[BRIEF NOTE] On Silly French-Bashing
Jan. 25th, 2005 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldSilly French-bashing is an epidemic that needs to be combatted. I'm not very fond of stereotypes, you see. They might exist based on popular perceptions and common knowledge, but popular perceptions are frequently wrong and common knowledge based on false assumptions. For instance, if I've never seen an Orthodox Jew on Queen Street West or in Parkdale, that doesn't mean that the Greater Toronto Area has a negligible Jewish population. That judgement would be based on two (false) assumptions:
Myself, I like to challenge stereotypes with poor moorings in reality simply because it's fun, and because it's a good way to hone my command of rhetoric.
The latest waves of French-bashing have come from the United States, most recently provoked by the Iraq issue. Myself, I tend to think that the United States and France are equally crazy, the two countries being republics with pretensions to universal relevance which have trouble with their immigrant populations and maintain largish military establishments. Perhaps that's why there's such a high level of vitriol exchanged between the two countries: They see their close resemblances and take offensive accordingly. That's me, though.
One particularly virulent subepidemic of public opinion holds that the French are bad at military affairs, or that they're cowards. Now, one could point out that France has built up and maintained a military force proportionately almost as large as the United States', complete with global deployments. One could point out that the United States entered the First World War three years after that conflict began, and that it entered the Second World War two years after that conflict began (in Europe; the Asian war had been going on for almost a decade longer), whereas France was involved in both conflicts from the start. One could point out that the only country on the European mainland to resist Nazi Germany was the Soviet Union, and that only because Stalin was as willing to spend human lives as your average teenager is quarters at a local video-game arcade. One could even point that far from learning from the French example in Vietnam, the United States expanded on what had been, for the French, a novel experience.
One would be silly and immature to respond to those people on their own terms, though. It's a tempting idea, but only that. Really.
I've had the good chance to read Alistair Reynolds' Century Rain. The plot of this novel--nominated for the 2004 British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel, incidentally--takes place on Earth, in 1959. Not our 1959, though, for in a rather entertaining scene, a native sees the former German dictator, enfeebled by Parkinson's and drooling in his wheelchair, being wheeled through Paris garden on an escorted day visit from prison. Once the French learned of the German invasion of the Ardennes in May 1940 and sent in their bombers, you see, the German invasion was doomed to failure. The coup by the army against Hitler followed in relatively short order, and the Second World War never took on its full horrific form.
I learned something interesting from M. at last Sunday's CFTAG. It seems that many wargames' designers take care to handicap France, to require France to collapse when Germany invades. If they don't do that, the game ends disturbingly frequently with the tricolore rising above the ruins of the Brandenburg Gate (or at least on the banks of the Rhine). Having France conclusively defeat Germany in the Second World War, assuming that the rather risky German offensive through the Ardennes is detected in time, is apparently something that a wargamer can easily achieve. Certainly, The Blitzkrieg Myth strongly suggests that the French defeat of 1940 wasn't inevitable. After all, the French military was in most respects just as modernized and mechanized as the German if not more so, and the German military had just finished a breakneck expansion that left it weakened and had been bloodied by a rather hard-fought battle against Poland.
I suspect that the world tends far too much to assume that the German conquest of France in 1940 was a foregone conclusion, to ignore the possibility that perhaps the French were simply unlucky in that year. Had a French reconnaissance airplane or two just crossed the Belgian frontier at just the right time in May of 1940, I suspect that students of French military history in the early 21st century would argue that, of course, France was destined to defeat Nazi Germany, given the relative lack of experience and strategic overstretch of the young German military. Perhaps French bellicosity and competence in military affairs would be taken for granted by American observers, in much the same way that French pacifism and incompetence is in our timeline.
For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost;
for the want of a shoe, a horse was lost;
for the want of a horse, a rider was lost;
for the want of a rider, a battle was lost;
for the want of a battle, a kingdom was lost,
and all for the want of a horse shoe nail.
- That Toronto's Jewish population is either dispersed uniformly across the metropolitan area or concentrated in my area of Toronto.
- That Toronto's Jewish population is Orthodox.
Myself, I like to challenge stereotypes with poor moorings in reality simply because it's fun, and because it's a good way to hone my command of rhetoric.
The latest waves of French-bashing have come from the United States, most recently provoked by the Iraq issue. Myself, I tend to think that the United States and France are equally crazy, the two countries being republics with pretensions to universal relevance which have trouble with their immigrant populations and maintain largish military establishments. Perhaps that's why there's such a high level of vitriol exchanged between the two countries: They see their close resemblances and take offensive accordingly. That's me, though.
One particularly virulent subepidemic of public opinion holds that the French are bad at military affairs, or that they're cowards. Now, one could point out that France has built up and maintained a military force proportionately almost as large as the United States', complete with global deployments. One could point out that the United States entered the First World War three years after that conflict began, and that it entered the Second World War two years after that conflict began (in Europe; the Asian war had been going on for almost a decade longer), whereas France was involved in both conflicts from the start. One could point out that the only country on the European mainland to resist Nazi Germany was the Soviet Union, and that only because Stalin was as willing to spend human lives as your average teenager is quarters at a local video-game arcade. One could even point that far from learning from the French example in Vietnam, the United States expanded on what had been, for the French, a novel experience.
One would be silly and immature to respond to those people on their own terms, though. It's a tempting idea, but only that. Really.
I've had the good chance to read Alistair Reynolds' Century Rain. The plot of this novel--nominated for the 2004 British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel, incidentally--takes place on Earth, in 1959. Not our 1959, though, for in a rather entertaining scene, a native sees the former German dictator, enfeebled by Parkinson's and drooling in his wheelchair, being wheeled through Paris garden on an escorted day visit from prison. Once the French learned of the German invasion of the Ardennes in May 1940 and sent in their bombers, you see, the German invasion was doomed to failure. The coup by the army against Hitler followed in relatively short order, and the Second World War never took on its full horrific form.
I learned something interesting from M. at last Sunday's CFTAG. It seems that many wargames' designers take care to handicap France, to require France to collapse when Germany invades. If they don't do that, the game ends disturbingly frequently with the tricolore rising above the ruins of the Brandenburg Gate (or at least on the banks of the Rhine). Having France conclusively defeat Germany in the Second World War, assuming that the rather risky German offensive through the Ardennes is detected in time, is apparently something that a wargamer can easily achieve. Certainly, The Blitzkrieg Myth strongly suggests that the French defeat of 1940 wasn't inevitable. After all, the French military was in most respects just as modernized and mechanized as the German if not more so, and the German military had just finished a breakneck expansion that left it weakened and had been bloodied by a rather hard-fought battle against Poland.
I suspect that the world tends far too much to assume that the German conquest of France in 1940 was a foregone conclusion, to ignore the possibility that perhaps the French were simply unlucky in that year. Had a French reconnaissance airplane or two just crossed the Belgian frontier at just the right time in May of 1940, I suspect that students of French military history in the early 21st century would argue that, of course, France was destined to defeat Nazi Germany, given the relative lack of experience and strategic overstretch of the young German military. Perhaps French bellicosity and competence in military affairs would be taken for granted by American observers, in much the same way that French pacifism and incompetence is in our timeline.
For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost;
for the want of a shoe, a horse was lost;
for the want of a horse, a rider was lost;
for the want of a rider, a battle was lost;
for the want of a battle, a kingdom was lost,
and all for the want of a horse shoe nail.
