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French history myths: The French army always surrenders

The Local France
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French history myths: The French army always surrenders
French army soldiers operate on a CAESAR during a high intensity shooting exercise in Canjuers, southeastern France. Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP

Mention France's military and you can virtually guarantee that someone will make a 'hilarious' remark about surrender - but what is the history behind this? Here's the latest in our series on French history myths.

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Myth - the French army is notorious for surrendering in times of war, giving rise to a long-standing joke about running away.

Since the Middle Ages, when France became established as a country and then gradually expanded to fill roughly the borders we know today, its military has been involved in a lot of battles.

If we go through France's entire wartime scorecard we could be here all day, but it's fair to say that by the 18th century the country was a military and political power in Europe. We can also thank (or not, depending on your point of view) the French for the USA - France was decisive in kicking the British out of North America, sending more troops than Britain and the 13 colonies combined.  

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But it's not all been plain sailing of course - French commander-turned-emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ran some very successful military campaigns, until he was defeated by a combined European force at the Battle of Waterloo.

France was also humiliatingly defeated by its neighbour Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1890.

But 'win some, lose some' is pretty much how you could describe most European countries' military record - so how did France come to end up labelled as the cowardly nation?

This seems to stem from World War II, where France did indeed surrender to Nazi forces in 1940.

As the Germans advanced through Europe, the French and British armies mobilised to meet them, but suffered a shock defeat that culminated in a long retreat back to the coast at Dunkirk, where Allied soldiers abandoned their kit and weapons and scrambled to escape across the Channel to Britain.

In the aftermath of this humiliating retreat, France offered an unconditional surrender to the Germans and became an occupied country (joining many other occupied European nations including the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Belgium) while Great Britain stood (almost) alone in continuing the fight.

But can we really blame the French army for this? Or did geography and politics play a bigger role?

Britain had the benefit of the English Channel to keep the Germans at bay, while France had already been over-run.

The key difference too, was in the countries' respective governments - the chaotic French government, which had fled in disarray from Paris, surrendered a few weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation while in the UK the political will to keep fighting remained under the newly-appointed Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

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France's shameful WWII history was revived during the 1990s when president Jacques Chirac refused to join the UK and US invasion of Iraq, which is when the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" was coined in the US.

Again, this was a political decision rather than a military one - and hindsight may now give us a different perspective on the decisions of both France and the US/UK coalition. 

This article is part of our August series on popular myths and misconceptions about French history.

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Anonymous 2022/08/20 09:25
You are right to inject a few nuances into the idea that the Fall of France in 1940 was an example of a cowardly surrender; many of France's failures were shared with the British. However, the modern perception of French military weakness is also based on the surrender of Dien Bien Phu in 1954: a crushing defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh which effectively ended French rule in Indochina. And then there's Algeria. All that said, French leaders now know an unwinnable war when they see one, unlike their counterparts in certain other nations ...
Anonymous 2022/08/16 19:04
Franco-Prussian war of 1890? You mean 1870?

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