[Cronos]

to understand the battle of France, one needs to look at the sweep of history from 1870 the Battle of Sedan right through to 1940.

And before that, to remember three clear points dating from the late 1700s:

1. the French revolution started off the idea of nationalism -- prior to that, only 10% spoke Parisian French (made standard French), now French is the only official language. During the 1800s the English anglicized the Welsh, Cornish, Scots etc., the Germans forced standard German and tried to Germanize Poles and Sorbians, and the Russians, Italians etc. did the same thing. In the case of Germany this created a nation of a group of nations -- Germanic nations. The temperaments of a Prussian differed quite a bit from a Bavarians etc.
   
2. Napoleon redrew the map of Germany. Before his invasion and conquest of Germany there were 300 different states. he reduced this to 20 odd. And then after he was defeated the Prussians became very powerful and Austria was getting weaker. The French created their nemesis
   
3. France had lost Alsace and Lorraine (though these are truly in the Franco-German continuum, not truly French or German but in transition), setting up bad blood
   
4. France lost a lot of soldiers in the trenches in WWI -- they were reluctant to fight. Remember that much of the war was fought on their territory or Belgium's. Germany never fought on its own territory. When they saw the destruction of their own cities, the Germans have become anti-war

[Olog-hai]

There are still lots of hawks among Germany’s elite politicians. And they know how to manipulate the opinion of the generally “anti-war” (no such thing, BTW) populace.