What the Fall of France in 1940 says About the US in 2025

While researching the French Resistance for my novel, which features a POV character that eventually partakes in the movement as a spy, I couldn’t help but notice many of the commonalities between the resistance then along with the challenges they faced, and the resistance to MAGA here in the US now.

When France was defeated militarily, and de Gaulle and his allies fled to England in exile, he went on to deliver his farewell address. He set up himself up as the figure of resistance, maintaining radio shows abroad with the help of English intelligence agencies. By 1943, most of France was tuning into the BBC illegally despite knowing that listening to or reading English news media carried with it a potential death penalty. De Gaulle’s show, Les Français parlent aux Français (the French speak to the French) was broadcast on Radio Londres. It was a daily show that gave occupied France hope.

In 1940 there was no hope, only a desire to avoid as much bloodshed as possible. Despite historical suggestions that the French army was woefully unprepared and easily defeated, nothing could be further from the truth. The French army called on the low countries, Holland and Belgium, to mount ambitious defenses. France of course had the impenetrable Maginot Line along its border with Germany, but additional defenses needed to be dug in order to prevent troop movements into the Ardennes or along the border with Belgium. The low countries did not heed this warning in time, and as the French army marched into Belgium, they were torn apart, pushed back into their own country and picked off by the Luftwaffe. When Churchill landed in Paris on the eve of destruction, he demanded from the French command to know where the reserves were. The response, “there are no reserves,” was in Churchill’s own words, the lowest point of his life. He was astonished how this could be.

To avoid further bloodshed, embarrassed by the disaster of the Third Republic, centrist French senators voted to install Vichy as a compromise with Hitler. The north would remain under Nazi occupation, and the south was governed by Vichy. As centrists do, they compromise. They seek security, stability– anything but open revolt and a threat to their status quo. They gave it all away! This sentiment continued on in the early days of the resistance. The left, labor parties and communists wanted to fight, but the centrists would rather an occupied France than a France destroyed. Perhaps as we are able to walk through Paris today, so untouched by the horrors of war many other capitals faced, that may have been the right move initially.

As the French patriots in exile learned of this split between centrists and the left, they exploited it. Leftists eager to liberate their country trained alongside British secret service despite their reservations about De Gaulle (he was military after all). They obtained military training, making ambitious parachute drops back into occupied France. They ran intelligence gathering and used various knowledge to sabotage and report German troop movements and supply lines. It was not centrists doing this, it was the working people who had had enough! They had nothing to lose and were willing to put their lives on the line, joining not only the resistance but the Free French Army. By 1944, the intelligence gathering and military preparation was so successful that they helped provide critical information to support the D-Day invasion and Operation Cobra which resulted in the liberation of their nation.

In 2025 the leadership of the Democratic Party, like the centrists who voted for Vichy and compromised with Nazis, has been absolutely feckless. They voted to advance Trump’s unqualified nominees. They voted for his Supreme Court justices in his first term. They claim that there is simply nothing they can do. As long as they can fundraise off the chaos, they believe they can remain in power and keep their spoils through compromise. They often say that the taactics of the left are too extreme, something commonly said by the centrists in occupied France: don’t openly revolt, you will destroy it all. Destroy what? Your compromise with Nazis?

You might not like the left. You may think their policies too unserious, and economically unviable. That’s fine! But when leadership cannot even stomach the thought of endorsing a popular leftist in open revolt of Trump’s worst policies, you are creating a divide that allows the fascists to walk right through because they are united in their mission. We need political leftists, because they are willing to do what centrists are not. They will not compromise their values to break bread with Nazis– not Nazis then, not Nazis now.

You want change? Then you need to stop supporting centrism and get in the fucking streets just like the French people did. Every small effort to subvert fascism matters, on the local level as the national. But centrist Democrats openly say they don’t want these people in their party. If that’s the case, then here comes a Trump third term (even if it’s one of his drooling sycophantic sons). It’s time to unite against evil because there is no middle ground.