Eighty years ago this May and June, northern France was overrun by a combined air and land assault the Germans called blitzkrieg. Two things are known with certainty by those who can remember, and those who have learned – even if imperfectly. As one earnest undergraduate put it: ‘The Germans took the bypass around France’s Marginal Line’ as part of their strategy of ‘Blintz Krieg.’ Well, the idea is there.
The first certainty is that the armed forces of the Third French Republic were defeated in six weeks. The second is that the defeat led to the immediate collapse of the Republic and the advent of Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy government, a short lived (1940-44) but murderous regime that collaborated with the Nazis and deported thousands of Jews for slaughter. Neither the suddenness of defeat nor its consequences are in doubt.
But because the collapse was so sudden and unexpected, and the consequences so vile, a body of dubious ‘knowledge’ has arisen and endured. It is that which has so colored popular impressions of pre-war, wartime, even contemporary France. Simply recall the famous and worn jests: "How many Frenchmen does it take to guard Paris? Nobody knows, it’s never been tried." Or "Raise your right hand if you like the French. Raise both hands if you are French." Or "What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up? The Army."
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