France sues for peace in 1917: postwar political developments

Anchises

Banned
Lets assume a scenario where the Brussilov Offensive never happens. Instead we see pointless and costly offensives against the German sectors. Basically a string of Lake Naroch Offensives.

The Tsar and his demoralized military are convinced that the war is unwinnable and sue for peace. Falkenhayn, who stays in charge, actually manages to influence the negotiations enough to moderate German demands. Russia has to cede some territory and has to supply the German Empire with food and resources.

This enables A-H to massively pressure Italy, it butterflies away the Romanian entry and unrestricted submarine warfare. A strengthened Germany (compared to OTL) is able to launch a series of devastating offensives against the French sector of the front.

The French army, close to breaking IOTL, collapses without the prospect of American help.

Soldier councils form making command of the army increasingly harder. Petain tries to bring the army back into fighting shape but is quickly sacked because the french government resigns when its faced with massive strikes and street fighting in Paris.

France is forced to seek peace with the German Empire.

Petain immediately starts laying the foundation for his version of the "stab in the back myth".

What happens next in France?

A Socialist/Communist revolution?

A new republican government struggles on leading to a weak Republic vulnerable to extremism?

The Third Republic manages to regenerate?

A right-wing authoritarian takeover ?
 
Well, given the specifics of the scenario you laid down (The Soldier's councils in particular, as well as a lack of a successful Red Russian Rising which would serve as the catalyst for a "red scare" type event), then the (I presume Socialist-dominated) newly-elected French government is liable to retain power at least temporarily due to having a popular mandate from the people and the military clearly being too tired of war to act as the baton of any right-wing coup. A great deal, however, depends on exactly what peace terms get negotiated and the impact that has on the French economy in the medium to long term, and weather the costs of the war itself or the botched peace process/poor demobalization policies are considered to blame for any post-war recession (In the former case, the Socialists likely get a boost, in the later they lose credability).

The next decade and a half or so likely sees a revolving door of unstable governments, though I imagine the constitutional framework of the 3rd Republic remains intact. Parties will rise on both extremes and maybe there's some moderate political violence, but likely the establishment parties can pull off a policy of transforismo and isolate both the far right and far left to form various centrist coalitions that can at least keep government policy on a moderate keel. That domestic stability though would have to be bought at the cost of withdrawing from international affairs; France being forced to concede its position as a Great Power in the new Anglo-German-Russian rivalry
 

Anchises

Banned
Well, given the specifics of the scenario you laid down (The Soldier's councils in particular, as well as a lack of a successful Red Russian Rising which would serve as the catalyst for a "red scare" type event), then the (I presume Socialist-dominated) newly-elected French government is liable to retain power at least temporarily due to having a popular mandate from the people and the military clearly being too tired of war to act as the baton of any right-wing coup. A great deal, however, depends on exactly what peace terms get negotiated and the impact that has on the French economy in the medium to long term, and weather the costs of the war itself or the botched peace process/poor demobalization policies are considered to blame for any post-war recession (In the former case, the Socialists likely get a boost, in the later they lose credability).

The next decade and a half or so likely sees a revolving door of unstable governments, though I imagine the constitutional framework of the 3rd Republic remains intact. Parties will rise on both extremes and maybe there's some moderate political violence, but likely the establishment parties can pull off a policy of transforismo and isolate both the far right and far left to form various centrist coalitions that can at least keep government policy on a moderate keel. That domestic stability though would have to be bought at the cost of withdrawing from international affairs; France being forced to concede its position as a Great Power in the new Anglo-German-Russian rivalry
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Interesting thoughts!

My rarionale for the soldier councils is extrapolating OTL. The mutinies IOTL were basically a reaction to the pointless french offensives.

ITTL with the full strength of the Germans flooding to the Western Front in early 1917 (even more than IOTL because there is less territory to occupy) and with no U.S. help in sight I think it is not unreasonable to assume that the French army would collapse to a degree.

