Interwar France covers the political, economic, diplomatic, cultural and social history of France from 1918 to 1939. France suffered heavily during World War I in terms of lives lost, disabled veterans and ruined agricultural and industrial areas occupied by Germany as well as heavy borrowing from the United States, Britain, and the French people. However, postwar reconstruction was rapid, and the long history of political warfare along religious lines of the time was ended.
Parisian culture was world-famous in the 1920s, with expatriate artists, musicians and writers from across the globe contributing their cosmopolitanism, such as jazz music, and the French colonial empire was in flourishing condition, especially in North Africa, and in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the official goal was complete assimilation , few colonial subjects were actually assimilated.
Major concerns were forcing Germany to pay for the war damage by reparations payments and guaranteeing that Germany, with its much larger population, would never be a military threat in the future. Efforts to set up military alliances worked poorly. Relations remained very tense with Germany until 1924, when they stabilized thanks to large American bank loans. However, after 1929 the German economy was very badly hit by the Great Depression, and its political scene descended into chaos and violence. The Nazis under Hitler took control in early 1933 and aggressively rearmed. Paris was bitterly divided between pacifism and rearmament, so it supported London's efforts to appease Hitler.
French domestic politics became increasingly chaotic and grim after 1932, moving back and forth between right and left, without clear goals in mind. The economy finally succumbed to the Great Depression by 1932 and did not recover. The popular mood turned very sour and focused its wrath on the corruption and scandals in high government places. There was a growing threat of politicized right-wing violence in the streets of Paris, but the numerous right-wing groupings were unable to forge a political coalition.
On the left, the Popular Front pulled together Radicals (a centrist party), socialists and communists. The coalition stayed in power for 13 months from 1936 to 1937. After massive labor union strikes, it passed a series of reforms designed to help the working classes. The reforms were mostly failures, and the disheartened Popular Front collapsed on foreign policy issues.
War came when Hitler's Germany stunningly reached a détente with Stalin's Soviet Union in August 1939, and both countries invaded Poland in September 1939. France and Britain had pledged to defend Poland and so declared war on Germany.
Wartime losses France suffered severe human and economic damage during the war. The human losses included 1.3 million men killed, or 10.5 percent of the available Frenchmen, compared to 9.8 percent for Germany and 5.1 percent for Great Britain. In addition, 1.1 million veteran men were severely wounded and often incapacitated. Many hundreds of thousands of civilians had died in the Spanish flu, which struck as the war was ending. The population was further weakened by missing births, amounting to about 1.4 million while the menfolk were at war.
In monetary terms, economist Alfred Sauvy estimated a loss of 55 billion francs (in 1913 value), or 15 months' worth of national income that could never be restored. The harsh German occupation had wreaked special havoc on 13,000 square miles in northeastern France. In addition to the smashed up battlefields, the region's railways, bridges, mines, factories, commercial offices and private housing were all massively affected. Germans pillaged the factories and farms, removing machines and tools as well as 840,000 head of cattle, 400,000 horses 900,000 sheep and 330,000 hogs.
The government promised to make it good again, committing 20 billion francs. The plan was to have Germany repay everything by reparations. Repairs and rebuilding were quick and highly successful.Philippe Bernard and Henri Dubief, The Decline of the Third Republic, 1914–1938 (1988) pp. 78–82.Frank Lee Benns, Europe since 1914 (8th ed. 1965) pp 303-4.
Economic and social growth The interwar total population grew very slowly, from 38.8 million in 1921 to 41.2 million in 1936. Educationally, there was steady improvement, and secondary enrollment grew from 158,000 in 1921 to 248,000 in 1936. University enrollment grew from 51,000 to 72,000. In a typical year, there were from 300 to 1200 strikes taking place, jumping to 17,000 in 1936, with the number of strikers soaring from 240,000 in 1929 to 2.4 million in 1936. As in other industrial countries, exports grew rapidly in the 1920s and plunged greatly in the 1930s.
Industrial production recovered to prewar levels by 1924 and declined only by 10 percent during the depression. Throughout the interwar period, steel and coal were strong, and motor vehicles became the major new industrial sector of increased importance during the 1920s.Thelma Liesner, One Hundred Years of Economic Statistics (Facts on File, 1989), pp. 177–200.
Labour movement Labour unions had supported the war effort and grew rapidly until 1919. The general strike and railway strikes of 1920 were a total failure; 25,000 railwaymen active in the unions were later fired, the companies blacklisted union leaders and trade union membership plunged. In 1921, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) split permanently, with more extreme elements forming the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU). It enlisted the syndicalists who wanted direct union ownership and control of the factories by and for the benefit of the workers. It soon lost the spirit of revolutionary syndicalism and came under the close control of the French Communist Party, which in turn was controlled by the Profintern, the Red Trade Union International, based in the Kremlin.Alexander Werth and D. W. Brogan, The Twilight of France, 1933-1940 (2nd ed. 1942) p. 102.
