Summary
Though victorious, France lost 1.5 million men in World War
I, and had 3.5 million wounded. After the war, France
faced an increased death rate was up and falling birth rate. The workforce
accordingly declined, and France never fully recovered during the inter-war
period. Steel production, a good indication of the status of heavy industry,
was more than cut in half, and both agriculture and industry fell into serious
decline after the war. The value of the franc fell by about 50 percent during
1919, the first year of peace. To pay off bondholders, France was forced to
borrow at extremely high short-term rates.
The French government took little action to rectify the economic situation,
relying on laissez-faire economics instead. The advocates of socialism began to
align themselves in protest of government inaction during the early years of the
inter-war period, but the threat from the left was quickly quashed by a
coalition of the petite bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. The fears of the
petite bourgeoisie were represented by the Bloc National, a coalition of
rightist forces. The Bloc national was determined not to bow to the needs of
the lower classes. Under the leadership of this conservative coalition, the
French government became totally committed to the belief that Germany should be
severely punished for its actions during the war, and should be made to foot the
bill for France's war debt. The left put up only slight, disorganized protest
to these decisions.
Under Raymond Poincare as prime minister between 1922 and 1924, the French
Chamber of Deputies demanded full payment of reparations by Germany. When the
Germans asked for a moratorium on payment, and subsequently defaulted on their
reparations, Poincare sent 40,000 troops to occupy the Ruhr in Germany. This
action cost France considerable funding, and failed to force the Germans to pay,
but rather led to the drafting of the Dawes Plan, under which annual
payments of reparations were decreased. Due largely to this failure, the Bloc
National was replaced by the Cartel des Gauches, a moderate socialistic
coalition elected on May 11, 1924. However, the socialists proved themselves
disorganized, disunited, and generally unfit for government. They could not
agree on how to approach the problem of Germany, and could not make headway on
economic issues. Thus in 1926, Poincare was asked to return to the position of
prime minister and granted extreme powers. In 1928, Poincare decreed that the
franc was to be devalued, a bold move which paid off brilliantly in the short-
run.
In July 1929, Poincare resigned from political life, and France was thrown into
disarray for a number of years, without stability or a clear ideology. After
the onset of the depression in the early 1930s, support for extremist groups
began to expand. As the government floundered, support for both fascism and
communism grew, climaxing in February 1934 with a series of riots and police
confrontations resulting in a number of deaths and the barricading of the main
square in Paris. The coming years held much turmoil for the French government,
and in the elections of the spring of 1936, the radical leftist Popular Front
emerged victorious, and a Jew, Leon Blum, became prime minister on June 3, 1936.
Though the concessionary attitude of Blum's government toward the workers earned
him popular support, it also strengthened the resolve of Blum's enemies and
increased the deficit. Blum proved unable to curtail the rapidly depreciating
economy, and a year after its inception, the Popular Front government fell
apart.
The rightist government that ensued restored a degree of economic stability with
a program that included an increase of armaments manufactures. France would
need these armaments soon, since it was not long before France declared war on
Germany, on September 3, 1939.
France ended the war on sounder footing than many other nations. Its economic
problems were not insurmountable, but the political will was lacking to tackle
the fairly major adjustments that did need to be made, and there was little
willingness in French society to adopt new attitudes commensurate with
significant change. The French government was predominantly bourgeoisie and
complacent. The challenge from the left was strong enough to bring the petite
bourgeoisie into cahoots with the bureaucracy, but never strong enough to
present a real threat during the early years of the inter-war period.
Socialists were severely divided among themselves between moderates and zealots,
those who advocated political action and those who advocated outright
revolution. Many traditional socialist sympathizers were concerned that the
movement was far to accepting of communism. Thus the socialist movement grew
only slowly. Finally, with the creation of the Cartel des Gauches, the
socialists presented a workable alliance, in which the communists weren't
powerful enough to threaten the moderate balance.