Not a full revolution but the mutinies don't fizzle out as much as IOTL. Petain manages to stabilize the front with British help but is forced to cooperate with the soldier councils.

So effectively the French army is in a similar shape to the A-H army after the Brussilov Offensive. And it has serious discipline and command issues.

This and domestic troubles lead to a collapse of the government.
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Your proposed Socialist government seems logical. I don't see a right wing coup happening either. The French army won't be in the business of putting down left wingers for a while.

However I have serious doubts that the Republic would stabilize soon. I could see massive radical left wing unrest, similar to what Germany experienced IOTL.
 
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Interesting thoughts!

My rarionale for the soldier councils is extrapolating OTL. The mutinies IOTL were basically a reaction to the pointless french offensives.

ITTL with the full strength of the Germans flooding to the Western Front in early 1917 (even more than IOTL because there is less territory to occupy) and with no U.S. help in sight I think it is not unreasonable to assume that the French army would collapse to a degree.

Not a full revolution but the mutinies don't fizzle out as much as IOTL. Petain manages to stabilize the front with British help but is forced to cooperate with the soldier councils.

So effectively the French army is in a similar shape to the A-H army after the Brussilov Offensive. And it has serious discipline and command issues.

This and domestic troubles lead to a collapse of the government.
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Your proposed Socialist government seems logical. I don't see a right wing coup happening either. The French army won't be in the business of putting down left wingers for a while.

However I have serious doubts that the Republic would stabilize soon. I could see massive radical left wing unrest, similar to what Germany experienced IOTL.

I'm not saying that's not a good rationale; just that having the breakdown of the French war effort on the front line due to poor tactics and treatment by the generals as well as greater German military pressure would strangle the "stabbed in the back" myth in its cradle. Sure, you might get the radical right who's already thinking of the Republic as the... err... woman of the night to believe it, but a clear military defeat in which the Socialist government salvages the country after being duely rather than selling it out following an overthrow of the Republic while the French army is still in the Rhine valley (to use a comparison to Germany's position IOTL) means the moderate right and center are liable to not buy the lie.

Also, keep in mind the mutinies were merely a refusal to launch further offensives and demanding better living conditions (like reliable access to hot meals) rather than abandoning the front.

I can see where you're coming from in terms of the left wing unrest... in the event of a broader backlash against the Right for blaming them and the war for France's downturn. However, I doubt it'd be against the government (who still has electoral legitimacy and is bound to lean left) but rather against the Church, right-wing groups, ect. , while peaceful demonstrators will be calling for greater protectionist measures, investment in industry, ect. To benefit the French working class and "modernize" the nation. In that frame, I see French communism as going down a more Futurist direction along classical Marxist mixed with Progressive/Technocratic lines rather than the decentralized agrarian model, reconciling the French Empire as "tutelage" of the locals through the full stages of Marxist materialist history including capitalist build-up before they can be equal components of French society. Democracy, however, would be respected in the Metropol; it's ingrained in French Liberal culture too deeply, and aristocracy/autocracy too heavily associated with the traditional French Right.
 
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The French army, close to breaking IOTL, collapses without the prospect of American help.

Soldier councils form making command of the army increasingly harder. Petain tries to bring the army back into fighting shape but is quickly sacked because the french government resigns when its faced with massive strikes and street fighting in Paris.

France is forced to seek peace with the German Empire.

What terms do you have in mind in this peace? Is Germany going to simply ask for something close to status quo antebellum or are they going to demand something outrageous like the Septemberprogramm?

If it's a white peace then the French have less to be angry about and that limits the prospect of a right-wing revanchist regime popping up later. If it's something utterly humiliating, well we all know how that went for Germany.
 

Anchises

Banned
Also, keep in mind the mutinies were merely a refusal to launch further offensives and demanding better living conditions (like reliable access to hot meals) rather than abandoning the front.

