Wait a minute.
Has anyone ever actually surrendered to the French in the last 100 or so years?
The Germans surrrendered to the French at the end of WW1. The surrender treaty was signed in a railroad car. A few decades later the Nazis overwhelmed the French and Hitler was present at the surrender; he made the French use the same railroad car to sign the papers in that the Germans had been in at the end of WW1.
I guess Der Fuhrer appreciated irony......................