France in World War I

There was no great agitation for war as in the Franco-German conflict of 1870. All the same, nationalism was rampant. Jean Jaurès, the only pacifist voice in the Assembly, was assassinated on 31 July 1914. President Raymond Poincaré called for national unity, and, for once, got it. Every shade of political opinion believed German aggression lay behind the war, and so backed the government. There was no French Fifth Column in 1914.

Unity did not, however, guarantee competence. As in the past, the General Staff set out in 1914 to fight the preceding war instead of the present one. Of course, so did everyone else. The Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Joseph Joffre, along with the General Staff, expected a short war on the order of 1870, to be decided by a single, sharp offensive. In the early days of the war - and as in 1870 - it looked as if the Germans were winning. Following the Schlieffen Plan, Germany's order of battle in the West, General von Kluck drove across Belgium, into France and towards Paris. The government withdrew to Bordeaux, just in case, after reorganizing to include Socialists, Radicals and Conservatives in the cabinet. The national union was secure; the nation was not, however, and on 5 September Paris itself seemed likely to fall. But General Gallieni, commander of the Paris garrison, counterattacked that day on the Marne, with reinforcements sent from Paris literally by taxi cabs. Von Kluck was stopped. Over the next four months, with the help of the British Expeditionary Force, the lines were stabilized with ten départements in enemy territory, and the armies in trenches which stretched from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea.

In these first four months of war France suffered 850,000 casualties. Sadly, they were only a foretaste of losses to come. The French command continued committed to the concept of the large offensive, to which soon was added attacks by troops who sallied forth from the trenches in small numbers. The main effect was large-scale slaughter, to little apparent purpose. It was the style on all sides, and casualties mounted steadily through 1915. Political and military nerves grew frayed, hence the symbolic tragedy of Verdun.

With the entry of the United States in 1917, the war turned decisively in favour of the Allies. Nevertheless, mutinies broke out in the allied armies, chiefly as protests against the endless slaughter. In France radical journals of Left and Right, Le Bonnet Rouge and L' Action Française, for example, stirred civilian unrest. First the Briand and then the Ribot and the Painlevé governments fell, the latter caught up in a scandal involving the famous German spy, Mata Hari; strikes, absent in France since the war began, now were widespread, given impetus by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in November; and Georges Clemenceau became premier. Like Britain's David Lloyd George, Clemenceau was an able and ruthless politician who would stick at nothing to bring order out of the sudden chaos.

The aftermath of war
During the war France suffered 1,322,00 dead and 3 million wounded soldiers; a quarter of the dead were under 24 years of age. Consequently, the birthrate plummeted after the war. In 1938 France had only half the number of 19 to 21 year-olds it would have had without the war. In 1919 France was short of 3 million workers, and the gap had to be made up by foreigners, whose mere presence created resentment among French labourers. Ten départements had been laid waste by the Germans, including mines, blast furnaces, roads, railways, agriculture, sometimes whole towns. The population of Reims dropped from 117,000 to 17,000, Soissons from 18,000 to 500. The war also played havoc with the nation's finances. The national debt in 1919 was 175 billion francs, five times greater than in 1913. Prices had risen 400 per cent since 1914, and the income tax introduced to pay for the war ate into everyone's income, especially among the bourgeoisie.

There were advances, too. Mass production was introduced on a large scale during the war, and many heavy industries expanded to make war material. They cut back in peacetime, but the principle of growth had been established and the industrial economy was ready for the take-off in productivity which began in the 1920s. Inflation pushed up farm prices further than costs, and the peasantry was better off than before 1914. Trade unions at the war's end were accorded more respect than in the past, and the number of women teaching in schools increased.

The slaughter of those four years and the horrors of life in the trenches produced a disillusioned and pacifist generation. Even the most patriotic of returning soldiers were fervent partisans of peace at any price. Pessimism and malaise: these were the war's legacy.

Women and the war
The status of French women hardly altered as a result of participating in the war. Women entered the war-work force in large numbers: they comprised 25 per cent of the munitions workers, for example, and at Renault were 4 per cent of the general work force in 1914, rising to 32 per cent by 1918. But working conditions were appalling. Women were resented by male workers, who saw to it that they had largely menial, and even dangerous, jobs. 70,000 industrial accidents reported in 1917 involved women. Sexual harassment was commonplace. After the war, the numbers of women in work increased, but shifted into 'light' industry and white-collar, mostly secretarial, jobs. The sexual division of labour was not altered; and no 'feminist revolution' was in the offing. In 1922 an attempt to give the vote to women passed the Chamber, but was thrown out by the Senate. French women would have to wait for their political liberation until 1945.

This article is based on material taken from A Traveller's History of France (© Robert Cole), published by The Windrush Press, and is by kind permission of its author Robert Cole.

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