Redpill me on the Franco-Prussian war. Why were the French beaten so badly...

Redpill me on the Franco-Prussian war. Why were the French beaten so badly? Why did France think Alsace Lorraine was theirs when the majority of the people spoke in German tongue.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War
youtube.com/watch?v=PpJKSMoiVds
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>redpill
>

redpilling isnt just a pol thing anymore faggot

Nor was it ever exclusively a /pol/thing, you dipshits.

It's literally a matrix joke, that's still all it is. Stop overthinking it.

Most of the people spoke German, but they were French. This is the tricky part about the beginnings of nationalism. National identities were largely created, they weren't as natural as many nationalists believed. Most countries that experienced nationalist movements had to unite their peoples and then re-organize their language so that it was shared between everyone. Look at Italy and Germany, before the creation of those states, people spoke so many varieties of their language that it was hard to imagine them all being German or Italian etc. France had the same thing, many languages in one state. Most of the people in Alsace-Lorraine would have said they were French, despite their language being German. This is why nationalism and identity can be weird sometimes.

>Most of the people spoke German, but they were French.

I think its the other way around friend. French is just an amalgamation of different peoples primarily romannized germanics and celts

>National identities were largely created, they weren't as natural as many nationalists believed.

but aren't borders defined by the languages of the people in the first place?

>Why were the French beaten so badly?
Shitty strategy
Germans used trains to move fastly while French were still fighting early 19th century style

>Why did France think Alsace Lorraine was theirs when the majority of the people spoke in German tongue.
Because thet had owned it since the 1600s
Also, prior to 1871, no one spoke German in Alsace
They spoke Alsatian (which is to German what Portuguese is to Spanish)

>Germans used trains to move fastly while French were still fighting early 19th century style
Actually, the french mobilized very fast too, but in bad conditions. The great difference was the conscription. The French professional army was really good, but there was only 400 000 soldiers. When the war started, the causalities were pretty much the same, and the Chassepot rifle was really effective. But the French armies soon found themselves outnumbered. With Sedan, it was a good part of the french army out of the war, and the other trapped in Metz. The republic tried to rise new armies, but they were made of volunteers and equiped with shitty rifles from the american civil war. They were almost always beaten.
The Germans had simply a much better and modern army. The French would learn from their mistakes and copy many things from Germany, for example, the organization of their universities.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War

France

756,285[4]

138,871 dead[5]
143,000 wounded
474,414 captured

Germany

116,696[6]

28,208 dead
88,488 wounded

yep the French got assraped. Its not even a defeat more like a military disaster. Im surprised the Germans didnt just keep moving inland and take all of Northern France.

>and take all of Northern France.
This isn't Europa Universalis.

Why would they? Bismarck didn't even want to grab AL in the first place.

wrong. The French had a bigger active army. around half a million compared to only 300 thousand Germans. The Germans did have bigger reserves but they were the attacking side. Germanys officer core was much better and its military structure was better.

Because wars of conquest never happen in real life.

Though yes Germany taking northern France in 1871 would've been unsustainable and the Germans had other shit to worry about than consolidating a bunch of angry conquered Frenchmen. It'd probably have made them more of a geopolitical pariah than they already were, but it could've neutered one of their rivals at least.

Borders are forged by people with a will to forge them, not by those who are already living there.

I think that one of the reasons for WW1 was because the Prussians after Napoleons defeat and up until then were never defeated soundly. They just kept whopping ass wherever they met resistance. Plus added to the fact that Germany became highly industrialized and war makes alot of profit.

The English wiki page has been sabotaged by naziboos Americans
The German page says the Prussians had 44,781 dead and 89,732 wounded

>Borders are forged by states
fixed

what about the French one?

No, not really. A lot of the linguistic/cultural homogenization happens after the territory is in one group's hands or another. They don't decide the language based on who lives there, they decide the language based on who the power group is (though nationalism and self determination threw a wrench in this).

Same as the German page.

Just because the page is written in German doesn't inherently mean it's more authorative citation-wise. What did they cite? Primary source?

The English page cites pic related.

probably the stupid wehraboos at it again twisting facts and information

I dont get the reason the war ever started. France was the one that attacked Prussia.

youtube.com/watch?v=PpJKSMoiVds

good documentary on the war.

Bismarck baited them. It was all part of his masterplan to unify Germany under Prussian leadership.

Was starting a war part of your plan?

also why was the Napoleon dynasty apparently still around after he himself was exiled for life?

Nah. It's still self-identifying yourself as cancer. Go back to wherever you came from.

It was a joke you mong

It's meant to be funny because he's bringing this phrase associated with /pol/ into a completely unrelated environment. It's absurd. People here find absurd funny. Otherwise we wouldn't have shitposting.

Don't be so butthurt about ebin memes

>what are states

>pic related
does anyone else see a man bending over to be violently taken from behind?

kinda fitting for france in the war.

>I was merely pretending to be retarded.

Just from your initial post I can tell that you are the reason this board and website as a whole suck now.

Just know that if you were to die today not a single person would be upset, and a few lucky people may even celebrate. You are below worthless, in that the humor I and others my find in your otherwise empty death may be worth more than your entire contribution to the rest of society.

A proto-communist revolution was going on in Paris at the same moment : "la commune". The french elite was so worried that it might spread in the rest of the country that Thiers (the head of the french republican government after Napo the third's fall) gave away Alsace and Lorraine to Bismarck in exchange for his help crushing la commune. It was not so much that the french rulers after Napoleon III were incompetent but full blown traitors. Thiers actually asked Gambetta not to attack the Prussian army while they were besieging Paris despite outnumbering them

so were the commies supported by the prussians or did they just seize on the perfect opportunity to create a mess?

The latter, both the german and the french elite hated commies, that one thing they always agreed on all along the war

but during WW1 the Germans supported the bolsheviks against Russia. It later came back to haunt them.

Not this time, it is a dangerous game to support the international revolution

This is completly retarded. The commune started after the war was lost.

>see thumbnail
>Alsace-Lorraine looks like a big-assed woman bending forward thanks to the colors
S-stupid sexy region

>Also, prior to 1871, no one spoke German in Alsace
>They spoke Alsatian (which is to German what Portuguese is to Spanish)

That's like saying people in Bavaria didn't speak German but Bavarian. They spoke several German dialects (mostly Alemannic), just like the people on the other side of the Rhine spoke Alemannic. Texts were written in an early version of standardized Upper German that was common throughout Southern Germany; after the French takeover it became more common to write in French and among the upper class to speak French, too.