It's somewhat ironic the depths to which the reputation of France as a martial nation plunged after WWII. France had good commanders but the smug politics of the interwar army meant they couldn't rise to prominence.
Giraud, Bilotte, Juin, Weygand and de Lattre de Tassigny were hardly to be taken lightly, and the performance of the different units varied from pityful to outstanding. After the slaughter of WWI, french people ceased to feel their generals cared about them at all. Having allowed this feeling develop and let the army decline from a broad-based institution representing the nation to an organisation dominated by a narrowly-based reactionary clique, a small number of interwar figures must shoulder the blame for what was an inevitable collapse. Gamelin etc. tore the emotional heart from the French military.
Setting aside "cheese-eating" etc. insults for the pathetic slurs they are, it's worth noting that every US officer that went to France in 1917-18 would have spoken excellent French. Jomini was the dominant figure in 19th Century military thought and the West Point curriculum was modeled on that of St Cyr.
The psychotic, utterly amoral French nobility of the ancièn régime only ever had one virtue: their suicidal courage in battle. They were legendary for centuries even if their countrymen didn't feel so enthusiastic about them.
Broad prejudices go in cycles. At a time when martial virtues were taken to signify moral elevation, the Irish Jacobite emigreés of the 18th Century were granted preference as loyal and brave. There were dozens of them: FM Peter Lacy (Russia), his son FM Franz Moritz (Francis Maurice) Lacy (Austria), FM Von Browne (Austria), Prince Nugent (Austria), a huge number of lesser generals, and Ambrosio (Ambrose) O'Higgins. A century later, their descendants were seen as debased, self-indulgent, stupid and untrustworthy, and were as welcome as plague rats and subject to extreme forms of racism.
The ancient German inferiority complex regarding the French prior to 1870 was no more justified than the sense of moral supremacy they felt afterwards.
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