Talk:Charles Corbin

Long sections

The #Ambassador in London section is too long, and needs some internal organizations with subsections. @A.S. Brown:, can you have a look? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Done! @Mathglot: I hope you like my work. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Perhaps I was remiss when I did major work on this article back in the summer of 2018. Once many moons ago, I wrote a lengthy massive MA thesis on the origins of World War Two, where once of the things I discovered was a tendency to downplay France as a factor, where the general picture of France is that of a declining power run by hysterical and weak men. Too much history written with the benefit of hindsight. It is true that France was defeated only in the six weeks in the spring of 1940, but one should not be projecting all back through the 1930s. The victory of 1940 came as a major surprise to both Hitler and the Wehrmacht generals. It should be noted that the original German plan for a victory over France in 1939 envisioned the earliest date that the Reich could defeat France as 1942. That plan got replaced with another in February 1940, which led to the victory of May-June 1940, but the point is neither Hitler nor the Wehrmacht generals envisioned France in the 1930s as the weak, tottering power that is the popular image of 1930s France today. It always seemed to me that a lot of articles on the late Third Republic figures tend to reflect this popular stereotype, la décadence thesis that is essentially an indictment of the French who allegedly went soft, became cowardly and defeatist and got what they had coming to them in 1940. There is something about French history that causes otherwise sane and intelligent people in the Anglo-Saxon world to lose their minds. I know the rules about OR, but I do like to set the rule straight on French history, which is writing good articles using good RS that tell what really happened. There were people like Corbin who were intelligent and forceful, and if their efforts ultimately ended in failure, it was not for a lack of trying or willpower. Corbin's ambassadorship was relatively successful. He was sent to London in 1933 to get the "continental commitment" and by 1939 that had been achieved. Of course, it would be a gross exaggeration to the change in British policy from a semi-isolationist foreign policy wary of the "continental commitment" with a "limited liability" defense policy to the opposite was all due to Corbin. But he did lobby successive British governments and many of the leaks to British newspapers in the winter of 1938-39 that had such an impact on changing British foreign policy originated with the French embassy in London. Your're right, there should be subsections. Thanks for your time and help!--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:01, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

A.S. Brown, Well, you'll be way more knowledgeable about it than me, for whom it's an amateur area of interest. That said, I find it fascinating how little French people (or anybody) know about the crucial role that Africa played in France's survival. It's not clear what would have happened, if Felix Eboue hadn't supported de Gaulle in the early days, and brought most of the rest of FEA along with him; maybe Henri Giraud would've been the first President, or maybe the Allies would've occupied France as enemy territory, with no de Gaulle to get in Eisenhower's face. Anyway, I'm learning more about it all the time. We have several drafts running, if you're curious, and would love to have someone of your background, either to contribute, if you have the time, or just to leave some tips or thoughts on the TP, if you don't; see Draft:Liberation of France, Draft:Government of Vichy France, Draft:War guilt question. I continue to remain amazed, that with 6M+ articles in the encyclopedia, there still remain plenty of missing articles on important, basic, topics like those (and many more), that need doing. Hope to see you over there! Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 06:39, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much for all your kind works and support. Your're quite right about the colonial dimension in French decision-making being overlooked. You and I may be the only editors around here that might actually aware of that. In 1938, France had six colonial divisions and by 1939 thanks to the energetic efforts of Georges Mandel France had twelve colonial divisions. At least part of why Daladier was more willing to risk war in the Danzig crisis as oppose to the Sudetenland crisis the year before was that France had raised more divisions from the colonies. The fact that Germany had three times the population and a higher birthrate than France really seems to be overlooked. The marked preference of German generals in both world wars for offensive operations was in large part due to the Reich having so much manpower that the Germans could take heavy losses in battles and still keep fighting because they could always replace their losses. For the French their colonies were much a force equalizer, and reading accounts of entire period from 1914 to 1945 one is struck by how much importance French decision-makers attached to the colonies not only as a source of raw materials, but also of manpower. All this talk of la force noir was not just propaganda relating to the mission civilisatrice, but also due to the fact the French really needed their African colonies to allow them to on Germany on something resembling an equal footing. At the risk of sounding pompous, there is a marked tendency today what are called are called "global" histories, which basically there saying that there are not boxes dividing history up and the history of conflicts must seen in a global perspective. Around here, things are a bit slower to catch up, but they will. The article dealing with British appeasement tended to ignore the role of Dominion prime ministers, but if you read the recent scholarship, you find that that the Chamberlain and Lord Halifax actually paid a bit of attention to what the Dominion prime ministers were saying. So the theory that the Dominion prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King in Canada, Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies in Australia, Michael Savage in New Zealand, and J. B. M Hertzog in South Africa were just passive by-standers to the drama unfolding in Europe is really wrong. So the fate of Europe was at least in part being decided in far-away cities like Ottawa, Canberra, Wellington, and Pretoria.    

Your're right about the fate of France be decided in least in part by the decisions of people of Eboue to rally to de Gaulle. When to dealing with governments-in-exile, the British tended to attach the most importance to those that brought assets to the table like the Belgian government-in-exile which had control of all the riches of the Belgian Congo. Without the FEA rallying to de Gaulle, he might as you have astutely noted have been nothing as he would lacked any assets to bring to the table, giving him a status like the unfortunate King Peter II of Yugoslavia . Peter really had no assets beyond the Chetnik movement, which at least nominally was loyal to him, which really blew up in his face when it turned that the Chetniks were in fact collaborating with the Axis instead of fighting them, which caused the British to disregard him. Thank you, I would be honored to look the drafts, though I must warn you that I don't have access at present to the books in the university, which at so helpful with writing good articles So I'm limited right now, but I will do my best. Best wishes and cheers! --A.S. Brown (talk) 21:44, 28 July 2020 (UTC)