It wasn't until fairly recently I learned that the whole "French cowards" trope largely came to us from the US reacting to various postwar French governments not playing ball with American military aspirations, e.g. kicking out all US bases in the 60s, calling for US withdrawal from Vietnam, opposing the second Gulf War etc.

The irony being that France only gets shit for being cowardly because they're pretty much the only Western European country to have the balls to stand up to the US.