Yeah but I think they carried with them an inherent risk of serious military setbacks or even the risk of ending the war.

IOTL the Germans never took advantage of the instable situation for various reasons and Petain managed to stabilize the situation.

ITTL, while the soldiers are forming councils and disobeying orders, the Germans are hammering down with successive offensives. Ths situation, from my perspective, seems to be inherently risky. Especially with the disastrous strategic situation ITTL. American entry seems unlikely and Germany is in better shape than IOTL (no Hindenburgprogramm, better access to food).

So Petain has less arguments ("waiting for tanks and the Americans" IOTL) to win the soldiers back. There seems to be a window where things could get out off hand. To me it doesn't seem to be thaaaaat far from "we won't attack" too "the war is lost". Petain might use the harsh measures he did IOTL (firing squads) and that carries the potential for even more discontent.

In this situation the government dissolves because it seems like the army is collapsing. "Petain is saying that he can turn the situation around but even if that is true, our army is unable to conduct new offensives while the Reichsheer is deep in France"

The fall of the government has knockback effects on the mutineers, undermining Petain's situation even further. He basically has to accept the existence of the soldier councils seriously hampering the options to further conduct the war. A comparison would be the early Red Army with its democratization experiments, albeit in a less severe form. Basically the officers have to negotiate with the soldier councils to realize their orders.

Petain is trying to win time, to end this situation but the new government has already lost hope that the war can still be won.

I'm not saying that's not a good rationale; just that having the breakdown of the French war effort on the front line due to poor tactics and treatment by the generals as well as greater German military pressure would strangle the "stabbed in the back" myth in its cradle. Sure, you might get the radical right who's already thinking of the Republic as the... err... woman of the night to believe it, but a clear military defeat in which the Socialist government salvages the country after being duely rather than selling it out following an overthrow of the Republic while the French army is still in the Rhine valley (to use a comparison to Germany's position IOTL) means the moderate right and center are liable to not buy the lie.

Well IOTL after France fell so quickly in 1940, Petain advocated for "rebuilding France".

He blamed Republican weakness for the defeat and wanted to build a new authoritarian and nationalist France to regain lost strength. So here the far right would not have a "stab in the back myth" it would be a "the rotten republic lost because of socialism/democracy/jews/gays/etc."

I think we would see a weird hybrid between the OTL far right leagues in the 30s and between the more extreme forms of fascism in Italy, Spain and Germany.

I still think that the far right has a chance to gain power once the immediate memory of the war has faded enough. A reduced geopolitical importance, the humiliation of defeat and other factors migh lead to a far right power grab in an unstable situation.


What terms do you have in mind in this peace? Is Germany going to simply ask for something close to status quo antebellum or are they going to demand something outrageous like the Septemberprogramm?

If it's a white peace then the French have less to be angry about and that limits the prospect of a right-wing revanchist regime popping up later. If it's something utterly humiliating, well we all know how that went for Germany.

Good question.

Well territory wise the Germans are going to be fairly moderate, they are very exhausted too and they want an end of the blockade.

Luxembourg and certain Belgian areas are annexed.

I think there will be some non-territorial clauses causing resentment.

Reparations, de facto (economic-) annexation of certain ore depositis, military limitations and maybe something similiar to OTLs war guilt clause.
 
@Anchises

1. Yes, there is a serious risk of military setbacks if there's excessive disruption between units in the line which would allow the Germans to successful implement a breakthrough and exploit it before it can be countered; hitting French trench systems in their sides and forming a "rupture" they can send arriving Eastern forces into to pry the system open. However, expecting the French forces not to fight in their own self-defense on a localized level is rather silly: the Russian forces IOTL dissolved because of the "top down" factors of the central government declaring the army dissolved and the war effort to be over as well as the supply system having long since broken down (The German army suffering a similar fate later). This breakdown, however, is the result of "bottom up" factors, meaning you're dealing with a fundamentally different set of motives and actions, and the lose a genuine collapse of military power versus a lose of nerve on the part of the civilian government or the home front. It's the soldiers themselves demanding no more offensives and getting it, so who are they going to see as having "betrayed" them? The civilian government and population who stood behind them, or the generals who'd been throwing them into the suicidal charges to no avail, sent firing squads to try to stop them, allowed the corruption/neglected the logistics that kept them cold and hungery, tried to continue the hopeless war until forced to give in under pressure from Paris and the ranks, and the Czarist autocrats who broke their pledge to not make a separate peace in order to save their throne?

