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France lost 1,322,000 men in World War I - the greatest percentage in war dead relative to population of any of the belligerents. More than 125,000 lost an arm or a leg, and 42,000 had been blinded. France emerged from the war with a large government financial obligation to those disabled by the war, to 600,000 who had been made widows by the war, and to more than 750,000 orphans. France had a labor shortage in its cities and its farmlands. Millions of acres of farmland had gone out of production. Like Britain, France had been an exporter of capital before the war and had become a borrower during the war. After the war, France constinued to suffer inflation, with real wages below what they had been in 1911.
With a labor shortage, France's labor movement was in a stronger bargaining position. And with the economic devastation and the hunger that many unionized workers felt at the end of the war, organized labor was eager to drive for improvements. Many in the labor movement were encouraged by the Bolshevik Revolution, believing that the revolution indicated that the "bourgeoisie" were vulnerable against the strength of worker unity. Like workers elsewhere just after the war, France's labor movement believed in remedy through strikes, and in 1919 and 1920 labor strikes rocked the nation. French workers won the eight-hour workday and a shortened workweek. But they also helped retard France's economic recovery.
The labor movement and the Bolshevik Revolution frightened France's middleclass. Many from the middleclass had been angered by the Bolsheviks having confiscated French-owned property in Russia and by the Bolsheviks canceling debts owed to French people who had invested their savings in tsarist bonds - a portion of the 50 percent in foreign investments that the French had lost because of World War I. The Bolshevik confiscations had energized the anti-Bolshevism of France's prime minister, Clemenceau and France's president, Raymond Poincaré. A large section of France's population was anti-Communist, and many associated Communism with the labor movement, noting the alliance between Communist intellectuals and the labor movement. And to preserve order, a large section of France's population supported government action against the Left.
France had a quick succession of prime ministers. Clemenceau was attacked for not getting more for France at the Paris Peace Conference, and he resigned as prime minister in January 1920. Poincaré's term as president ended a month later. Clemenceau was followed as prime minister by Alexandre Millerand, who was adamantly opposed to labor strikes. Then came the short reign of Georges Leygues as prime minister. And in January 1921 Leygues was followed in turn by Aristide Briand's return as prime minister.
While Briand was in office, the economy continued to decline, and the French were upset with Germany's apparent stall in making reparation payments, which the French wanted for reconstruction. Briand was a man of the Left and an internationalist, and to many French people Briand appeared too soft on the Germans. Briand was forced to resign in January 1922. And following Briand as prime minister was the former president, Poincaré, who also became minister of foreign affairs and was expected to be tough on the Germans.
The Poincaré government introduced financial reforms, and it tried to hold down taxes in order to increase incentives and rebuild the economy. French chemical, textile and metal trades began to recover and advance. France needed to import workers and did so mainly from Italy, Belgium and Spain - people who took the more menial jobs and were resented by most people because they were foreigners. New technical schools were established in France. And the French spent billions to repair their nation's war-torn northeast, where factories, farmlands, roads, railways, public buildings and homes had been destroyed and mines flooded. France's production in 1919 had been fifty-seven percent of what it had been in 1913, and by 1923, under Poincaré, production rose to 87 percent of that level.
In 1923, parliament turned down an attempt by Poincaré to raise taxes to cover government expenses, which put France on a course of living beyond its means. Meanwhile in Lorraine, which France won from Germany at the Paris Peace Conference, the French were acting like colonizers and alienating its inhabitants. Lorraine had been integrated economically with Germany and it was suffering from economic dislocations. People in Lorraine were unhappy with France's social security system, which they found inferior to Germany's.
The political organization in France that Mussolini admired, Action Française, had little support among the French, and its newspaper had only a very modest circulation. Action Française was a movement that first appeared in the late 19th century. Its leader, Charles Maurras, had described it as favoring traditional values, as monarchist, and as favoring a return to pre-industrial society. Maurras opposed what he saw as the corruption of modernity, the move to democracy and what he called parliamentary chatter. He claimed that democracy in the name of abstract liberty suppressed individual liberties and ended in despotism.
People belonging to Action Française were for a unified and exalted France, which they believed could be accomplished by recognizing France as a Catholic nation. The membership of Action Française was largely Catholic, but they were only a small minority within the Church. And they tended to be anti-Semitic, at least a few of them complaining about Jewish gold. About 25 to 30 percent of the movement's members were from the lower middle class, many of these members feeling threatened by the competition from big business and Jewish merchants. Some of Action Française's 200,000 supporters in the early 1920s were school teachers, librarians, traveling salesmen, white collar workers, and civil servants, some of whom felt that they were being held back because of their sympathies for monarchy and for the Church.
Maurras remained concerned about the well being of rural France. He saw rural poverty as driving peasants to the wicked cities in search of work, to the factories where his support was weakest. But this concern for the peasants brought Action Française little support from France's many small farmers, who saw little benefit in turning back socially or politically to the 19th century.
