I saw a piece of newsreel film you don't get to see very often. It showed French people attacking Allied prisoners of war in a Normandy village in 1944. The villagers were obviously not happy about attempts to liberate them from the Germans. A lot of Allied soldiers reported that even after the Germans were driven out, the French did not seem too happy. Certainly, there wasn't the joy seen in Belgium or the Netherlands. Of course, Normandy took a hammering; a lot of war damage and civilian deaths. But maybe perhaps there were a lot of French who had done well under the Nazis. Despite later claims, not everyone was in the Resistance. It could even be that there were more men in the fascist police force, The Milice, than took up arms against the Germans. Most people, I suppose, just made the most of a bad job and tried to get on with life as best they could. But I wish we would stop pretending that the French were enthusiastic allies in the war against fascism. Of the 38,000 French troops captured by the Allies in Syria in 1941, only 6,000 opted to fight the Axis as members of the Free French forces. And let's not consider the British lives squandered rescuing French troops from Dunkirk in 1940, only for them to return to France after the surrender to work for the German war effort.