Summary: When looking at America’s problems it’s easy to forget that we’re a part of Western civilization, and share many social dynamics with our cousins in other nations. Today we have a powerful example. Posts here have documented our amnesic, our inability to clearly to see our past. Perhaps the French have the same weakness.
“Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing..”
— Gore Vidal, “The State of the Union,” The Nation, September 13, 2004
Here is a fascinating report “1938-1944 Munich Agreement in the liberation of Paris or the dawn opinion polls in France“, Frederic Dabi (Director), French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), February 2012. It’s 8 pages, in French. You can translate it; a summary appears below, with a shocking graph from the report.
The teaching of ignorance: what nation most contributed to the defeat of Germany in 1945?, from Les-Crises: des images our comprendre, 4 June 2014 — Posted on Redit, posted in the comments by Kevin. Translated by Google.
A survey conducted in May 1945 by IFOP {French Institute of Public Opinion, founded 1938}, the entire French territory now free (and confirming a survey in September 1944 with Parisians) showed that respondents appear to be well aware of the power relations and the role of allies in the war, despite censorship and the difficulty under occupation to access reliable information.
Thus, a clear majority (57%) consider that the USSR is the nation that has most contributed to the defeat of Germany while the United States and England, yet liberating the country, do not collect 20% respectively and 12%. But what is truly astonishing is that this vision of public opinion has reversed very dramatically with time, as shown by two surveys in 1994 and 2004:
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It would be interesting to compare these numbers with the same poll conducted in America. My guess is that these represent a convergence between American and French public opinion on the preeminent role of America in the war.
For More Information
Posts about amnesia:
- Only our amnesia makes reading the newspapers bearable, 30 April 2008
- The Trinity of modern war at work in Afghanistan (more evidence that amnesia is a required to be an American geopol expert), 28 November 2009
- We have trouble coping with our present because we’ve lost our past, 23 October 2010
- The pilgrimage of Martin Luther King: an antidote to our amnesia about America’s history, 14 September 201
Posts about France:
- The Rioting in France and the Decline of the State, 8 November 2005
- France gives us tips for the Afghanistan War, from their successful role in the American Revolution, 11 March 2010
- Which is better? Rioting in France and Greece or snoozing in America?, 28 October 2010
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