France and the Après Guerre, 1918-1924: Illusions and Disillusionment

Although victorious in the First World War, the French of the Third Republic soon learned the devastating price of success. The grave loss of life and incredibly harsh conditions during and after the war shook survivors to the core. The extraordinary suffering would eventually bring about the collective failure of national nerve in the 1930s that led to the appeasement at Munich and the collapse before German invasion in June 1940. But during the Après Guerre--the half decade following World War I--the French held out hope for a return to the ideal conditions of the Belle Epoque, a hope that gradually gave way to disillusionment. Benjamin Martin's close examination of the aftershocks felt by the French and their world at war's end is a story masterfully told and thoroughly gripping. Using astute analysis and the cultivation of detail to paint a fresco of French society, Martin vividly describes the period's changes, remainders, exultations, fears, lives, deaths, addictions, crimes, figures grand and small, significant and not, remembered or forgotten. Through compelling character sketches of the great politicians of the day, including Georges Clemenceau, Raymond Poincaré, and Aristide Briand, Martin reveals the inner workings of French political life and its role in society as political figures sought to make sense of the tumultuous times. The collective portrait builds to overwhelming sadness. More than 1.3 million Frenchmen had been killed in the war, nearly one in three of those aged eighteen to forty-two. Material damage was estimated to total 55 billion francs. Inflation, hardly known in France during the nineteenth century, soared, while the franc declined disastrously against other currencies. Professionals and rentiers--the social groups that had provided the political and intellectual leadership of the Third Republic before 1914--were struck disproportionately hard by both the war and its aftermath. The new demands of feminism and of changing moral codes, a growing fascination with suicide and drugs, and, above all, the utter strangeness of the postwar world left many in anomie. A devastated France was left to face Germany essentially alone as the United States refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty, Great Britain exhibited early interest in restoring trade with Germany, and one-time ally Russia collapsed into Bolshevism. As Martin shows, French frustration reached a climax in 1923 with the occupation of Germany's Ruhr Valley as a means of compelling the payment of reparations. The failure of this Ruhr incursion meant the end of serious efforts to control Germany. France and the Après Guerre, 1918-1924 shows in convincing detail that the men who had won the war had lost the peace. Their struggle, and that of French society, makes a captivating and moving story.