“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys” long predates the Iraq war. It comes from their surrender in WWII. Yes, the jokes ignore their resistance movement and the fact that they basically lost an entire generation of young men to WWI. It also ignores that Britain failed to help France.
I have never in my life heard of Italians being stereotypical cowards.
Well the complaint always wants that when the French surrendered in World War two they neither scuttled nor transferred their navel fleet. So then a pointless and dangerous bombing run that to be undertaken to destroy the French naval vessels before the Nazis captured them, that could have been avoided had the French simply transferred the existing navy to Britain which had been requested but then just not acted on for some reason.
Then there was the whole rainbow warrior thing many decades later which didn’t help.
“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys” long predates the Iraq war. It comes from their surrender in WWII. Yes, the jokes ignore their resistance movement and the fact that they basically lost an entire generation of young men to WWI. It also ignores that Britain failed to help France.
I have never in my life heard of Italians being stereotypical cowards.
Well the complaint always wants that when the French surrendered in World War two they neither scuttled nor transferred their navel fleet. So then a pointless and dangerous bombing run that to be undertaken to destroy the French naval vessels before the Nazis captured them, that could have been avoided had the French simply transferred the existing navy to Britain which had been requested but then just not acted on for some reason.
Then there was the whole rainbow warrior thing many decades later which didn’t help.