Parisians entered the First World War (1914–1918) in August 1914 on a wave of patriotic fervor, but within a few weeks Paris was close to the front lines and bombarded by German aircraft and artillery. The Parisians endured food shortages, rationing, and an epidemic of influenza, but morale remained high until near the end of the war. With the departure of young men to the front lines, women took a much greater place in the work force. The city also saw a large influx of immigrants who came to work in the defense factories. The end of the war on November 11, 1918, saw huge celebrations on the boulevards of Paris.
Paris mobilizes
On June 28, 1914, the news reached Paris of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, and following the terms of their alliances, the German Empire joined Austria-Hungary, while Russia, Great Britain and France went to war against Austria-Hungary and Germany in quick succession. The war was opposed by some prominent socialists and pacifists, but the press and most political leaders pressed for war. On July 31, one day before a general mobilization was declared in France, one of the most prominent leaders of the French Left, the socialist politician Jean Jaurès, an outspoken opponent of going to war, was assassinated at the Café Croissant on Montmartre, not far from the offices of the socialist newspaper L'Humanité, by Raoul Villain, a mentally-unstable man who considered Jaurès an "enemy of France."
Most male Parisians of military age were required to report on August 2 to designated stations around the city for mobilization into the army. The army command expected that up to thirteen percent would not appear, but to their surprise all but one percent appeared as ordered. The poet and novelist Anatole France, at the age of seventy, appeared at the recruitment station to show his support. The Ministry of the Interior was prepared to arrest prominent pacifists and socialists who opposed the war, but, in the face of little opposition to the war, the arrests were never carried out. The next day, August 3, Germany declared war on France.
Paris on the front lines
The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 saw patriotic demonstrations on the Place de la Concorde and at the Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord as the mobilized soldiers departed for the front. But while the Paris newspapers were confident of a quick victory, the Imperial German Army swept through Belgium and marched rapidly toward Paris.
On 26 August, trainloads of refugees from Belgium arrived at the Gare du Nord and were given shelter at the Cirque de Paris. On 30 August, a German plane appeared over Paris and dropped three bombs, one on the Rue des Récollets, one on the Quai de Valmy and the third on the Rue des Vinaigriers; the last bomb killed an elderly woman and wounded three persons. City authorities did not allow the casualties to be mentioned in the press. Another plane appeared on August 31 to drop a message with the claim that the Germans had defeated the French Army at Saint-Quentin, and a third plane appeared on September 1, this time to drop more bombs that killed one person and injured sixteen. These casualties were also concealed from the public.
On August 26, the same day that the refugees from Belgium began arriving in the city, General Joseph Gallieni was called from retirement and appointed military governor of Paris, a title that dated back to the fourteenth century. He quickly began organizing the defenses of the city; the forts around the city were prepared for action, 376 cannons and batteries of new 75-millimeter guns were placed around the city to defend it against aerial attack, and machine guns and a cannon were placed on the Eiffel Tower. Herds of cattle were brought into the city to provide meat in the event of a long siege. The important masterpieces of the Louvre were transported to Toulouse for safekeeping. As the German army drew closer, French President Raymond Poincaré decided to move the French government and the National Assembly to safety in Bordeaux, as had been done in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. On September 2, posters appeared around the city announcing that "The members of the government of the Republic have left Paris to give a new impulse to the national defense."
By the first week of September, the Germans had come within thirty kilometers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. The French and British armies were engaged in fierce fighting with the Germans in the First Battle of the Marne. When one of the German armies turned southeast to attack the French army on the flank, it opened a gap between the German armies, and the French forces, led by Marechal Joffre, saw an opportunity to attack them on their own flank. General Gallieni decided to send all of his reserves from Paris to the front to aid the attack, but lacked enough trains and omnibuses to move the soldiers. On September 5, Gallieni requisitioned a thousand private vehicles, including about six hundred Paris taxicabs and their drivers to carry soldiers to the front at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, fifty kilometers away. The drivers were assembled on the evening of September 6 on the esplanade of Les Invalides. They were mostly the Renault AG1 Landaulet model, with an average speed of . Within twenty-four hours, the Villemomble and Gagny battalions, about six thousand soldiers and officers, were moved to the front at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. Each taxi carried five soldiers, four in the back and one next to the driver. Only the back lights of the taxis were lit; the drivers were instructed to follow the lights of the taxi ahead. Most of the taxis were demobilized on September 8, but some remained longer to carry the wounded and refugees. The taxis, following city regulations, dutifully ran their meters. The French treasury reimbursed the total fare of 70,012 francs. The Germans were surprised and pushed back by the French and British armies. The number of soldiers transported by taxi was small compared to the huge armies engaged in the battle, and the military impact was minor, but the effect on French morale was enormous; it demonstrated the solidarity between the people and the army.
