Quote:
Originally Posted by Magnum PEI
The French purposely retreated and then regrouped to attack Germany’s exposed flank. The British thought it was all over and were evacuating their whopping 6 divisions back to England. Joffre persuaded them to stay. Both the French and British suffered heavy casualties.
EDIT: The USA had 300 000 casualties in WW1, and 4 million mobilized men. Not quite the negligible force you make it out to be.
Germany completely bypassed that region and almost captured Paris. Both sides had heavy losses. The difference was the fresh Americans.
Are you talking about southern Ireland? It would have had less than 1% of the ~500 million population.
How would losing the least industrial area of the British Isles cripple Britain? The oilfields of Iraq and Transjordan easily make up for that.
Britain was still willing to fight for its empire up until the 50s. If Churchill had had his way they would’ve never left India. I know there is a famous quote about the Somme, but Singapore and Suez are where the empire was lost.
More anti-french rhetoric that seems to be so popular these days. Obviously the French are pussies because they lost to Germany 2/3 times. Must be nice to sit back on your island and get someone else to do all the work.
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They got their arses kicked 3/3 times, the French were a spent and meaningless force after Verdun and were it not for the Allies the Germas would have defeated them in both 1914, 1917 or 1918.
The French were thrown back reeling by the Germans, the only thing that slowed them was that the BEF and Belgiums in the North didn't fall back as fast, thus the front turned as a huge gate with the Germans deep into France in the South while the British barely left Belgium frontier, the attack in '40 was a text book copy except in 40 the Germans ignored the threat to their flanks and hooked around isolating the BEF.
And yes it was a luxury to have an island, we had no reason to be involved in either war and had we stayed out of the first one the French would never have started it and we would have been spared WW2 as well.
Empires arn't just land, Britian lost almost its whole population of men between 16 and 30, fully 3 percent of the total population of the country died as well as virtually bankrupting itself, by the end of WW1 the end of the empire was just a matter of time.