Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 8,822
An Almost Forgotten War During WWII...
In the summer of 1940, France lost the war against the lightning-fast attacking Germans, is defeated...
...largely occupied by the Hitler Wehrmacht - and what is not occupied by the Wehrmacht...
...is run by a collaboration government under the former national hero Marechal Phillipe Pétain as "Chef d'Etat"...
...and governed by the "Prime Minister" Pierre Laval...:
This collaborationist government is based in the small town of Vichy, which is why it is commonly referred to as "Vichy France" and the "Vichy government".
Another regime at the other end of the world would like to use this hour of defeat and the great weakness of militarily defeated France to display a large piece of French colonial possessions and thus expand its own empire.
On December 1, 1940, the forces of the Kingdom of Siam (today Thailand) invade French Indochina (Vietnam and parts of Laos and Cambodia)...:
This is how the Franco-Thai War began - a conflict that is almost invisible against the backdrop of the Second World War and is almost forgotten today.
Thailand has 60,000 soldiers...
...134 tanks (mostly British Vickers tankettes and Japanese type "Type 83")...
...and 140 relatively modern aircraft (US and Japanese production) mobilized...:
The troops are commanded by a member of the royal family, General Prince Plaek Phibunsongkhram...:
Opposite them are troops of the Vichy regime under Admiral Jean Decoux, since July 1940 the new (Vichy) Governor General of French Indochina...:
His force includes 50,000 soldiers...
...which are distributed over the entire huge colony, exactly 20 tanks (all BT-17)...
...and about 100 obsolete planes..:
**contunued next post**
In the summer of 1940, France lost the war against the lightning-fast attacking Germans, is defeated...
...largely occupied by the Hitler Wehrmacht - and what is not occupied by the Wehrmacht...
...is run by a collaboration government under the former national hero Marechal Phillipe Pétain as "Chef d'Etat"...
...and governed by the "Prime Minister" Pierre Laval...:
This collaborationist government is based in the small town of Vichy, which is why it is commonly referred to as "Vichy France" and the "Vichy government".
Another regime at the other end of the world would like to use this hour of defeat and the great weakness of militarily defeated France to display a large piece of French colonial possessions and thus expand its own empire.
On December 1, 1940, the forces of the Kingdom of Siam (today Thailand) invade French Indochina (Vietnam and parts of Laos and Cambodia)...:
This is how the Franco-Thai War began - a conflict that is almost invisible against the backdrop of the Second World War and is almost forgotten today.
Thailand has 60,000 soldiers...
...134 tanks (mostly British Vickers tankettes and Japanese type "Type 83")...
...and 140 relatively modern aircraft (US and Japanese production) mobilized...:
The troops are commanded by a member of the royal family, General Prince Plaek Phibunsongkhram...:
Opposite them are troops of the Vichy regime under Admiral Jean Decoux, since July 1940 the new (Vichy) Governor General of French Indochina...:
His force includes 50,000 soldiers...
...which are distributed over the entire huge colony, exactly 20 tanks (all BT-17)...
...and about 100 obsolete planes..:
**contunued next post**
. There is about as much in this post as I have ever read on this little known "war within a war".
