Hist 172 – Modern France

Interwar Yearsand 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?

• 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 Franco-

Prussian 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, 1934Rightwing 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 guerrePhoney 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 invadedFall 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