Thanks for this reply and post!
"The German military authorities particularly wanted to raise a unit made up of turned British POW’s and mounted a recruiting campaign consisting of offers of various and sundry enticements including direct payments of cash and the recurring company of prostitutes. The Nazi’s were rewarded for their efforts with the acceptance of their emoluments by no less than 30 enlisted men and a single officer who was shortly thereafter diagnosed as schizophrenic by the Germans themselves and repatriated against his will to the British. While the existence if not the reality of the St. George Legion had some propaganda value, that was the extent of its contribution and none of the members ever saw combat. Indeed, it is reputed that the Germans saw the St. George Legion as so untrustworthy that it was kept out of combat by direct order. 30 British misfits and 1 psychotic lieutenant as opposed to thousands of Frenchmen willing to fight and die for the monster who’d raped their own country. Apparently, some things never change." (C)
My Dad was a WWI vet. He was injured in accident and broke his back and never got to France. However, many of his friends did. They came back after WWI hating the French.
My Dad had a couple of younger cousins who served in France in WWII, one came back with a metal plate replacing part of his skull. I remember my Dad and his cousins discussing the French when I was growing up.
I could never understatnd their hatred of the French until the past couple of decades.
As you noted, some things never seem to change.
Growing up in a 3rd floor tenement in Fall River, Massachusetts, our landlord downstairs was a French Canadian who'd lost both his legs fighting in the US Army in WWII.
At some point as I was growing up, I came to know how much, as odd as it seemed, he, too, hated the French. Never got the details of why, though.