Maurras was most comfortable as an intellectual and as a critic, but his movement prided itself on its action. The movement engaged in protest demonstrations, and occasionally Action Française engaged in street brawls. Some of its brawlers were veterans of World War I, and a few were priests. But its brawling was not on the same scale as that of Mussolini's Fascists. And Maurras had no hope of gaining power through a rising in the streets. Instead, he hoped that military leaders would come around to his point of view, overthrow the republicans and arrest those he considered subversive. If the elite acts, claimed Maurras, the crowd will eventually follow, knowing in their heart that he, Maurras, was right.
Action Française was a dying movement. Too few wanted a return of the monarchy -including the Church's younger priests. Leaders of Action Française attacked opponents within the Church with great vehemence, and the Vatican became disgusted with the movement. In 1926, Pope Pius XI condemned Action Française and put the works of Maurras on the Index, leaving Action Française more isolated. And competing with Action Française for support among the dissatisfied was a small organization called the Young Patriots (Jeunesses Patriotique), which was attracting young men interested in fascism.
In France, as in Britain, conditions were not right for either fascism or a Leninist-style revolution. The Great War was over and people could express their frustrations by voting. The status quo in France was strong enough to defeat with any leftist coup. And by 1924 France was enjoying the beginnings of economic recovery. Its capital, Paris, was attracting people from around the globe. Students, teachers, artists, and tourists were arriving from abroad, spending their money and becoming a valuable source of income for the nation.
The United States dollar went further in France than it did in the United States, and many Americans interested in the arts flocked to Paris, escaping what to many appeared to be the aridity and narrowness of American culture. This included some American black veterans, who found in France less of the discrimination that they had experienced in the United States. And with them came Jazz.
One problem that remained in France, however, was the same problem that Italy had before Mussolini took power: an unstable parliamentary government. At the beginning of 1924 the government could not repay its short-term debts. For money with which to pay government debts, parliament finally approved Poincaré's demand for a rise in taxes. And these taxes fell hardest on those with modest incomes, while many with wealth took advantage of loopholes in the tax law. Having failed to convince the public that the increase in taxes was a necessity to be shared equally by all, the middle of France's spectrum of voters drove the conservatives from power, bringing in their place a leftist-moderate coalition government headed by Edouard Herriot, an eloquent former professor of literature.
The new government favored more state controls over the economy. And the new government showed itself to be less consumed by anti-Communism and less given to hatred toward Germany. The new government extended official recognition to the Soviet Union. It favored more of an accommodation with Germany, and it approved of a revision in reparation payments by Germany.
A major problem confronting the new government was inflation and the falling value of France's currency, the franc, which was not on gold as it had been before the war. And the new government was burdened by people of wealth who were trying to protect their savings by sending it abroad, which was accelerating the decline of the franc - while capital was badly needed at home to help finance reconstruction. The Herriot government asked Parliament for a law to control flight of capital. The Herriot government also sought a shift of the tax burden toward those with wealth. The great financial houses in France rallied against the Herriot government. Banks refused to make loans, and the press described the Herriot government as engaging in socialism and undermining the capitalist system. Parliament refused to approve a law limiting the export of capital, and capital continued to flee the country. Enough people shifted their sympathies away from the Herriot government that in April, 1925, the government fell.
In the following fourteen months, other governments were formed and fell. And financial chaos continued. Hooked on the notion that reparation payments from Germany would relieve the money problem, the government continued to borrow. By 1926 the government treasury was empty, and again the government could not repay its short-term debts. The franc had fallen to a new low - 50 francs to one American dollar - which meant that Americans with dollars could buy more. And some French saw Americans as having plotted the franc's fall. A few French attacked busses filled with American tourists. But more common were crowds of women storming department stores and small shops, rushing to convert their falling francs into durable goods.
The French nation responded to the emergency by bringing Poincaré back to power as prime minister. Poincaré cut government spending and raised taxes. He balanced the budget and paid off government debts. The franc recovered, and, in 1928, Poincaré pegged the franc as 25 to the dollar (20 percent of its prewar value). And the franc was then tied to gold, as it had been before the war.
The economy improved. In 1929 the government's treasury reached a surplus of 90 billion francs. The French were enjoying prosperity, built largely by private initiative and partly by the government having ended wartime restrictions. France's economy was benefiting from factory methods imported from the United States - which had at first been resisted by France's labor unions. And France's agriculture had been adopting more scientific methods, agriculture remaining prosperous and as France's greatest source of wealth.
Meanwhile, military service had been reduced to one year. Many were leaving the military because of low pay. Some in the military high command were opposed to giving up horses, and men in the high command were rejecting what they considered "utopian" thinking about mechanized warfare. They were at odds with and ignoring one of France's brighter junior military officers, Charles de Gaulle, a teacher of history at France's military academy, Saint-Cyr, and a provocative writer on military subjects. In 1927, after twelve years without a promotion, de Gaulle, at the age of thirty-seven, was finally elevated to the rank of major.
While de Gaulle was largely being ignored, France's military planners won approval for a new defensive line, called the Maginot Line, consisting of tons of steel and concrete, which was to span the length of France's border with Germany. In their minds, the French military was fighting the beginnings of the last war, when defensive warfare was supreme. They had missed the point then, and they were still confused. Warfare was still changing, and their Maginot line would prove worthless.
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Germany and Hitler in the Twenties
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