The reason people don’t fight back is because fighting back creates winners and losers.

Winners: men, particularly fighting men and weapons makers.

Losers: Women, Gays, various non-White groups (historically non combatants), Elites, SWPL Yuppies.

It’s as simple as that. Europe is dominated by people who LOSE politically if they fight back. So they don’t fight back. They meekly surrender to maintain their social power.

The French could well have conducted a fighting retreat. De Gaulle perhaps self-servingly noted in his War Memoirs that his plan for a fighting retreat to the South, boarding every ship that would float to Algeria, in his own version of Dunkirk, would have preserved the core of the French Army.

It would however have sacrificed most of the personal wealth, belongings, property, standing, and good life of most every politician in the Third Republic and so surrender was the order of the day.

Meanwhile, Balkan nations like Greece and Yugoslavia, with less to lose, fought and fought and fought, because most saw winning in the fighting, not catastrophic loss.

Europeans do not fight because fighting means a loss for their ruling groups. It’s the same reason Obama’s backers don’t want to fight.