Talk:Military history of France during World War II

Article's Structure is Terrible
189 sections means that the article is either too long to read, or it needs a rewrite. Ammar M. Elbehery (talk) 16:01, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

92.000 dead during the campaign of 1940 ?
Not so sure. More Recent research arrives at some ten thousands less* - And, what about the 3rd French Republic Armed Forces POW, died in german captivity from 1940 on ? There were some 40.-50.000 of them. /
 * see: Les Mythes de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, volume 2 --129.187.244.19 (talk) 13:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Split and merge proposal
I agree with who noted above that the article structure is terrible. I don't have a formal or specific enough idea of what the best structure would be, so this perhaps should be called a "discussion" and not a "proposal", but let me throw some ideas out, and see what happens.

For starters, the article title includes the word "France", but what does that even mean during the period of World War II? Are we talking about the Vichy regime under the Nazi boot, or the Free French Forces under De Gaulle with tentacles in Free French Africa and the Resistance? Combining both Vichy and Free France in one article, and calling it "France" is head-spinning. Those two need to be split off into their own articles, perhaps, Free France military and Military forces of the Vichy regime, or some such, if there's a need for that, or into subsections of existing articles if there isn't. (Note that the latter will be a short article, because they weren't permitted much under the Nazi yoke, but see Armistice Army for a possible destination as a subsection.)

This article attempts to cover a lot of material, that is covered in many articles that already exist, and have more specific titles. In my opinion, this article should be converted to a parent article in WP:Summary style, with the existing articles being the child articles. This would mean stripping it way down, with a paragraph or two for major sections like "Free French Forces", "French State Army" (poorly named; but that's another issue), and "French colonial empire", and almost all the content presently in those sections, moved out and merged into the articles about those topics, leaving a paragraph or two of summary about the subtopic, headed by a Main link pointing to the existing child article. As it happens, there's another section at the same level as those three, entitled "French Resistance" which is already just a couple of summary paragraphs, with a Main link to the French Resistance article. So, that section is fine, and is a model for how the rest of the article should be handled. But the Free France and Vichy France sections together, only make up about 1/3 of the article, or less, which leaves a lot of other material to deal with.

The top-level sections "European Theatre of World War II", "Atlantic theatre of World War II", "Mediterranean theatre of World War II", "African theatre of World War II", "Middle East theatre of World War II", "Indian Ocean theatre of World War II", "South-East Asian theatre of World War II", should be merged into their respective theatre of World War II articles, imho, with a brief summary left here for French contributions. In the case of "Middle East" and "Indian Ocean" there's mostly just empty section titles with Main links; those can be simply eliminated. As far as the section "English Channel and North Sea theatre of World War II" I never heard of that labeled as a "theatre" before, but maybe I"m wrong.

Your feedback on this quasi-proposal would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 04:34, 16 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Not sure I agree. France is, by and large, a well-defined territory. With of course the large exception of its overseas departments and territories, but I think of France at the time as a single country, even if at a given point half and more of it was occupied by Germany. Perhaps this is an emotional reaction learned while I lived in France. In any event, I just read the first paragraph and see that the article needs much unFrenching, so I will do a pass for that, and later discuss structure with you, if you are still interested. Elinruby (talk) 08:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)


 * (later)Article needs a lot of work. It feels like somebody fished it out of draftspace, where somebody else had set up an outline and pasted some detail from various sources into some of the sections. Haven't really done a first pass, just skimmed and gotten some low-hanging fruit. As you know I have done a lot of French military history and I am finding this article weirdly both very incomplete and overly detailed. I will do a deeper dive and ping you if you haven't responded by the time I have an opinion. But offhand, yes, it should be a parent article while still managing to be accurate, which is also a problem in places. For example, as we well know from Liberation of France, there was a lot more to the Resistance than Charles de Gaulle. Elinruby (talk) 20:32, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Copyeditor notes

 * Way too many parentheses
 * Account of the end of the Third Republic is vastly over-simplified. Granted that it should be a summary but..
 * "meanwhile opposing French forces on the Eastern Front were subordinated to Soviet or German leaderships" -- really?
 * I can see Soviet, but German? Not positive this is wrong but find it unlikely. Even conscripts would be fighting on the Western front, no?

