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[smjjames]

I'd totally support a bandwagon of countries riling up France with commemorative coins.

Newly announced:

5 Euro "Maginot Line" coin
10 Euro "Algerie" coin
20 Euro "Dien Bien Phu" coin
100 Euro "Gerard Depardieu" coin

I get Maginot Line, don't see how Algeria would rile up France (besides being a former colony), Dien Bien Phu is Vietnam maybe, I guess I'll wiki the gerard guy.

As for Gerard, every country has some actor who is up to the sheneinighans like Gerard, so......

[Helgoland]

Algeria would rile them up because that's the place where their dreams of being an empire died for good... And yeah, the other guy thing is from Vietnam. Another empirectomy trauma.

[Sheb]

Algeria is a former colony that France lost after loosing a humiliating war, Dien Bien Phu was an humiliating defeat where a 20,000 Frenchmen were surrounded and killed or captured. Gerard Depardieu is an overweight actor that became rich after exploiting the French subsidies for the movie industry, then decided that taxes were too high took a Russian citizenship to pay less.

[scriver]

That doesn't adequately describe it. Depardieu is the actor who, after the social democrat party had won elections and raised taxes on the rich, moved to Russia to avoid paying taxes because  "that's the only place left with a true socialist government".

I'd totally support a bandwagon of countries riling up France with commemorative coins.

Newly announced:

5 Euro "Maginot Line" coin
10 Euro "Algerie" coin
20 Euro "Dien Bien Phu" coin
100 Euro "Gerard Depardieu" coin

€69 "von Fersen Seduces Marie-Antoinette" coin

[mainiac]

The Maginot Line was actually a complete success and worked exactly the way it was supposed to.  The taunt would be a "Dyle Plan" or "Maurice Gamelin" coin.  Gamelin came up with the Dyle Plan for the northern half of the battle which left the French army exposed at Sedan and resulted in the fall of France.

[smjjames]

The Maginot Line was actually a complete success and worked exactly the way it was supposed to.  The taunt would be a "Dyle Plan" or "Maurice Gamelin" coin.  Gamelin came up with the Dyle Plan for the northern half of the battle which left the French army exposed at Sedan and resulted in the fall of France.

Well, it worked until the Germans went AROUND it and behind it.

[Culise]

The Maginot Line was actually a complete success and worked exactly the way it was supposed to.  The taunt would be a "Dyle Plan" or "Maurice Gamelin" coin.  Gamelin came up with the Dyle Plan for the northern half of the battle which left the French army exposed at Sedan and resulted in the fall of France.

Well, it worked until the Germans went AROUND it and behind it.

Well, that was the entire point of the Maginot Line.  "Hey, we've got this big ol' wall of death here; go attack us through Belgium instead."  In that role, it worked like a charm.  The problem is that Belgium's ginormous fortifications fell like ten-pins instead of holding out.  Since they were the same design as the Czechoslovak forts that fell into German hands in 1938, the Germans knew them inside and out and had determined how to beat them, most famously Eben-Emael which, with a garrison of over 1000, was supposed to hold indefinitely or at least destroy several critical bridges before the Germans could ever reach them, and instead fell to less than a hundred paratroopers - or rather, glidertroopers - in a single night.  The complete rout all along the front panicked Gamelin and likely helped motivate him to push the entire French strategic reserve into the Dyle plan, perhaps believing that the Germans were following the original warplan by Halder which the Belgians had captured in January.  This left absolutely nothing to counter the main German thrust when it came roaring through the Ardennes. 

Though, honestly, if Gamelin hadn't overcommitted to Belgium, we'd be discussing how stupid the Nazis were and the reckless incompetence of Manstein and Guderian, not to mention Hitler for overruling the entire OKW to authorize their plan instead.  The German army was in complete disarray in the Ardennes for an extended period, and their logistics were terrible - when people say the Ardennes aren't tank country, they're actually right.  A well-timed counterattack there would have destroyed the core of their armored forces, while they had already been stopped cold in Belgium at Gembloux.  It was a horribly reckless gamble, and it only worked because their opponents moved exactly as they hoped and lacked the responsiveness to counter in time.

