What's France's greatest embarrassment besides WWII?

Literally who cares about this

what do french people think of Petain? good guy caught in a bad situation or literal nazi racist fascist?

i'll kick your ass again

The Franco-Prussian war? The first Indochina war maybe?

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The answers to the debacle of 1940 are purely of military and strategical nature. Without particular order :
>armies spread way too thin with the Ardennes unprotected
>falling for the trap of Belgium and letting the most heavily armed division being separated from Maginot
>no real research in army theory since 1918, hence no real usage of radios
>extremely low morale on the front ("why are we waging a war for Poland and Britain's continental entanglements?")

A lot of books have been written on the question. "Strange Defeat", by Marc Bloch, is probably one that explains the most.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Defeat
For a good review of Vichy history (and including a rebunking of Vichy apologists), you can try "Vichy France", by Paxton.

It really depends if you ask people before or after 1970.
Before 1970, military archives were closed, and access to German/British archives was even more difficult. Hence, most people wrote what they felt, with their gut feelings and own bias.
The authority until 1970 was Raymond Aron's theory of "Vichy as a Shield", ie, Vichy was used to protect the French people from the hardships of a full-scale military occupation and tried to negociate with allies & De Gaulle secretly.

This theory has been debunked by American historian Paxton & by other French historian with access to military archives.
Vichy has always been a choice of "neutrality", ie, trying to pass itself as an arbiter between Axis and Allies ; on that, most HS-educated Frenchmen know it failed completely, and that De Gaulle was our best representative (if a bit of a rough one) to the Allies.
More over, Vichy gov't went far beyond was what was asked of it, and notably, used its autonomous police to cooperate with the Nazi invader to root out resistance & Jews. This point is heavily emphasised in school.
Lastly, and most importantly, Vichy actually got some freedom granted by the Nazis compared to the "administrative authorities" of Belgium/Netherlands/Denmark, and it used this authority to fuel a pseudo-fascist movement called "Renaissance Nationale".

tl;dr : Vichy was a fascist, collaborationist regime and Pétain knew it full well. However, most actions were done by Pierre Laval & the general public was always distrustful of Laval and Vichy as a government.

I don't even know ya

Indo-Chine War probably

Why was Daladier so unpopular in France?

Popular Front, while being able to earn a lot of victories in some domains (40h work week, first paid vacation forever, ...) was unable to actually put the economy back on tracks following the Great Depression and was still way too "centrist" for the then all-powerful and Moscow-aligned Communist Party.
Add, with that, the most unstable and weakest regime we had - to the point that the 5th Republic was built with a much too strong executive power because of the memories of 1930's - which meant he couldn't do anything to solve any problems we had.

...

The radicaux were the perfect form of opportunists (the party still exists today but is a residue). Daladier followed the wind, he's one of those who sold us to the nazis. But since they are numerous to have done so, Daladier is not really hated, it's just that his name is bound to the accords of Munchen.

One of France's greatest embarrassements could be find in this epoch too, with the Front populaire leaving the Spanish Republic die alone and putting Republicans refugies in camps.

But truly there are many, during WWII or not. De Gaulle get back to power by a coup, btw, and we're still leaving under his undemocratic Constitution, the fifth.

I don't know why the French have this reputation solely because of WWII, it's terribly unjust.
It is hard to overstate how confused or ill-prepared the Franco-British forces were in 1939.
For example, the apparent casus beli was Germany's invasion of Poland. But by nature, defending Poland meant invading Germany -- an offensive war, not a defensive one. There existed not a single plan for this, and in fact it was France who took the only tentative steps (in the Saar Offensive) towards the war that really had to be fought.
The British contingent was wholly inadequate for a European war, and one of the uglier implications of the Franco-British alliance was that the French Army would do most of the heavy lifting. This again was the result of political squabbling in Westminster but it remains true all the same.
France capitulated after a month of rather bloody and closely-fought conflict, when military and political confusion had strangled any hope of victory, and which was perfectly reasonable of them.
Compare to Hitler whose suicidal "no retreat and no surrender" orders may have single-handedly lost the Axis the Eastern Front.

the end of the algeria war

not for the reasons you are thinking

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Tbqh the Allies and especially the French sucked ass in 39-40. But incompetence doesn't equate cowardice, looking at death toll of France in WW1 should be enough for a non retarded person to understand the French weren't particularly cowardly