In the 1920s and the 1930s, the Paris Metal Union became the test bed for communist unionism at the plant level. The model spread to all communist unions as the party shifted from winning votes at general elections to control of factory cells. A small number of disciplined party members controlled the cells, which then controlled the entire union at the factory. The strategy was a success and was essential to very rapid growth in the 1930s.Michael Torigian, "From guinea pig to prototype: Communist Labour policy in the Paris metal industry, 1922-35," Journal of Contemporary History (1997) 32#4 pp. 465–81.
Union membership doubled during the war and peaked at 2,000,000 for 1919 out of some 8,000,000 industrial workers, or about 25 per cent. After the plunge in 1921, membership slowly grew to 1,500,000 in 1930, or 19% of the 8 million employed that year. The heaviest losses came in metal factories, textile mills, and construction. The greatest density was in printing, where 40% were members. Blue-collar government workers were increasingly unionized by 1930, especially the railways and trams.D. J. Saposs, Labour Movement in Post-War France (1931) pp. 117–25. online
Great Depression
The Great Depression affected France from 1931 to 1939 but was milder than in other industrial countries.Henry Laufenburger, "France and the Depression," International Affairs (1936) 15#2 pp. 202–224 While the 1920s economy grew very fast at 4.4% per year, the increase in the 1930s was only 0.6%.Jean-Pierre Dormois, The French Economy in the Twentieth Century (2004) p. 31 The depression was relatively mild at first since unemployment peaked under 5%, the fall in production was at most 20% below the 1929 output and there was no banking crisis.Paul Beaudry and Franck Portier, "The French Depression in the 1930s," Review of Economic Dynamics (2002) 5:73–99 The depression had some effects on the local economy, which can partly explain the 6 February 1934 crisis and especially the formation of the Popular Front, led by the leader of the socialist SFIO, Léon Blum, who won the 1936 elections.
The sour economic mood after 1932 heightened French exclusionism and xenophobia, which caused protectionism against importing foreign goods and allowing in foreign workers. Asylum-seekers were not welcome, including thousands of Jews trying to flee Nazi Germany after 1933. Hostility to foreign workers was connected to the lack of a legal framework for the effective treatment of refugees.Greg Burgess, "France and the German refugee crisis of 1933." French History 16.2 (2002): 203–229. The middle classes resented Jews in France and showed anger at competition for jobs or business. That fed anti-Semitism, which was more than a symbolic protest against the republic or communism. By the end of 1933, France began to expel refugee Jews, and right-wing movements escalated their rhetorical anti-Semitism.Vicki Caron, "The Antisemitic revival in France in the 1930s: the socioeconomic dimension reconsidered." Journal of Modern History 70.1 (1998): 24–73. online
Social and cultural trends Religion Almost all of the population used church services primarily to mark important life events, such as baptism, marriage and funerals. Otherwise, religiosity was steadily declining and already varied enormously across France. The largest groupings were the devout Catholics, the passive Catholics, the anticlerical secularists, and small minorities of Protestants and Jews.W. D. Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France (1992) pp. 3–38 Online
Pope Benedict XV (1914–1922) ended Pope Pius X's harsh anti-modernist crusade and returned to the tolerant policies of Pope Leo XIII. That enabled the French modernizers, such as Christian democrat Marc Sangnier, who had led the liberal-leftist Le Sillon until the Church pressured him into shutting it down, to be restored to the Church's good graces.Gearóid Barry, "Rehabilitating a Radical Catholic: Pope Benedict XV and Marc Sangnier, 1914–1922." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60.3 (2009): 514–533. The new spirit from Rome enabled a permanent end to the rancorous prewar battles between secularism on one hand and Church on the other. It had climaxed in a major victory for the anticlerical Republicans in the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, which disestablished the Catholic Church and took legal control of all its buildings and lands.Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Rebérioux, The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914 (1984) pp. 227–44.
Reconciliation was enabled by the wartime dedication of so many Catholics fighting and dying for the nation and so most allegations of disloyalty disappeared. More immediately, the conservatives secured a large majority in the Chamber of Deputies in the 1919 elections, and Aristide Briand took the opportunity for reconciliation. In 1920, 80 members of Parliament joined the delegation to Rome for the canonization of Joan of Arc. Formal diplomatic relations were reestablished in January 1921. In December 1923 the government set up diocesan associations under control of bishops for the administration of church property that had been seized two decades earlier.
In January 1924, the Briand-Ceretti Agreement was approved by Pope Pius XI and the Holy See recognised the Catholic Associations Culturelles established after the 1905 laws.J. de Fabrègues, J. "The Re-establishment of Relations between France and the Vatican in 1921." Journal of Contemporary History 2.4 (1967): 163–182. The Catholics set up numerous local organizations, especially youth groups, to try to combat falling activism among the remaining church members. In 1919, the Church established a union, French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC), to bargain with employers and act as a political force. It was in competition with socialist and communist labor unions. However, only a few industrial workers were unionized until the 1930s.