‘Nous sommes trahis!’: Alistair Horne on the French trait of looking for scapegoats
"Gallic pride can never admit that the nation has been collectively at fault; inevitably, she has been betrayed by an individual or faction."
Deep in his very good study, To Lose a Battle: France 1940, Alistair Horne identifies an unappealing French trait: “Gallic pride can never admit that the nation has been collectively at fault; inevitably, she has been betrayed by an individual or faction.”
Likewise, William Shirer, in his history of The Collapse of the Third Republic, reports that when a colonel trying to stop fleeing French soldiers, they brushed him aside, saying, “There’s no use trying to fight. There’s nothing we can do. We’re lost. We’ve been betrayed!”
Photo credit: Das Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia Commons
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