Fearing a long siege, General Gallieni did what he could to reduce the number of Parisians who needed to be fed; a dozen free trains were organized on 5 September to take Parisians to the French provinces. An emergency census ordered by Gallieni on September 8 showed that the population of Paris had dropped to 1,800,000, or only 63 percent of the population counted in 1911. By October, public transportation was again running in the city. The military government declared a moratorium on rents for those Parisians who had been summoned into the army and protected them from legal action until the end of the war. As of December 20, pedestrians could walk freely in Paris once again, but vehicles were only allowed to enter and leave Paris by fourteen of the fifty-five city gates that were open from five in the morning until ten at night. The government returned to Paris on December 11, and President Poincaré was again able to meet with his Council of Ministers in the Élysée Palace. The front lines moved further north, and by 4 January 1915, Paris was no longer considered to be threatened. Nonetheless, the city was bombed by a German Zeppelin airship on March 21, 1915, and by German planes on May 11 and May 22.
Daily life
The Parisians gradually adjusted to the life of a city at war. Avenue de l'Allemagne was renamed Avenue Jean-Jaurés, and the Rue de Berlin became the Rue de Liège. The Grand Palais was converted to a military hospital. After a brief interruption, the theaters of Paris reopened, presenting plays with patriotic themes, and the cafés-concerts, which offered music, food and dancing, were crowded.
As it became evident that the war would be long, the government began to take over the system of food distribution in the city. A law of October 1915 allowed the state to requisition wheat and other grains at a price fixed by the government. In 1916, the controls were extended to milk, sugar and eggs. A Ministry of Food Supply was created in 1917 to better control the distribution, and to tax the food products to limit consumption. In May 1916, sugar was taxed at 1.3 francs per kilo, while margarine, which had largely replaced extremely-scarce butter, was taxed from 2.70 to 3.10 francs per kilo. A standard loaf of bread, called the pain national ("national bread"), was introduced on June 29, 1916; it was made with a more rustic flour than the traditional Parisian white loaf. Restrictions were tightened even further on February 25, 1917, with the requirement that only a single type of loaf of bread could be sold; it weighed seven hundred grams, was eighty centimeters long, and was sold twenty-four hours after it was baked. Special breads and brioches were forbidden. Other food staples were also rationed; the municipal council provided a ration of 135 grams of potatoes per day per person to poor families.
Reliable sources of electricity and heat for the city population was another urgent need; the major coal mines of northern France were to the north behind the German lines. The problem was especially urgent during the bitterly cold winter of 1916–17 (Turnip Winter, when temperatures fell to seven degrees below zero Celsius. The municipality reserved supplies of coal for the elderly, the unemployed, and the families of mobilized soldiers; they were permitted a fifty kilogram sack of coal every forty days for a payment of 4.75 francs. Shortages of coal also limited the generation of electricity, and sometimes the tram lines could not operate for lack of power.
As men were drafted into the army, women frequently took their place, first as teachers and ticket clerks on the metro and tramways, then for factory working. By 1916, they were driving streetcars; on June 1, 1917, the first women mail carriers began delivering letters in the 10th and 17th arrondissements. Parisian fashions were modified for the benefit of working women; skirts were made shorter, and corsets were made less tight. New words entered the French language: a factrice for a woman postman; a conductrice for a woman tram driver, and a munitionnette for a woman working in a munitions factory. The first business school for women, the École supérieure de commerce in Paris opened on December 2, 1915.
While the government stressed efficiency and the maximization of supplies for the army, the working class was largely committed to a traditional sense of consumer rights, whereby it was the duty of the government to provide the basic food, housing and fuel for the city. There was also a sense that hoarding and War profiteering were evils that citizens should organize to combat.Tyler Stovall, "The Consumers' War: Paris, 1914-1918." French Historical Studies (2008) 31#2 pp: 293-325.
Industrial Paris
Since coal mines and major industrial cities of the north were behind German lines, the government was forced to reorganize the industry of Paris to provide the enormous quantities of weapons and ammunition that the army needed. The munitions factories of Paris had to produce one hundred thousand 75-millimeter artillery shells every day, in addition to other munitions, cannon, rifles, trucks, ambulances, and aircraft, as well as building the machine tools and factory equipment needed to expand production. The effort was led by Albert Thomas, a socialist politician who became the Secretary of State for Artillery. In 1915, more than a thousand Paris enterprises were working in the sector of National Defense.