Americans
have a stereotypical impression of the French: snooty, aloof, and
condescending.
Well,
it certainly applies to Parisian diplomats.
Earlier
this month—on December 7th of all dates—the French ambassador to the United
States reminded millions of Americans why the French are often so thoroughly
unpopular Over Here. Excepting the
fabled Foreign Legion, you’ve probably seen the unkind sentiment: “French Army
rifle for sale. Only dropped once.”
However:
Monseur Gerard Araud was rude/stupid enough to tweet, “In this Pearl Harbor
day, we should remember that the US refused to side with France and UK to
confront the fascist powers in the 30s.”
We
shall examine the gross hypocrisy of that sentiment, but first, some
background:
The
fact is that both nations owe a tremendous debt to one another. France’s aid during our revolution was
essential to achieving independence from Britain. Of course, that largess was not provided
entirely from generosity. France and
England had clashed bitterly two decades before, contesting mastery of North
America in the French and Indian War. (I
recommend your CD/VCR to rerun the superb 1992 remake Last of the Mohicans.)
Paris
extended diplomatic recognition to the nascent United States in February,
1778. The alliance thus formed was
massively unpopular in London, where King George III’s acolytes declared war on
France six weeks later. The rest, as they
say, is history. Admiral De Grasse
pulled one out of the tricorn hat with a rare (nearly unique) French victory
over the British Royal Navy off the Virginia coast in October 1781. That in turn led to Lord Cornwallis’
surrender to General George Washington’s forces surrounding the limeys at
Yorktown. Washington’s staff included
the youthfully competent Marquis de Lafayette, who became an icon on both sides
of the Atlantic.
Then
the alliance jumped the rails for two years, 1798-1800, during the French
Revolutionary Wars. America, perennially
destitute at the time, exempted itself from repaying Paris’ loans and support
because the royalist government had been cut short (by guillotine) and no
longer existed. The naval Quasi-War was
resolved by another treaty in 1800.
Time
passed. In fact, 117 years. Then in April 1917 Uncle Sam stuck his goatee
where it had little justification by joining the Allies against Germany during
World War I. The plain fact is that the
much-vilified “merchants of death” were not so much armament producers as
bankers and financiers who were heavily invested in loans to Britain and
France. After all, when President
Woodrow Wilson (“He kept us out of the war!”) sought a declaration of war, he
cited sinking of the British liner Lusitania
with 128 Yanks—two years before.
That the ship knowingly entered U-boat water amid a German quarantine was
conveniently ignored.
It
took time to muster two million doughboys and ship them to Europe, but the job
was done with enthusiasm amid the spirit of “Lafayette, we are here!” (Beyond that, a squadron of Americans was
recruited to fight the Germans in the air in gross violation of U.S.
neutrality. But the over-hyped Lafayette Escadrille gained enormous
publicity and generated more support for France when the French Army was
riddled with mutiny.)
Well,
the Yanks were a-coming, with drums tum-tumming, and they made a huge
difference. At Belleau Wood in June 1918
two Marine Corps regiments blunted a hunnish drive some 50 miles from Paris.
In
the next war, the Yanks took longer to save France, but the sons of doughboys
had to undo four years of Nazi victories and occupation. The Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 were
followed by “D-Day South” along the Riviera in August, with the City of Lights
being liberated later that month.
Nine
cemeteries in France contain the graves of 43,404 Americans who lost their
lives liberating the ambassador’s homeland in both world wars. Additional cemeteries are the final resting
place of 26,685 more in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Those figures do not include thousands of
soldiers and airmen still missing in action.
Now,
addressing the odious ambassador’s absurd lecture to his nation’s liberators on
Pearl Harbor Day:
Before
the war America was isolationist with good reason. A main factor in U.S. reluctance to
re-engage in Europe during the 30s was France’s (and the Allies’) bungling of
the Versailles Treaty that imposed immense burdens on Germany. That toxic environment spawned the rise of
ultra nationalism that produced Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In 1939 a clear majority of Americans wanted
no part of another European war, since “the war to end all wars” (!) only
produced a bigger, worse calamity.
Furthermore, France and Britain appeased Hitler when he could
have been stopped, first in the Rhineland in 1936 and then in Czechoslovakia in
'38. In fact, Hitler had ordered his forces to withdraw if confronted by
the Anglo-French.
Meanwhile, the ambassador pointedly omitted U.S. loans and lend
lease. In fact, the American-built Curtis
Hawk was France’s most important fighter, scoring one-third of credited aerial
victories in 1939-40. And America’s role
in the Battle of the Atlantic, which cost thousands of U.S. merchant sailors,
began in September 1939.
In 1939 the U.S. military counted 335,000 men—less than 3
percent of the total needed to win the war—and the 1940 draft act passed
Congress by one vote. Yet because of our
non-neutral aid to the Allies, Hitler was eager to declare war on us after Pearl
Harbor.
From
1936 to 1938 the French government was a Popular Front, led by the Communists
who following the Soviet line. And in
1939-40 the French and Russian Communist parties were still allied with
Germany, preferring the Americans to mind their own damn business. That only changed when Hitler invaded the
Soviet Union in 1941.
Following
Paris’ capitulation in 1940, half the country was “unoccupied” because the
Vichy regime was formally allied with Berlin.
France’s compliance with the Axis extended to the Pacific where French
Indochina was jointly occupied by Vichy and Japan.
That
odor you detect wafting off the Seine is the stench of hypocrisy.
Yet
Aurad, ambassador since 2014, retains his post as of this writing. Obviously surprised by the outrage
his…outrageous…message encountered, he deleted the tweet and tried to backtrack
by saying “We are immensely grateful for what the US did for France in 1944…”
Not
enough, you puke. Not nearly enough, and
way too late.
“Remember
Pearl Harbor. Oh, and Paris Liberation
Day.”
