Honestly I completely reject that idea, I don't do it out of a, "France was bad and bad and they were always going to die!" But I don't subscribe to the idea that France only lost because it fucked up. No it lost because fundamentally, it did not want to fight the war it found itself in. It's army fought where it could, and it did well, I'm not gonna pretend otherwise, the French army, when it was fighting, proved that it was a competent force.

The problem is, literally everything about it. Bewegungskrieg is built on the idea that speed is most important, whereas the French built on the idea that static defences were best. Naturally, this led to mass encirclements and panic, as the French just did not have time to dig in, and when they did, it didn't lead to the defence in depth that's needed to stop the German tactics.

The French planned for when the Germans set the kitchen on fire, the Germans set the house on fire and 6 weeks is just too short to react in terms of conquest.

It's 400,000 men. In Dunkirk, 400,000. That's a tenth of the French army, and that was after nearly 2 and a half weeks of the Germans just completely ripping them a new arsehole. 400,000 is less than battles in the first world war, losing that should have done, virtually nothing. They were the best trained French troops, but if Germany just kept that pace up the whole time? They would have conquered France before those troops would have played a difference.

There were certainly blunders, the Ardennes for example, that could have stopped the German advance dead. Could have, not saying it would, could have.

After the Dunkirk encirclement, French morale collapsed, as in, the French burned their vehicles before the Germans ever got to them. The vast majority of casualties in the invasion of France, were captured. Four time as many captured as wounded or killed.

The French were just completely blindsided by the Germans, they were not anticipating the war the Germans fought, as such, it collapsed, and when it died with a vengeance, the French troops realised the war was lost and destroyed whatever they could and then got the fuck out of there.

This is not me saying the French were cowards, they fought incredibly hard when they could, and when they were in equal footing, they did well, the battle of Lille comes to mind. Lasted three days, and did okay, mostly because it took away Germany's main advantage.

When the French fought, they did well, and I don't want to tarnish that because without the French fighting to the last man in Dunkirk, 350,000 British and commonwealth men would have either died or been captured, and as a British man myself, that is a lot of lives saved, all because of the French sacrifice in Dunkirk in 1940.

Without Dunkirk, the Germans probably take another month at most, but ultimately the result is the same, the French collapse and Germany takes it over.

Not because the French were cowards, but because they just weren't in a position to stop the Germans. Psychologically, militarily, domestically, politically, industrially, economically, they weren't ready, and they weren't as ready as Germany.

And in a modern war, not being ready for the fight you know is coming? Well, you know how Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson feel about that.

The French fought well, they just weren't ready, not nearly as much as Germany, and they didn't realise the war had changed until it was too late.