France's Great War
80% of French males between 15 and 49 years old were called up to serve in WWI; 1.2m died, 4.2m were wounded. In this the centenary year of The Great War, Dick Fowler reflects on some of the factors that led to France’s involvement.
On the 16th July 1914 French President Raymond Poincaré and his Prime Minister René Viviani left Dunkirk on the battleship France for a Baltic cruise to meet the Csar in St Petersburg. Twelve days after the French President and his consort had set sail, the Austrians declared war on Serbia. Paris was too distracted with the acquittal of Mme Caillaux for the murder of the Figaro editor; whilst M. Caillaux, the former Prime Minister and close friend of Poincaré, threatened to expose Poincaré’s secret liaison with the Pope. In spite of only receiving scraps of critical information, France was additionally obliged to make a courtesy visit to Stockholm on the return journey.
The shooting of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph’s son Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia in Sarajevo caused no real upset to the leaders of the day. But their killer Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, was just the pretext the Austrian minister von Berchtold needed to accuse the Serbs and foment a war in which he could destroy Serbia. The only worry was that the Russians would support their Slav kinfolk and for that he needed German acquiescence. This, the Germans were only too willing to give, providing the Austrians joined in an alliance against Russia.
Wilhelm II’s Chancellor Helmuth von Moltke saw the situation as ripe for pursuing an age old Prussian agenda to overwhelm France. Von Moltke approved Berchtold’s plan as long as the Austrians acted quickly and were then ready to hold off Russia. The Czar was reeling from defeat by the Japanese, and in 1905 Russia had suffered its first revolution.
Moltke and the generals felt that with a weakened Russia, and the Austrians bound into a mendacious alliance, now was the moment to act. Britain was bogged down in Ulster, after giving Home Rule to the rest of Ireland. Nor did she have a large standing army. Wilhelm II in spite of his bellicose reputation was not in favour, was kept in the dark and virtually forced by Moltke, von Falkenhayn, War Minister, and von Lyncker, the Military Cabinet Chief’s machinations, into signing a declaration of war. The German people were not in favour and it was only the German cabinet’s manipulated declaration of war from Russia that forced them into line. In truth it was to be a war of conquest going in the other direction.
The Austrians were slow to start (13th August 1914) and found the Serbs were more than a good match. On the 3rd August 1914 the Germans declared war on France.
The previous Wilhelm II and Csar’s relationship was broken by the German war cabinet’s intrigues and there was no way back from the brink. It was a war started by very few people caught up in a tortuous relationship: it threatened the whole structure of what were in reality archaic systems of monarchs and powerful military men.
The forces of democracy and nationalism were already shaking this structure and its “leaders” felt, maybe unconsciously, that war was the only way to maintain their control. It was a very risky strategy – catastrophic as it turned out.
The war seemed to come out of the blue.There were insecurities all round Europe which stretched all round the world. Britain, France, and Germany had grown through industrial revolution and their colonies provided raw materials and trade.
The main protagonists had been in alliances of long standing: Prussia, Russia, and Austria in the Holy Alliance since 1815; then broken up through a Balkan policy dispute between Russia and Austria and Hungary. In 1890 the Kaiser refused to sign a ‘reinsurance treaty’ with Russia. Bismarck, the German chancellor who had directed the alliances carefully to this point maintaining peace, had been sacked by the militaristic Wilhelm II. The French attacked Germany and became badly unstuck in 1870 with Napoleon III being captured at Sedan. Paris had been surrounded and besides having to pay 5 billion ‘francs or’ of retribution, they lost 93% of Alsace and 26% of Lorraine. Bismarck, against this annexation, knew it would be a permanent sore in the Franco/German relationship.
In 1892 Russia and France signed a treaty to countervail the German and Austro/Hungarian alliances. France loaned large sums to Russia to develop its railways etc. and Russia made huge leaps in its development, only marred by the first revolution of 1905.
Britain signed the Entente Cordiale with France in 1904 after centuries of persistent enmity. Not a full alliance, but an agreement to go to France’s aid were she attacked. This effectively linked Britain, France and Russia, confirmed by the Anglo Russian Convention of 1907, ‘The Triple Alliance’.
Throughout the period there were Franco-German commercial partnerships in cars Delamere-Deboutteville/Benz, Panhard & Levassor /Daimler; in steel, French companies Schneider & De Wendel with the Germans Krupp and Thyssen freely collaborating in each others’ factories. The de Wendel family in Lorraine found itself split with Robert refusing German nationality and Henri based in the Reichstad. The French suffering a negative balance in the relationship were further aggravated by the loss of mines and industry in Alsace and Lorraine. Rivalry occurred in the sharing out of the African colonies, in spite of the 1885 Berlin conference which sought to smooth this out. Germany got Cameroon, Togo, Namibia Tanganyika (or Zanzibar), while France could solidify its conquests in North and Central Africa. Morocco was a stumbling block and it was the German ‘gunboat diplomacy’ which led to the Algésiras Conference in 1906 which granted Morocco full independence.
The accumulation of these rivalries caused German insecurity. Its response was a massive increase (90% of national budget) spent on the German Imperial army and navy. Admiral Von Tirpitz’s goal was to overwhelm the British Dreadnought battleships. Poor internal tax systems were causing unrest amongst the middle and working classes.
Pierre Bezbakh of Paris-Dauphine University in Le Monde (12th November, 2013) writes about various Marxist theoreticians’ interpretation of imperialists striving to find profit through the exploitation of colonies and them being driven to fight each other for them. Today, maybe, 100 years on, we can appreciate in the hindsight the innumerable and different pressures.
For me, the map showing the extent of the German unification in 1871 shows what would have been a powerful economic unit, well able to thrive under an enlightened democratic government. And I am left wondering whether this was all simply thrown away due to older ideas of Prussian militarism, land hunger and a complete disregard of the opportunities to share industrial and agricultural progress?