France loses one war officially, keeps fighting with the entire Resistance for YEARS until they get relieved by the Normandy landings, and people are still like “haha cheese eating surrender monkeys” as if France was not the Grim Reaper through a huge part of history.
i have a friend who says france is pushing the surrender chicken propaganda to lower our expectations while they casually have the largest continental army in western europe
The Foreign Legion or what it’s called is also one of the best trained corps in the world as far as I know.
Honestly, Italy has a much worse record, yet they don’t get nearly as much flak for it. It’s curious.
That being said, even knowing it’s incorrect, I have been socially conditioned to find the occasional French war joke amusing.
Making fun of Italy’s military record feels like punching down. They’re a like 40 year old smoker in an intramural league that spends half of every season too injured to play who “could’ve gone pro” if not for the injury freshman year of high school and feels they get snubbed by not winning MVP. Their saving grace is that their primary borders are with the Swiss who don’t want to fight and Austrians who are merely incapable.
Now Germany, that’s a country that can spectacularly lose a war. They’ll develop advanced technology, display innovative tactics on the battlefield then fucking run out of gunpowder because they picked a war on two fronts. Then 20 years later they’ll pick another war on two fronts and lose it because once again they used everything they had stupidly. It’s not that they’re bad at war, it’s that nobody’s as good at war as they think they are
Then 20 years later they’ll pick another war on two fronts and lose it because once again they used everything they had stupidly.
Just you wait, der Fuhrer’s megatank will turn the tide against the Judeo-Bolsheviks once we figure out how to make it!
anyone using cheese-eating-surrender-monkey as an insult simply hasn’t eaten enough cheese to appreciate it
We didn’t lose WW2 we changed teams, twice.
Not a historian, but Id imagine it should really depend on what one is making fun of France for. Like, claiming that they’re no good at fighting wars is ignoring most of the military record of the country outside the second world war specifically, but say, criticizing them over what they did to Haiti is another thing entirely.
I agree, it’s fair to criticise France’s history with Haiti and some of their meddling in African affairs. But it gets a sour taste if it comes from an American, who has never lost a word about them still actively holding colonies and has never even thought about giving back American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, Hawaii or the entire continental holdings.
40k upvotes on Lemmy? 🤔
I for one will never make fun of the French for their war fighting.
The French language, on the other hand…
English is just a french dialect
German dialect, actually.
Please elaborate I am intrigued and am looking forward to reading on my next poop break
Essentially the english were invaded by the normans and that changed the english language from a germanic one to the abomination we are familiar with today : a blend of german without the agglutination part, and norman french (which is descended from latin).
That’s not a French dialect, it’s a creol!
The problem is, there’s a lot of french creoles
There’s also a lot of French dialects, and English dialects, and English creoles.
Throw the odd Celtic and Dane in there and then boil it all inside a sheep’s stomach and you’ve got English.
Thanks for completing the tree, I am no linguist
I know of a local place that still calls them “freedom fries”. I laugh every time I drive by.
In honor of the French assisting the colonies win their freedom from the British, right? 🙂
At Napoleon’s execution, his head sprouts tiny legs and scuttles off, raises an army and invades Prussia.
this isn’t a meme i was there
I’m only alive because brave French soldiers fought and died to protect the British expeditionary force as they left Dunkirk.
I will personally fight anyone that mocks the French as cowards, especially when there are so many actually valid reasons to mock the French.
Son, I think it’s time we had the talk.
There are a multitude of valid reasons to make fun of Fr*nce
The moment I was won over by the French:
I was taking the Eurostar back to Paris from London, and had bought a charcuterie thing at st. pancras. I had the unopened cheese packet in my bag, and the French customs guy said "Who brings cheese into France? Turns it around to look at the label, laughs, and puts it back.
I asked if he had to throw it away or not, slightly confused he was putting it back. He said it’s made in the UK, it doesn’t count as cheese.
Kampfpanzerwagen V “Tiger” (Schmalturm)
