The backbone of the old French army, the gritty little poilu, was destroyed in the furnace of WWI. The generals threw those brave men away with such stupidity that they mutinied. All that was left for WWII was the misfits and the (even more) incompetent.
It's a real shame that the French have developed such a bad name for themselves, because it's really only the Parisians and the self-styled "intellectuals" who are the problem. I have never met kinder or more hospitable people than the farmers of Normandy (of course folks'll tell you that the Normans are descendants of the Vikings, so they don't count. Could be.)