Reply #32: The French continued fighting in WWII after the fall of France

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

First of all, not only French troops were facing Hitler when he invaded France. There were about 350,000 British troops, a Belgian Army, Dutch units, and two Polish Divisions. All of them disintegrated before the German Blitzkreig, not just the French. The British fled to Dunkirk and in fact relied on the French First Army to keep the Germans at bay. About 60,000 French troops accompanied the British as they fled across the English channel. In North Africa and in the French colonies, they had garrisons that eventually joined the Free French Army. The French Air Force according to French sources estimate that they shot down about 1,000 German planes during the battle of France. Those were 1,000 planes not available to the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, which was a close contest. One of the greatest aces of the allies in all of World War II was the Free French pilot Pierre Clostermann, who had a combined killed and probable total of about 50 German planes. Free French pilots in North Africa volunteered to go to Russia and formed the two French squadrons of the Normandie Niemen and shot down approximately 300 German planes fighting as a detachment of the Russian Army. The fighter ace Marcel Albert won the medal "Hero Of The Soviet Union", which is Russia's highest military honor. The Free French fought with the allies in North Africa. The battle of Bir Hakeim involved the stand of regiments of Foreign Legion, French Marines, French Spahis, and other units whereby they held off a superior German force under Rommel for 10 days, under constant bombardment, that allowed the British Army to escape and later win a victory at El Alamein. The Free French forces fought with the allies in the Italian campaign and, while the US was bogged down on the bloody beaches at Anzio, it was the French forces that stormed the mountains above them and broke the Gustav Line, forcing the German army to retreat. There was a French Army fighting at the Battle of the Bulge as well. And when people talk about the fact that the French Army retreated and lost in the Battle of France, they are forgetting that the Soviet Army, which was an even larger force, completely fell apart under German attack. If you compare the distance of retreat, the Soviet Army retreated several times the length of France, in fleeing to the gates of Moscow, and was only saved by the fortuitous arrival of the Siberian Army and the Russian winter.