322 Chapter Nine
sources on munitions production and front line soldiering to a degree
otherwise unattainable. French production of 75 mm shells, for exam
ple, became adequate to the demand in 1915 and peaked at over
200,000 per day—twenty times the original scale. Later, a shift to new
weapons—big 155 mm artillery pieces, and such novelties as airplanes
and tanks—became more important than mere numbers of shells.
Here too the French equaled or exceeded what the other great powers
were able to accomplish, so much so that when the American Ex
peditionary Force began to arrive in France, most of its heavy equip
ment was, by arrangement, supplied from French factories and arse
nals.^35 France, more than Britain and far more than America, became
the arsenal of democracy in World War I.^36
The Germans had a different problem. Their industrial resources
were far greater than those of France, and in 1914 nearly half the adult
male labor force was not immediately affected by mobilization, having
been excused from military training.^37 A substantial cushion therefore
remained in Germany between absolute limits of production set by
available manpower and materials and the escalated demand for shells
and more shells that started in October when initial stocks stored in
government arsenals began to run out. As a result, officers of the
German War Ministry could simply demand more from the civilian
economy; and, for many months, more was in fact forthcoming, with
out the wholesale improvisation and assignment of manpower to
which the French resorted from the beginning.
On the other hand, before 1914 Germany had imported a number
of key materials for the waging of war. Copper needed to manufacture
shell casings and for electrical machinery had come from Chile; so, by
coincidence, did nitrate, required for the production of gunpowder
and fertilizer. From the moment war broke out, the Royal Navy de
clared a blockade of Germany’s coastline and made access to overseas
- Practically all the AEF’s artillery and tanks were French; so were 4,791 of a
total of 6,287 airplanes used by the Americans, not to mention 10 million 75 mm shells.
Cf. André Kaspi, Le temp des Américains: Le concours américain à la France, 1917–1918
(Paris, 1976), pp. 244–45.
- Cf. figures for production of different types of arms in Hardach, The First World
War, p. 87. France led the allies in every category except rifles and machine guns
according to this compilation. In some lines, e.g., airplanes, France also exceeded Ger
man production. See James M. Laux, “Gnome et Rhône: Une firme de moteurs d’avion
durant la Grande Guerre,” in Fridenson, 1914–1918: L’autre front, p. 186.
- Before the army reforms of 1913 Germany called up only 53.12 percent of the
eligible age class, whereas France called up 82.96 percent, i.e., all who were physically
fit. These figures come from Hans Herzfeld, Die deutsche Rüstungspolitik vor dem Welt
krieg (Bonn-Leipzig, 1923), p. 9.
