000 US combat deaths, far more than we took in Korea, Vietnam, and all the other little post WW2 fights put together. Actually, 450k would be more KIA than the US took in WWII itself. By this source, the total was slightly under 300k. infoplease.com 450k is probably greater than the total including WWII, or maybe that's what you meant.

To: Bilow who wrote (53092)	10/18/2002 11:36:05 PM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Picking on the French for being pansies after Verdun just doesn't make any sense. I don't understand how you can say WWI did not have an impact on on France's "willingness to fight" up to and including WWII. They were NOT willing to use force to stop Hitler until the Blitzkrieg rolled into Poland. (And yes, I looked at those statistics....you could argue which comes first, the lack of preparation or the unwillingness to fight, but I notice that that at full strength the US had roughly 1/4 the divisions the Germans had (for 2 theatres, yet) so it's not just numbers. Post WWII, the French were willing to fight the people in their own colonies, so yes, they're not "pansies" - your term, not mine - but I can't say I admire their judgement on who or why they chose to fight (or not). Then or now.