Hist 172 – Modern France
Interwar Years
and
Strange Defeat
Impact
• War reparations imposed on Germany
– Source of resentment in new German Republic,
bolstering fascism
• Socialist forces bolstered
– Mixed feelings about war participation
• Mixed feelings about Germany
– Those who wanted peace and understanding
– Resentment
• Anti-Semitism: Jews and financiers responsible
for war
Social impact
• Generational consciousness on the rise
• Tension between those who fought and those who could
not
• Soldiers feel alienated from society
• Many youths, too young to fight, feel left out of the ‘Union
sacrée’
• Disenchantment and alienation going into the interwar
years – fertile ground for instability
Women’s suffrage?
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Before 1917: Denmark, Finland, Norway
Britain: 1918
Germany: 1918
Soviet Russia: 1917
United States: 1920
France? 1944
Why not?
• National Assembly overwhelmingly supported
women’s suffrage
• Senate: refused
– Insufficiently educated
– Too Catholic (anti-Republican)
– Will lead to defeat (memory of Commune of 1871)
– ‘Women’s hands are for kisses, not ballot papers’
International Impact
• Weimar Republic (1918) born of defeat (much
like the Third Republic in France)
• Stiff reparations on Germany: seeds of
discontent
• Communist Revolutions (Russia, successful,
Hungary, thwarted)
• Anti-semitism rears its face in this turmoil
– Romanians, who push back socialist Hungarians,
attack Jews
State of post-war France
• France in tatters
– 1.3 million soldiers dead
– Hundreds of thousands of orphans
• Costly pensions
– Northern industrial area in ruins (where coal was
largely located)
– Further debt: state must pay war bonds sold
during war and must rebuild destroyed areas
Rhineland
• The boundary between France and Germany
– Demilitarized
– To be occupied by allies until reparations were paid
• US and USSR out of the picture by 1918
• Embittered and economically distressed Europe
nations pitted against each other but too
exhausted too fight
Challenges after war
• Largely economic
– Reparations from Germany not forthcoming
– French invasion of the Ruhr (1923) – total political
failure
– Inflation due to gold-standard problems
• Balance of payments
– Struggles over taxes: who should pay?
1920s Economy
• Yet, industrial production increased
– New factories replacing destroyed ones
– France’s recovery of Alsace (lost in FrancoPrussian War) and its rich textile industry
– Workers’ share of gains is very weak
– Syndicalism and Socialists gain support as a result
– Communist Party, initially strong after war,
declines from infighting (Lenin did not help, asking
French workers to repent for contributing to WWI)
Ruhr Crisis, 1923
• Germany refuses to meet repayment schedule
as stipulated in Versailles Treaty
• Britain keeps pressure on France to repay its
own debt to Britain
• France and Belgium invade the Ruhr with
troops and force repayment
• Economic catastrophe in Germany
• France and Belgium pressured to pull out
Ruhr invasion
by France and Belgium
German inflation:
effect of German ruse or economic forces?
League of Nations
• Founded in 1920
• Excluded Soviet Union and Germany (initially)
• Manage land disputes (Germany’s former
colonies)
• Oversee disarmament (of Axis and Allies)
• Foster international cooperation
• An Enlightenment idea (Kant’s Perpetual
Peace)
Failure of League of Nations
• No real enforcement mechanisms
• Reluctance on all sides to disarm
• Economic interests not always aligned with
League’s agenda
• Economic crisis outstripped capacity to secure
international economic cooperation
• Gold standard from 1925 on unleashed
deflationary forces and curtailed the ability of
states to increase money supply once Depression
set in… money supply was bound to balance of
gold payments between nations…
Briandism – Towards a European
Federation?
• Aristide Briand
– Premier and Foreign Minister during much of the
1920s – worked closely with German Gustav
Stresemann
– Briand and Stresemann lay foundations for European
Peace
• Locarno Pact 1925: National boundaries set (except for
Germany’s eastern boundaries)
• International Industrial cooperation
• French/German schoolteachers collaborate on new textbook
to reduce nationalist animosities
• Briand-Kellogg Peace Pact 1928: outlaws war
– Late 1920s: moving towards peaceful collaboration
Things fall apart
• Stresemann dies 1929
• Briand dies in 1932
• Britain more interested in its own empire than
participating in economic growth in Europe
• Radical forces in Germany grow (Nazis)
• 1929: Wall Street collapses
• Re-armament: employment!
Depression, 1931-36
• Came late to France. Why?
– Cushioned by small agriculture
– Healthy inflows of gold (investment)
– Slightly more autarkic economic structure
buffeted France from international instability
• Acute economic crisis in 1932-36
– Left returns (Radical Party and Socialists)
Rise of fascist right
• Several populist parties motivated by hate and
the desire to overturn everything
– PPF (Doriot: former Communist)
– Croix de feu (Colonel de La Rocque)
• Rightwing street revolt of February 6, 1934
– Allegedly against corruption
• Really, they exploited a corruption case involving a Jewish
banker and a freemason government minister to voice their
anti-semitism, anti-freemasonry and anti-parliamentarism
– Left coalition collapses in aftermath
February 6, 1934
Rightwing street revolts at Place de la Concorde
Popular Front (1936-37)
• 1934-1936: left wing groups unite
– Marxist parties and syndicalists join forces
• Léon Blum become Prime Minister, 1936
– Dreyfusard
– Jewish
– Socialist
Léon Blum
Popular Front in Action
• Immediate strikes in aftermath of election
– Bottom-up phenomenon: leaders of Communist
Party and CGT were surprised
• A ‘New Deal’, not socialism
– 40 hour work week in industry
– Paid vacations
– Compulsory arbitration of labor disputes
– Bank of France brought under state control
– Nationalization of aircraft plants
Economic crisis continues
• Inflation cancels out workers’ gains
• Unemployment remained high
• Economic failure
– Fault of the Left or Right?
Lead-up to 1940
• Blum pushed out in 1937.
• Center-left coalition collapses, fueling the rise
of Communist and fascist parties.
• ‘Better Hitler than Blum!’
Defeatism
• Maginot Line
• Slow to respond to Nazi threats
• Western capitulation to Hitler’s central
European annexations (Austria and
Czechoslovakia in 1938, Poland in 1939)
Drôle de guerre
Phoney War (Sept 1939-May 1940)
• Few serious engagements
• Time of preparation, a sense of inevitable war
but no real panic or great initiative
• Could the Allies have stopped Germany had
they intervened after Germany’s invasion of
Poland?
France invaded
Fall of the Third Republic
• May 10, 1940
• June 14, Germans parade down the Champs
Elysée
• Prussian invasion of 1870 had prompted 3rd
Republic
• Germany’s invasion of 1940 brought about its
end
Down the Champs Élysées
Hitler in Paris