I had a French coworker who I liked. He was quite sensitive to the French surrendering trope. He proceeded to give me a history lesson. Out of respect for him and acknowledging France was a help in the early beginnings of the U.S., I have stopped using the French surrendering trope.

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Originally posted by marksman41:
A whole lot of coulda-shoulda-woulda... maybe... what if... etc. Nobody knows what might have happened, but history tells us what did happen.

More importantly, history also tells us the factors that led to France's survival and Germany's failure in WW1, and American intervention isn't one of the primary ones, merely one of the last and most dramatic ones.

Thus students of history can make reasonable extrapolations grounded in facts, not just whimsical "what ifs" and fanciful "maybes".

Extrapolation is still a guess about what might have happened.

What is certain is that we will disagree on the guesses as to what might have been if America sat out WWI.

Frances's relevance with regard to military victory/dominance ended 200 years ago. Yes, we owe our republic to their help (although it would have happened anyway eventually), but that's about as far as it goes for me. They've gotten their asses handed to them so many times it's a wonder why we allow them to have nuclear weapons.

They are a has been. Nothing more. And they cannot...and more importantly will not, advance any meaningful military force against foes to the western world for the foreseeable future. That is just a simple fact.

To be an apologist for them is lunacy.

"NIB French battle rifle...only dropped once" is true IMO. If we're looking for them to have our back this time, we'd best look elsewhere. With a sub-par military and a government that is no friend to our own, we're better off on our own.