Trump suggests France would have been defeated without U.S.

The Columbian ^ | November 13, 2018 | Darlene Superville, The Associated Press

[ssaftler]

When you get right down to it, France hasn’t “won” a war since 1789, and that was only because it was an internecine conflict!

[pfflier]

Aren’t we talking here about WWI?

Many historians argue that WWII was simply a continuation of WWI.

[shanover]

If the U.S. stayed out of Wilson’s WWI folly, The Central Powers would have won and history much different and no WWII as we know it now. I think America would have to fight eventually even if we did not save France’s butt in WWI.

[ro_dreaming]

And, the United States of America would not exist without France, who backed us in our independence from the United Kingdom. So, we paid them back.

[I want the USA back]

That is true.

[Rebelbase]

Had we not intervened in WWII Europe the Soviets would have pushed all the way to the Atlantic.

[frogjerk]

Absolutely. They did not have enough steel

[Wizdum]

Ah....ok....I was going to talk about Operation Sea Lion.

Britain was only in WW1 to defend the Belgians right to neutrality. They rarely worked well with the French and a lot of the time, when they did work with the Brits, the French never left their trenches.

[Sam Gamgee]

Certainly not the second. FDR was part of the war before official declaration, providing material support to Russia. Without that support Russia would likely have fallen, thus Germany would keep its hold on France.

For the first, well the forces were in stalemate. Russia leaving the war could have been argued the turning point for the Allies.

[dfwgator]

Had we not intervened in WWII Europe the Soviets would have pushed all the way to the Atlantic.

Ironically France falling so quickly in WWII might have been a good thing. It caught the Soviets off-guard, they expected Germany, France and England to get bogged down in another war of attrition that would have bled all of them dry, making the entire continent easy pickings for the Red Army.

[Sam Gamgee]

Except the US was sending aid to Russia before the war started.

[uncbob]

Hitler’s V2s and probably a NUKE would have defeated the Soviets

[itsahoot]

I guess we have forgotten these guys. Vichy France

[hinckley buzzard]

Well, they were indeed defeated in WW II. As for WW I, the German Army was all on French soil when the war ended, so... who knows.

[hinckley buzzard]

If Hitler had been able to hold his hatred of Russia in check, he could have had a million more troops to defeat the Allies in Africa. this would have deprived Britain of their resources from the empire, and knocked them out of the war. Hitler then could have secured his western front, neutralized Britain, and pursued his entire drive to the Urals. And all this would have happened before the US was ready to engage in the European theatre.

The European war could actually have ended with a Pax Germana.

[stevem]

Are there any credible historians that would argue with him?

What am I missing here?

Before the US began her war on the Nazis, France was already defeated. They had a bunch of puppets we can refer to as Vichy acting as administrators.

[Vigilanteman]

They win when led by a Corsician (Napoleon) or a woman (Joan of Arc).

[robowombat]

Perhaps not WW 1 but why DeGualle was so perpetually angry at the ‘Anglo-Americans).

[ClearBlueSky]

He's 1000% right and the French know it. They had some who resisted but the majority were appeasers. They didn't get the moniker-cheese eating surrender monkeys for nothing.
And before I am accused of being anti-French, my grandparents came from the South and North of France in the 1700's. My dad fought there in WW2 and would have loved to have visited ancestral places but couldn't. He always said later that the only bad thing about France itself was that it is full of French people. Guess he didn't see the irony or maybe our ancestors were tougher.

[semantic]

You're normally a pretty good poster, so I'll provide a little information that might cause to give you pause.

The point of DeGaulle's June 18, 1940 speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_of_18_June) was:

(a) Admitting the Germans got the jump on France; (b) conceding that the Germans held the main French territory (France itself); but (c) insisted that the war could be carried on from the many and far flung components of the still extant empire.

A similar comparison would be if the USA was occupied, but patriots still held TX, AK & HI. Would the war be over?

A second and very important point is this: because Hitler had driven out all the Jews, the Nazis never even began preliminary investigations into atomic weapons.

While the US was of course first, both FR & UK were were right behind. While we can't re-write history, without the development of atomic weapons, the Germans were going to be eventually defeated.