[Sergarr]

The Maginot Line was actually a complete success and worked exactly the way it was supposed to.  The taunt would be a "Dyle Plan" or "Maurice Gamelin" coin.  Gamelin came up with the Dyle Plan for the northern half of the battle which left the French army exposed at Sedan and resulted in the fall of France.

Well, it worked until the Germans went AROUND it and behind it.

They went through the place that nobody could really expect them to move through, and for a good reason, too. For some reason, people usually forget that the Germans have managed to create the largest traffic jam in history while attempting to move through there (250 km length). Only due to either German luck or stupidity on the Allies side this force didn't get noticed.

[Culise]

The Maginot Line was actually a complete success and worked exactly the way it was supposed to.  The taunt would be a "Dyle Plan" or "Maurice Gamelin" coin.  Gamelin came up with the Dyle Plan for the northern half of the battle which left the French army exposed at Sedan and resulted in the fall of France.

Well, it worked until the Germans went AROUND it and behind it.

They went through the place that nobody could really expect them to move through, and for a good reason, too. For some reason, people usually forget that the Germans have managed to create the largest traffic jam in history while attempting to move through there (250 km length). Only due to either German luck or stupidity on the Allies side this force didn't get noticed.

Actually, it was noticed.  They just didn't have much there to stop it.  The strategic reserve was in Belgium heading for the Netherlands by that point, while Gamelin had literally lost almost half of his bomber corps just days before over Maastricht, and the losses taken when they did end up trying to respond after Sedan (again almost half of the bombers committed) demonstrate what would have happened without actual boots on the ground - the aforementioned strategic reserve.  If you want to blame them for anything other than that, their lethargic response after would be better; they overcommited to Stenay, which had no French defenses or terrain to serve as obstacles and thus looked like a weak point, and neglected to move sufficient forces and ammunition to Sedan in time, or even to bury the land lines for their communications (which meant that when the attack began, they quickly lost the ability to coordinate their defenses).  It doesn't help that this was most French soldiers' experience with the vaunted Ju-88 or the notion of dive bombing, which worsened their morale at a pivotal moment. 

EDIT:
Heck, just their lethargic response in general.  Even after they crossed at Sedan, a rapid counterattack could have repulsed them, and by that time, the forces available could have been there to do it had they been moved up in time.  Of course, by this point, the weaknesses in the French command structure should be well-understood - the forces available hadn't been moved up, the retreat from Sedan made disorder the name of the night, and communications was so poor that the rear forces barely even understood that the Germans had crossed the Meuse.  Their aversion to casualties, especially where experience had already taught them that those casualties would have been taken to no good (never mind that the situation in the Netherlands was different from the Ardennes).  But not just their total ignorance.

[smjjames]

I thought the Belgian ones fell due to lack of air cover or something? Though the Germans figuring out how to defeat them certainly didn't help.

[Culise]

I thought the Belgian ones fell due to lack of air cover or something? Though the Germans figuring out how to defeat them certainly didn't help.

Yep.  That's the major weak point the Germans identified from the Sudeten forts, and how they knew exactly where to land the gliders.  Without the Sudeten forts, it's probable that they would have been landing in the dark figuratively as well as literally. 

[Erkki]

Yep, simplification of simplifications is that the Maginot Line worked exactly as advertised and the Allies were prepared to cover all the mistakes done in the first war. They had more men too, and were on defensive. Nobody planned to slug out another 4 years or give Germany breathing room. Where things were REALLY bad south was how nobody, not even Germans themselves, managed to anticipate just how much effect air force(of proper kind, and when used right) and motorized/mechanized units have. Additionally, modernisation France's Army and especially Air Force were still underway and the lack of proper strategic reserves to use at and immediately after Sedan did not help.

[Sheb]

Nobody planned to slug out another 4 years or give Germany breathing room.

Not entirely true, the Sitzkrieg was pretty much a case of letting the Germans have breathing room.

To go back to the French coins,, what about a "Whilhem being sworn Emperor in Versaille" coin? :p

[Helgoland]

Or a "Bismarck - Hitler - Merkel" one. To piss of the Germans though

[Sheb]

I'd do one with "France", but they might not understand the implied criticism. :p