In 1940, Germany toppled France in 20 days, and the panzerdivizion symbolized war's shift from drawn-out conflicts using massive fortifications to rapid-fire engagements built around manned, motorized armor.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
After World War I, while France and other Allies were building military defenses modeled on trench warfare, German commanders were shaping a nimble fighting force.
In the early hours of 16 December 1944, the Germans launched their last great offensive of the Second World War against weakly held U.S. positions in the Ardennes Forest, the site of their original Blitzkrieg success against the French in 1940.
Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.
If D-Day - the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken - failed, there would be no going back to the drawing board for the Allies. Regrouping and attempting another massive invasion of German-occupied France even a few months later in 1944 wasn't an option.
When France fell in 1940, De Gaulle was a temporary brigadier general.
I defy anyone - and I have said this to the Germans - to build a solid, articulated, and viable Europe without France's consent.
I flew a full string of 35 combat missions over some of the most heavily defended targets in Europe. We were hitting Hitler's oil refineries, his tank factories, his aircraft factories, his railway yards. Those were our prime targets.
In France, when there was a war, we fought and our ancestors fought, though many had real reason to flee the Germans.
'Il faut vivre' might almost be the French national motto from 1940 to June 1944, but who is to say ours would have been any different if the Germans had paraded victoriously through London and Generalfeldmarschall Von Runstedt made his headquarters at Claridge's?
In 1918, Germany suffered the ghastly consequences of defeat; France suffered those of victory, the price of which was to divide and embitter French politics and culture and lead to its defeat in 1940.