Obviously there is a pervasive idea within American culture that depicts France and the French as cowards/quick to surrender but was that always the case? Given their proud martial history and direct role in the colonial independence movement as well as their prodigious cultural output at that time, was there a more positive idea of France before world war 2?
It's my impression that the whole "cheese eating surrender monkey" schtick has only come about relatively recently, in response to France declining to get involved with the Iraq War in 2003, (remember all that nonsense about Freedom Fries) and that before that the go-to country for "coward" jokes was Italy.
Certainly, in sources I've been reading in connection with D-Day (Band of Brothers, The Longest Day for instance), the US soldiers preparing to invade are thinking of France in terms of pretty girls, good food and wine. There were no recollections of people thinking, for example, "Why should we help these cowards". Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, of course.