William Shirer’s lengthy investigation into the collapse of France’s third republic in 1940 features a notable paragraph that, in itself, not only explains the French failure in the Second World War but the general failure of the French in all notable and worthwhile fields going back to early modernity. In the quote to follow, nouns such as “soldier” and “general” can be equally read as “philosopher” or “statesmen” or “artist” or “general citizen.”
The section in question occurs on the morning on June 12th, when the illustrious Marshal Petain is complaining to a British counterpart how, now that France has been overrun by the Nazis, the British, too, must surrender, since it would be impossible for anyone to carry on without the French. Shirer writes:
“The answer that history would give to that question [of fellow surrender] could not be foreseen—not even faintly imagined—by the illustrious Marshal who, like so many French generals of limited vision, did not fully comprehend the character of the British race, the infinite possibilities of global war, and the unpredictability of human events. How could the old soldier, for whom the tiny sector of the planet that lay at the western corner of the European continent constituted the only world he knew, the only one in which he had lived and fought, possibly foresee, though the signs were already beginning to appear, that within eighteen months the two most powerful military and industrial powers on the globe would be engaged against the German foe?”
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