| > Interesting how the British told the French and Belgians to fight on The French only fought because the British (who were not in command) told them to? > They even forced the French at gunpoint who wanted to defend Dunkirk to destroy their weapons. You just said the British told the French to fight on. Now you're saying they forced the French "at gunpoint" (?) to destroy their weapons? > French who wanted to embark were shot at by the BEF [...] The BEF got away and the French fighting were captured. Of the people rescued by British ships and taken to Britain, 123,000 were French and 198,000 were British. As for the BEF "getting away", a second BEF was assembled by Britain to defend France after Dunkirk - again under the command of the French - despite France's defeat being inevitable at that point. > All RAF fighter squadrons were moved to the UK ahead of the evacuation. The RAF moved to the UK due to European bases being overrun by the Germans. Nevertheless, despite certain and imminent French defeat and despite requiring aircraft for its own survival, Britain did send squadrons to France after Dunkirk. The RAF in fact sacrificed around 1000 aircraft, and even more in personnel, in defence of France. |
Anyone who believes that the French needed the British to tell them to fight or make them obey orders at gunpoint clearly has a very poor, and highly inaccurate, view of French soldiery.
> ... shot at by the BEF ... 123,000 were French and 198,000 were British
Maybe the British weren't very good shots? More seriously, this might be alluding to the fact that the British were originally given priority for embarkation from the French admiralty. This was changed part way through the evacuation but did mean that the rearguard was almost exclusively French troops.
Again, though, whoever came up with the suggestion that French troops needed to be shot at to follow orders is a fairly nasty Francophobe masquerading as a Britophobe (probably not a word).
It's hard to comment on the RAF bit. I mean, where else were they meant to fly to?
It's a weird analysis, the BEF lost ~70k soldiers attempting to help in the defence of France and Belgium. It seems to suggest that did it to spite the French or something. Very odd.