Chapter 258: The End of France (28)

Q: What do you call the 100,000 Frenchmen who raised their hands at the same time?

A: Of course it's the French Army.

Q: How can you identify a French veteran?

A: Just look at his armpits, they are very healthy there under the sun.

Q: If the French want to sell off the surplus rifles from World War II, what will their slogan be?

A: "Brand new, never fired, only thrown to the ground once."

There are many jokes like this in later generations, and at this moment Guderian is walking through these live jokes, and he has to drive these people aside with a loud speaker. "We don't have time to capture you, put down your weapons, get off the road, don't block the way."

Guderian's 19th Panzer Corps is rushing towards the English Channel. From time to time, what stands in front of them is not the French warriors who are ready to sacrifice their lives for their country at any time; but the French who have mental breakdowns and completely lost their fighting spirit.

"These guys are really annoying." Looking at the French soldiers rushing down the road, Guderian spat with disdain.

The adjutant on the side looked at these French soldiers with dusty faces, with a look of disbelief on his face. "I can't believe these are French soldiers. How can their performance be so different from that during the last war?" If they had encountered such French soldiers in the last war, France would have been in Germany's pocket long ago.

But the fact is that the French were very brave in the last war. They devoted themselves to the first war to avenge the shame of the Franco-Prussian War. During the entire first war, the equipment level and combat capability of the French army were world-class.

At that time, when revanchism was pervasive in all walks of life in France, the mentality of the French on the battlefield was "to bring down the Germans at all costs."

For example, in the famous battle of Verdun, Germany did not take advantage of France. In the ten months of fierce fighting, 60,000 French soldiers were killed and more than 400,000 were injured and disabled, while 30,000 German soldiers were killed and 350,000 were injured and disabled.

Therefore, it is inappropriate to say that the French army "lost miserably" before the intervention of the US military. Before the United States joined the war in 1917, the German-Austrian coalition and the Russian army lost 800,000 people in the Carpathian Mountains War (January-April 1915), while the French army was still attacking on the Western Front.

Now looking at these French soldiers who have no fighting spirit, it is hard to imagine that they are all from the same country.

Guderian replied casually. "Maybe they are scared last time." Just like people often burst out with unlimited potential between life and death, but when they come to their senses after the danger, they will be afraid. It is basically impossible for you to burst out again.

The most important thing is that the Maginot Line consumed too much effort of the French, gave the French too much illusory sense of security, and even became their spiritual pillar.

French soldiers have nothing to do all day long. They neither fight nor train, let alone practice those infantry-tank coordination and air-ground coordination tactics that they have never heard of.

The daily work of French soldiers is to dig some useless field fortifications and enjoy the rich and comprehensive entertainment facilities provided by the rear. They believed that the Germans would inevitably be beaten to a pulp in front of the Maginot Line, and that this war would be an "easy war".

Until the German army broke through the Ardennes Forest, the Maginot Line had hardly played any role, which made the French army feel that the sky was falling and the earth was collapsing, and they were at a loss. Their will to resist was extremely weak. How could such an army fight a war?

Guderian simply looked down on the various weapons thrown on the road by the French soldiers. He directly let the tanks run over them and crushed these French weapons that had little captured value into scrap metal. The only thing he was interested in now was the gas stations and oil depots along the way.

The speed of the 19th Panzer Corps not only caught the Allied forces off guard, but also made the German High Command a little uneasy. Even Marshal Rundstedt, who always let his men play freely, asked Yannick whether he should let Guderian stop advancing?

Yannick smiled disapprovingly and ordered that as long as there was enough fuel, they would run freely.

After returning to London, Churchill took the time to write a letter to the US President after issuing the order to convene a meeting.

To be precise, it was a letter for help.

He had written to Roosevelt as early as after the Scapa Flow attack, hoping to buy American warships.

Although Roosevelt was happy to help, it was a pity that the United States was not Germany. As the President of the United States, Roosevelt could not do whatever he wanted like the German Crown Prince Yannick, especially he could not damage the interests of too many capitalists.

Those members of Congress were representatives of various monopoly groups, and these bigwigs who could influence the United States opened large and small companies and factories in Germany, and made a lot of money as the war expanded.

Naturally, most of these people supported Germany!

In addition to them, there were many Germans who immigrated from Germany after the last World War in the United States.

As a defeated country, the various conditions in the country were naturally very difficult, and many Germans chose to immigrate to the United States. However, in their hearts, they carried the shame of World War I and still missed their motherland.

And most of these people were rich people. They had lived in the United States for so many years and still had some influence.

So the last time Roosevelt proposed a bill for Britain to buy warships in Congress, it was opposed by most people, and Britain's ship purchase plan was also ruined.

Especially now that a new round of elections is about to begin in the United States, Roosevelt, who is preparing to run for election again, will not do anything that will anger the public at this time.

Yes, he is running for the third term. You should know that no one has been re-elected as president for three consecutive terms since President Washington.

Washington took the initiative to resign after two terms, which later became a common practice in American politics. Jefferson, Madison and others did not seek the nomination of their party after two terms. Grant sought the nomination for the third time in 1876 and 1880, but failed. In the 1880 Republican National Convention, he led in the first 35 rounds of votes, but never reached the majority. In the 3rd round, Garfield emerged as the Republican candidate.

However, this is just a tradition and is not written into the Constitution (until 1947, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution with a two-thirds majority, and the presidential term was officially limited to two terms).

When Roosevelt first took office, he took over a mess. The US economy was about to collapse. Roosevelt turned the tide and successfully pulled the United States back.

This was originally a remarkable thing. In the original time and space, the Democratic Party became a "reform" party in the minds of Americans, and Roosevelt became a "reform" standard bearer. In the second election in 1936, Roosevelt received 98.49% of the votes, second only to Washington and Monroe, becoming one of the presidents elected with the highest number of electoral votes.

But at this time, Yannick had already used all kinds of new policies and reform methods in Germany, and Roosevelt's measures did not seem so new. The opposition party sarcastically ridiculed Roosevelt as a "copycat" president, and even if a monkey sat on the presidential throne, it could do better than him.

Therefore, in the 1936 election in this time and space, Roosevelt received 62% of the votes, which was much lower than the vote rate in the original time and space.

No one in the Democratic Party was optimistic about Roosevelt's third election, because the Concord Party had the most popular candidate, Wendell Willkie, and Roosevelt might have a hard time winning; but Roosevelt stubbornly decided to participate in the third election.