France and World Wars

Okay so the joke goes that it isn't a World War until France surrenders. Ha ha? What a load of crap.

1: World War One, the Great War, was won under the overall command of the French. Here is what France was willing to pay in order to defeat Germany;

World War I cost France 1,357,800 dead, 4,266,000 wounded (of whom 1.5 million were permanently maimed) and 537,000 made prisoner or missing -- exactly 73% of the 8,410,000 men mobilized, according to William Shirer in The Collapse of the Third Republic. Some context: France had 40 million citizens at the start of the war; six in ten men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight died or were permanently maimed.

2: World War 2, before France was forced to surrender to the Nazis 250,000 soldiers had been killed and another 350,000 wounded. France also lost a quater of a million civilians during the war. And the Free French force took part in the D-Day invasion to retake France. While under occupation the French resistance worked tirelessly to undermine the Nazi's.

And lastly the US should be the last nation on Earth to make jokes at France's expense since it would not exist if it had not been for French involvment in the American War for Indepedance.