Elinruby (talk) 08:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I would assume this refers to the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism, a German military unit.—Brigade Piron (talk) 21:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah. Did not know about that unit, thanks. My previous wikignoming on this topic has focussed on the Resistance Elinruby (talk) 22:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)


 * British attack section: pretty sure that they also scuttled some French ships at harbor in southern France, on the theory that autonomous as the Vichy French claimed to still be, the Allies could not risk the Germans having the use of the ships. And Vichy was highly miffed. Need to look this up and try to add in while trimming for WP:DUE as this is a detail even if pivotal. Elinruby (talk)
 * There is a link to this in the German capture section, although the display text is something else. And it is a little more complicated than that. Proximate cause of Case Anton Elinruby (talk) 04:19, 13 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The Free French Forces overlap the Resistance but are not synonymous with it. Elinruby (talk) 16:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)


 * "Free French Forces were created in 1940 as a rebel faction of the army, refusing both the armistice with Germany and Vichy's authority." Frem Free French Forces section. Not really true afaik, requires research to verify. However: numerous factions of what became the Free French Forces pre-date the military elements (with the exception of those forced very early to choose; see scuttling of fleet at Toulon. The organization itself was in fact of De Gaulle's making, and was an attempt to Free French Forces were created in 1940 as a rebel faction of the army, refusing both the armistice with Germany and Vichy's authority. itnify the Resistance and provide some coordination among its element and reationalize its chain of command. The date, 1940, does sound righ I am pretty sure the rest is an over-simplification at best. Leaving for now as it is the topic sentence of that paragraph. Will strike this comment when addressed Elinruby (talk) 11:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomenclature and conventions
Thinking of establishing some conventions:
 * First of all, British spellings. This is already mostly the case. I have no particular strong feelings about this and have and can use either, but it should be one or the other within a given article, and since it is already mostly British I will change anything I encounter while working on the article that isn't. However, I am Canadian not British and have not memorized MoS so... either way I will strive for consistency within the article
 * By the way, if a French word has an accent and you write it without one, you are spelling it wrong as far as French people are concerned. Period. It affects the sound and often the meaning of the word. I understand not knowing the right keystrokes on an english keyboard, but that's me. This isn't some unreasonable thing the French made up to give us headaches, it's their language. If you can't figure out how to type it, cut and paste it from elsewhere.
 * It is extremely likely that the structure of the article will change quite drastically. So while I am wikilinking, I or someone else may find either a missing first reference or some overlinking. I suggest we not get too hung up on this until we establish what should happen with some of the really long sections, which possibly should spin off, assuming that they aren't already the entire text of a spinoff main article.
 * I dunno if Wikipedia has a policy on this, but I dislike the nomenclature of "French state" for the Pétain government. Its legitimacy was immediately challenged. Apart from De Gaulle, the entire Third Republic collapsed because a significant slice of those in power at the time resigned rather than participate in a surrender to the Nazis. Pétain definitely did not hold office through a legitimate democratic process. He was given absolute power, yes, but was not supposed to become a French caudillo. He was supposed to arrange a constituent assembly, but chose not to do so, and the law that gave him the absolute power simply assumed that he would of course ensure a smooth and timely transition to a better republic and possibly even deal with the Germans as well. Therefore it failed to include in its language any term limits for that power. On another level I feel rather strongly that any government that sends its citizens into concentration camps or forced labor is not a legitimate government. So I myself use "Vichy régime" and would like to comment on any proposal to change that. Ok, it is a little derogatory but how could it not be, about mass murder and corruption on that scale? Should my practice turn out to be somehow wrong, a find and replace will more easily remedy the matter if the naming is consistent, which it currently is not.
 * note to self, stuff about forced labor is military history because those were prisoners of war, but that is too much detail for the lede and probably should have its own section any way, perhaps. Definitely further down the body of the article.


 * I am proceeding from the assumption that since this is military history the article should omit more than passing mentions of very important non-military topics such as diplomatic initiatives, the Holocaust, or colonialism, unless they are necessary for context or directly pertain to a military event, person or organization. On the other hand, the names of the participants in given battles or campaigns, and of the tactics and ordinance, have been carefully spelled out in all of the military history articles I have worked on, so I am spending some time on correctly identifying them. If this is not usual but is instead is a quirk of whoever keeps creating articles on French military history, please do let me know, as I find it less fascinating than they apparently do, especially for a top-level summary. But if my grandfather had died in one of these battles I think I would like as much detail as is available, and so I will also where appropriate try to move detail down into the main articles

Open to suggestions, comments and insults Elinruby (talk) 15:57, 14 January 2022 (UTC)