of the British electorate turned neither to fascism
nor to communism.
France emerged the victor from the Great War,
but no country, excepting Russia, had suffered
more physical damage, human and material. In
the struggle for power on the European conti-
nent, France was the loser. Population losses had
been such that there were now three German for
every two French. French industry had been dev-
astated in northern France. The war had deeply
scarred the towns and countryside of this region,
whereas no battles, apart from the early encoun-
ters in East Prussia, had been fought on German
soil. One in every five Frenchmen had been
mobilised during the war (one in eight in Britain),
1.4 million killed and another three-quarters of a
million permanently invalided. Put another way,
it has been calculated that for every ten men
between the ages of twenty and forty-five, two
were killed, one was totally invalided and three
were incapacitated for long periods of time,
leaving only four available for work. The French
governments faced the common problems of
demobilisation and changeover from wartime and
industrial controls to a peacetime economy. In
addition the French had to cope with the task of
reconstruction in the war-torn regions of France.
The acquisition of Alsace-Lorraine and the
utilisation of the Saar mines were important com-
pensations for the losses suffered, but did not
cancel them out. Financially France was in a dif-
ficult plight. The government had financed the
war not by taxes but largely by making loans at
home and receiving loans from Britain and the
US. After the war, yet more money had to be
found for reconstruction and invalid or widows’
pensions. France was dependent on the goodwill
of the US and Britain. It was also dependent on
receiving reparations from Germany to cover the
gap between what it could earn and what it spent.
French needs and policies in the 1920s have
not received the understanding and sympathy
they deserve. In British judgement, the French
were acting vindictively and arrogantly towards
defeated Germany, and thus were responsible in
part for Germany’s fervent nationalism and for
delaying a ‘normalisation’ and pacification of
Western Europe. Britain came to see its role not
as an ally of France so much as a mediator
between France and ‘helpless’ Germany in the
interests of creating a new balance of power. This
British attitude of ‘conditional’ support could
only strengthen France’s anxieties about its long-
term security once Germany had revived its
strength.
For France the ‘German problem’ was insolu-
ble, because France alone could not enforce any
solution in the long run. Britain and the US could
express their disapproval effectively by applying
financial pressure on a weakened French economy.
But the exaction of reparations from Germany
was, for France, not only a necessary financial
operation; far more was involved. Nothing less
than the question of whether Germany would be
required, and if necessary forced, by the Allies to
abide by all the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
On that issue depended the security of France.
If Germany could set aside reparations with
impunity, then why not also the military restric-
tions and finally the territorial clauses of Versailles?
Marshal Foch had expressed these deep fears when
he called the Treaty of Versailles no more than a
twenty-year truce. France had already lost one pil-
lar of its security when the Senate of the US failed
to ratify the Treaty of Guarantee, and Britain, too,
according to its original terms, had backed out.
The second pillar of its security was the Allied
(including its own) right to occupy the Rhineland
zones and to continue to do so beyond the five-,
ten- and fifteen-year periods specified if Germany
did not fulfil its obligations under the Treaty
of Versailles. After the failure of the Treaty of
Guarantee, the French were naturally all the
more determined to maintain their rights. In the
third pillar, the League of Nations, the French
realistically did not place much faith.
In March 1921, with the Germans appearing
to be evading the military and financial obliga-
tions placed on them, the French, with Britain’s
blessing and cooperation, occupied three indus-
trial German towns. Almost immediately after-
wards the Germans were presented with the total
reparations bill of 132 billion gold marks (£6,600
million) and a method of payment. The Germans
gave way. Reparations were regularly resumed
1
BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE US FROM WAR TO PEACE 137
