"WWI Casualties - France" Topic

France seems to get a bum rap post WWI for their military but the following startled me and I think goes a long way to explaining their post WWI mindset.

France in 1914 had a total population of around 40 million.Of that assuming normal 50-50 male-female split they had potentially 20 million men (ranging in age from 1 to 100). Of those 20 million potential soldiers about 1.7 million died and another 4.3 million were wounded. So close to one in 10 men dies in the war and another 1 in 5 were wounded.

In total more than one out of every four men was either killed or wounded and when discussing military aged men probably closer to one in three. In addition due to the nature of their inheritance laws and other factors France had a birthrate far below other European countries at the time, especially Germany. There is a reason large numbers of Germans, Irish, Poles, etc. emigrated to the U.S but few Frenchman and mainly it that their population was relatively stable and had little excess to pressure immigration

To put that in perspective that would be like saying the current US population incurred 13.6 million deaths and 34.4 million wounded in the current war.

Is it any wonder their mindset was so radically different in the 1920's and 1930's?

The Austrians lost even more in proportion to their population in World War I, as did the South during the American Civil War. It would difficult to imagine any contemporary Western society willing to risk so much for the sake of any cause.

Kevin

In the War of the Triple Alliance, little Paraguay lost in the neighborhood of 90% of their male population right around the time of the American Civil War.

But yes, I agree, France does get a bum rap.

@jaxenro,

This website suggests 8.3M men served, including almost 0.5M Colonial troops (not included in the metropolitan populace). link

Further to your figures, the 1914 metropolitan French population of 39.6M (which excluded Alsace and Moselle – both lost in 1871) accounted for 9% of the European population and 2.5% of the global population. Your 50:50 male/female split is too generous (to males); child mortality below the age of 1 was overwhelmingl male at that time (the pre-WW1 life expectancy of UK males at that time leaps by about 10 years if you ignore infant deaths), as were accidental deaths (especially in the workplace), murder victims and many incapacitating/lethal diseases.

In theory, from 1913 every French male aged between 20 and 48 was eligible for military service – an initial 3 years in the regular forces, then 11 years in the Reserve, and another 14 in the Territorials. When you take into account those outside military age, invalids, and reserved occupations (France also had a substantial navy), you could be looking at barely 50% of your estimated 50% of the total population (ie nearer <25%). That makes their losses even more staggering, although you would also need to factor in men who were wounded more than once, and men who were wounded (possibly more than once) and then killed – it's not unusual late on in the war to see British/Empire soldiers with 4-5 "wound stripes" on their sleeves.

Incidentally, I'm not sure how true this is, but their losses in WW1 are supposedly the cause of the habit of Frenchmen in public life having one (or more) mistresses.

I read an observation once that stated that the armies of the period lost cohesion when their casualties equaled the numbers of troops they started the war with. I think it holds true for France, Germany and Russia.
Bob

To what extent do the numbers include colonials. If the population numbers do not include the population in the French colonies but the casualty figures do include troops from the French colonies in Africa and Asia it will skew the results.

Bill N: My understanding was neither colonial populations or casualties were included but I could be wrong on the casualties but I don't think so.

Supercilius Maximus: Definitely I overstated the percentage of men available for service possibly by a factor of two as you suggest. But even at that rate it is staggering. I would be willing to wager that most of the families in France either had a son, brother, nephew, or close friend killed or wounded in the war. Not to mention the cases of "shell shock" and what we term PTSD that probably affected large segments of the population.

My main point is that it really isn't any wonder that by the 1930's they neither had the resources or inclination to fight an offensive war against a major European power. I think once the euphoria of winning wore off they decided the cost of winning was too high and went on the defensive.