The French Republic

Part One - The Interwar Period: 1919-1939

With the end of the Great War France breathed a great sigh of relief: the greatest crisis in the history of the country had passed. Most of the infamous trench warfare had taken place within French borders, and portions of the country had been occupied for four long years. With the armistice signed in a railway car in Compiegne, the guns fell silent, and France set about the business of rebuilding, as well as exacting vengeance.

The “Big Four” at Versailles: Lloyd-George of Britain, Orlando of Italy, Clemenceau of France, and Wilson of the United States

The Treaty of Versailles was drafted mainly be the French and British, with opposition from the idealistic Americans and from the Italians, who were being shunted aside. The treaty as ratified instituted harsh penalties on Germany, and was in no small part intended to ensure French dominance over Germany perpetually. The territory of Alsace-Lorraine, which Germany had conquered in 1870, was returned to France. In addition, a French led Entente force occupied the Rhineland, the industrial region along the Western border of Germany. They also required Germany to pay massive reparations for not just their own war debts, but for all Entente nations.

French occupation troops confront a German civilian during the occupation of the Ruhr

French forces occupied the Rhineland until 1930 along with the British, Belgians, and Americans, although the Americans withdrew in 1923, transferring their zone to French authority. In 1923 with the collapse of the German economy and the resulting slow down of payments, the Ruhr was also occupied by French forces. This continued despite widespread civil unrest in response to the occupation, and despite withdrawing in 1925 after American mediation the occupation did a great deal to ensure the rise in support for movements such as the National Socialists in Germany.

Congress of the French Communist Party in Paris

At home in France the situation was nebulous, and beset by polarized politics. The era was well embodied by President Paul Deschanel, who was removed from office on September 21, 1920 for insanity, following episodes including receiving dignitaries completely naked and jumping off his personal train to wander the woods in his pajamas. His presidency lasted a mere seven months. The initial attempts to create a left wing government were hampered by the fragmentation of the major left wing parties, with the rise of an independent communist party inspired by the Soviet Union, as well as a schism between moderate liberals and radical socialists.

These issues would come to a head in 1934 when a major corruption scandal erupted and weakened the government in public opinion. This would culminate in street protests and riots by right wing groups, resulting in the collapse of the Liberal coalition and the installation of a moderate conservative government, much to the displeasure of the far right groups also active in the protests. The French government would remain deadlocked with continuously shifting political alliances, and in 1939 would still be locked into this morass.

Unrest on the streets of Paris in the early 1930s

The French military was considered to be the most powerful in Europe at the time, and was indeed so throughout the 1920s. With the rise of the Third Reich and remilitarization of Germany in the 1930s, however, France began to demonstrate serious military shortcomings. Beginning in 1929 France had begun construction of the Maginot Line, an enormous series of underground fortresses stretching from the Swiss border to the Belgian frontier, making the German border all but impenetrable to any attack. This enormous program would consume almost 90% of the French military’s budget until the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. As a result, money was not available for other, sorely needed aspects. The French solider was equipped with the same items as in the Great War, including the Lebel rifle, which had been twenty-eight years out of date in 1914, and was hopelessly so by 1939. A major program had resulted in excellent new weapons, vehicles, planes, ships and tanks entering service, but development had taken a long time, and procurement was agonizingly slow.

French soldiers in formation within the Maginot Line

With the clear threat posed by Hitler’s resurgent Germany, and the French having squandered their chance to stop it by allowing the Germans to occupy the Rhineland, by the late 1930s the French sided with Britian to appease the Germans. They played their own part in Chamberlain’s debacle at Munich, and cast their Czech allies under the proverbial bus. With the German invasion of the rump of Czechoslovakia the French and British renewed the old Entente, and drew their line in the sand regarding the German ambitions against Poland. Despite this, Paris was desperate to avoid war, not the least because of the decrepit state of the Army. Despite the German and Italian intervention during the Spanish Civil War along the French border, the French refused to support any side of that conflict, and thus would find themselves surrounded, with Germany, Italy, and a Spain now controlled by the German leaning Franco along three major frontiers, with the Maginot Line and the bulk of France’s forces only guarding the German frontier.