As British historian Professor William Philpott put it: “France won the First World War. This simple fact is all but forgotten in the English-speaking world.” French generals coordinated overall allied strategy, rebuilt the shattered Serbian and Romanian armies, threw back the German offensives in the west (both Marne battles, Verdun, and others) and articulated the concepts behind the Hundred Days Offensive that ended the war.
French soldiers did the majority of the fighting, dying, and killing among the western allies. They fought not just in purely French sectors, but also in battles thought to be uniquely American or British such as the Somme, Gallipolli, and the Meusse-Argonne. Other allies gave crucial assistance — Britain, America, and Russia before her collapse above all — but in the end, the victory belonged to Paris. But the cost was horrific.
How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?
About 1.3 million dead and times three wounded. That’s how much blood it took to both defend Paris and liberate conquered French territory. In addition, the northern industrial heartland of France was in ruins. What the Germans didn’t strip mine for the war effort, they blew up to prevent falling into French hands. The rest was wrecked by the warfare which has left a scar on this landscape to this day.
What made things worse was the post-war geopolitical landscape. Germany may have temporarily been weakened by Versailles, but the French knew that all the Germans had to do was decide to rearm, and within a few years a vengeful and powerful enemy still dreaming of a Brest-Litovsk style empire would come a-knockin’.
To maintain the peace out of the wreckage of post-WWI Europe, France needed allies. But she had none she could rely on. The new national states created or supported by Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations were many things, but they were neither powerful enough nor far-sighted enough to serve as a real barrier to either a resurgent Germany or Russia. They were often too busy fighting each other in petty squabbles to truly maintain the peace in Central-Eastern Europe against their more powerful neighbors.
Things were no better when it came to France’s erstwhile Atlantic allies. Britain in particular was so scarred by a war many still believed she should never have entered that she went out of her way to demonstrate neutrality. Not until 1939 did Britain even allow joint staff talks with the French Army — years after it was clear to anyone with a brain that Nazi Germany was a real and dangerous threat that should at least be prepared against.
The US was even worse in this respect. Embittered by the post-war politics and haggling, many came to side with Germany against France, for reasons legitimate and not. Some, like Herbert Hoover, maintained this opinion even after WWII and the Holocaust. At the very least, they certainly saw no need to intervene in a war in Europe ever again.
Thus was France, scarred and bloodied, left to maintain continental security in Wilsonian Europe. Alone. Even if France had a Manstein for a Commander in Chief and a Dick Cheney for a Premier, the prospect would have been daunting. As it was, the French found themselves flailing to prevent what felt like an inevitable second round with starting conditions even worse than the first.
In the 1920s, that meant an overly aggressive stance on German reparations, the encouragement of separatism in Germany’s western areas on the Rhine, and even a military takeover of the Ruhr. Condemned at the time and also later (often by people with…suspect motives), and certainly not a sign of wisdom, this agression was borne of weakness. Time and again, France told either Britain or the US that a security guarantee on their part for Paris would make them less nervous or belligerent. But the guarantee was not forthcoming, for reasons already mentioned.
This was one of the lessons misunderstood by those who fought in the war: alliances can restrain war as much as they encourage it. It was France’s alliance with Britain which prevented the former from considering a preemptive entry into Belgium in WWI, which made military sense, strictly speaking. Prior to July 1914, allies managed to calm their partners down and prevent cataclysm.
Still alone after the Ruhr, France increasingly took a defensive posture, culminating in the Maginot Line. Lots of people like to make fun of this defensive barrier and the “Maginot Line mentality” that came with it. They are wrong. The Maginot Line did its job, and was one of the last positions in France to fall.
Nor was the idea of defense so wrongheaded. France understood that any war against as dangerous and skilled an opponent as Germany would be long, bloody and costly. In such conditions — and with the correct understanding that France would shed most of the blood yet again — a defensive approach made sense.
Some may think that Britain and the US “cracked the code” of war in WWII, which is why their casualties were far lower than in 1914–1918. Professional military historians know better. They know that the only reason the WWII Western Front was not as bloody or bloodier than the first round is because Germany ended up doing most of its fighting and dying in the east — with Russia bleeding far more profusely at Rzhev and Stalingrad than Britain during the horrors of the Somme and Ypres.
Did France make serious mistakes in the years running up to the war?
Yes. Its army, which did NOT lack for talented or brave people, was far too rigid and inflexible. Too many of its elite wrongly believed “better Hitler than Blum.” Many of its actions, such as the Ruhr invasion, were at the very least ill-judged. But given the conditions they faced, any war would have been a difficult and prolonged affair, even if victory eventually came.
And 1940?
All I’ll say about that is this: if the French are cowards for losing so quickly to German might, then the Poles, British, Greeks, Norwegians, and Yugoslavs are also “cowards.” The same unfair verdict could also be said of the hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers who perished fighting desperate but doomed battles around Kyiv, Smolensk and Vyazma. No-one so much as stopped the Wehrmacht until late 1941 or dealt it a serious defeat until the end of 1942.
It is past time that we take the myth of the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” throw it in the garbage, and replace it with real history and empathy for a nation whose bravery, suffering, and hardship deserves proper recognition.
