French Strategy on the Western Front, 1914-1918

Abstract

From the beginning to the end of World War I the western front was the principal theater of war. It was primarily the damage suffered there that caused Germany's defeat. Right up to the November Armistice, by which time both Britain and America had fielded some two million men in that theater, the strongest Allied force in the west was the French army. France dominated the Allies' western strategy until the spring of 1917; in 1918 a Frenchman became the Allied commander in chief. Despite losing 40 percent of its coal and 58 percent of its steel output in the provinces overrun by Germany, by 1918 France was producing more artillery and munitions than was Britain. It supplied the American Expeditionary Force with all its field guns and tanks, most of its aircraft, and four-fifths of its shells, but the cost was commensurate. France's war expenditure has been estimated at 48.2 million francs, compared with a national income of 38.2 million francs in 1913. Of the 8.41 million French soldiers mobilized, 1.38 million were killed and 3.6 million wounded, 806,000 of them so grievously that they could not return to the line. French casualties relative to population were higher than for any other Great Power. There are many reasons, then, for studying French strategy in 1914—18, yet it is still under-researched. A massive official history of Les armees francaises dans la Grande Guerre and several revealing memoirs were published between the wars. In the 1960s the opening of the military archives in the Château de Vincennes made possible the outstanding studies by Guy Pedroncini, who remains the leading authority on the topic. Nonetheless, interest in France s war experience has been directed more toward combatant and civil morale, to society and the economy on the home front, and to war aims and diplomacy, than to strategy. Perhaps because the campaigns on the western front, however horrifying, were patently fought to liberate the national territory, they were never so controversial as they have remained in Britain.