If the US and the British had not invaded France (see any reports on the anniversary of the Normandy Liberation lately?), the overlords in France would have been Russian, not German.

Maybe they have a point. France doesn't look so liberated under the socialistic government of Chirac.

'If the US and the British had not invaded France (see any reports on the anniversary of the Normandy Liberation lately?), the overlords in France would have been Russian, not German."

That would have been most unfortunate for them. I hear it's much harder to learn to surrender in Russian than in German.

Invasion. We imposed Anglo-Amnerican values on them, like opposition to Fascism. For anyone getting too optomistic about Iraq, France is evidence that imposing democracy by force doesn't always work.

Well, imposed democracy worked on the Germans and Japanese, did it not? It wasn't imposed in France, and just look at the result. Shoulda put in a provisional Franch gov't after WWII like it was done in Germany. I would have suggested Patton as governor and Hoover as chief of police.

The Vichy government of France was dominated by the right-wingers of France.

I guess that means the resistance was probably led more by the left-wingers. Too bad you were on the wrong side of that one, too. Have you seen all of Reagan's movies produced between '39 and '42? Notice how overtly pro-German and anti-war they were? Has your side ever been on the right side of anything big?

By the way, which answer did the students come to? Did you bother to find out? I bet it sounded like "Unlike Iraq, Normandy was liberation"

I don't know how republican the French Fourth Republic was, but the Nazis, supported through Reagan's films and Prescott Bush's managerial skills and IBM's computers, all without a formal apology, was totalitarian.

We fought totalitarianism in WWII.
We fought totalitarianism in the Cold War.

Robert,

Calling a spade a spade (or calling idiocy, idiocy) is not "stifling viewpoints." Taking out students and shooting them is.

Which is happening today, and which happened under the Nazi occupation/pro-Nazi Vichy regime?

Stephen:

Don't know if you saw Yehudit's comment in a separate thread, but Rob't is a troll. He's been banned at Jeff Jarvis', Damian Penny has decided to ban him as well, and he's been wandering the blogosphere generally being obnoxious and making a nuisance of himself.

I'm amused that he's no longer listing his "blahg" as he called it, perhaps b/c his claim that he went around spraypainting "F*** the Jews" or somesuch nonsense but he's not anti-Semitic brought down more than enough heat elsewhere as to make folks fed up.

It's probably worth mentioning that the author of the article, who I presume is French, is just as shocked by the debate.

As to whether the French would be speaking Russian or German, it is a complete unknown. The invasion of France was part and parcel of a campaign by the Allies to squeeze the Nazis from two sides - well, three if one includes Italy. If the Germans had had no need to worry about a western front, it is not entirely clear that that the eastern front would've have had the same result.

So you're saying that a guy sitting in his basement office in Colorado has the same power over French students that a restrictive parent has over his child?

My -- those students must be more immature than even I thought.

"The Vichy government of France was dominated by the right-wingers of France.

I guess that means the resistance was probably led more by the left-wingers. Too bad you were on the wrong side of that one, too. "

Rarely has so much idiocy been packed into so few words. "You"? Who is that supposed to mean? Us, on the right? Like, um, Churchill?

About the "left-wingers" in the French Resistance: As I read it the Resistance was divided into Communist and non-Communist factions. An American army officer who worked behind the lines in France wrote about the nasty habit the Communist resistance had, late in the war, of turning in the non-Communist resistance to the Nazis. See, they figured the war was winnable without their erstwhile allies, and wanted to smooth the way to a Communist postwar France.

Oh, and, you might be dismayed to know how many of those who were French Socialists in the postwar era were Vichy, or accommodationists, during WWII--the sainted Mitterand among them.

Your juvenile little word game reminds me of the famous quote from the New York Times during the Cold War: "Conservatives in the Kremlin have cracked down on imported books, including...'The Conscience of a Conservative', by Barry Goldwater."

Another bouquet for Francophiles...

During World War II more Frenchmen volunteered for the Waffen SS "Charlemagne" division than enlisted in the cause of the Free French.

"Birds of a Feather Flock Together". Old French Proverb??!!

To follow up w/ Charlie and JPS:

Let's also not forget the execrable performance of French leftists prior to the invasion of the USSR.

French workers regularly struck (as in "went on strike") during the period 1939-1940. They saw no point in fighting Germany---as instructed by the COMINTERN. French units drawn from the "working class" suburbs manning the area in the Ardennes were among the worst in fighting spirit, not least b/c they were constantly being propagandized about how useless their sacrifice was and how the war was a function of the capitalists.

Odd how that mood didn't change in France (or among other Left organizations) until June 22, 1941. Remember what happened then?