When the veterans associations form (a key base of the rise of Fascist groups in Germany and Italy), they're certainly going to remember the affair and exactly who stood with and against him. Provided the Socialists come to power peacefully (which they will, given how as opposed to the dictatorships in overthrown Russia, Germany, and AH the democratic institutions in France to replace the unpopular governing officials remain intact) there's not much the left has done to earn enmity. Indeed, if the war effort was seen as a mistake ("Why did you send us to die in droves for Russian vanity interests in the Balkans?") the Right is only going to be seen a having sacrificed France's global position by Petain and his ilk's boneheaded offensive tactics that gave no concern for the safety of the common man.

2. Again, the far right might buy it, but given the old military brass is going to be sacked, the professional/drilled army having been hollowed out, ect. Their administrative and public influence has taken a severe knock, while the popular left is on the upswing and holds the reigns. IOTL, the hard line stance in the Great War was seen as having paid off, and the softening and coward ness in the interwar period having been one of the causes of France's rapid lose in 1940 (Not to mention the fact that no left-winger could have gotten power in a Fascist dominated Europe). ITTL, generals, bankers (cutting off loans) and autocrats are to blame for the lose and the Socialist negotiators having brought peace. I fail to see how the Right is going to offer solutions to the problems France will be facing; if anything, I see the radical left being the one to push for major changes and purging the reactionaries.
 

Anchises

Banned
@Anchises

1. Yes, there is a serious risk of military setbacks if there's excessive disruption between units in the line which would allow the Germans to successful implement a breakthrough and exploit it before it can be countered; hitting French trench systems in their sides and forming a "rupture" they can send arriving Eastern forces into to pry the system open. However, expecting the French forces not to fight in their own self-defense on a localized level is rather silly: the Russian forces IOTL dissolved because of the "top down" factors of the central government declaring the army dissolved and the war effort to be over as well as the supply system having long since broken down (The German army suffering a similar fate later). This breakdown, however, is the result of "bottom up" factors, meaning you're dealing with a fundamentally different set of motives and actions, and the lose a genuine collapse of military power versus a lose of nerve on the part of the civilian government or the home front. It's the soldiers themselves demanding no more offensives and getting it, so who are they going to see as having "betrayed" them? The civilian government and population who stood behind them, or the generals who'd been throwing them into the suicidal charges to no avail, sent firing squads to try to stop them, allowed the corruption/neglected the logistics that kept them cold and hungery, tried to continue the hopeless war until forced to give in under pressure from Paris and the ranks, and the Czarist autocrats who broke their pledge to not make a separate peace in order to save their throne?

When the veterans associations form (a key base of the rise of Fascist groups in Germany and Italy), they're certainly going to remember the affair and exactly who stood with and against him. Provided the Socialists come to power peacefully (which they will, given how as opposed to the dictatorships in overthrown Russia, Germany, and AH the democratic institutions in France to replace the unpopular governing officials remain intact) there's not much the left has done to earn enmity. Indeed, if the war effort was seen as a mistake ("Why did you send us to die in droves for Russian vanity interests in the Balkans?") the Right is only going to be seen a having sacrificed France's global position by Petain and his ilk's boneheaded offensive tactics that gave no concern for the safety of the common man.

2. Again, the far right might buy it, but given the old military brass is going to be sacked, the professional/drilled army having been hollowed out, ect. Their administrative and public influence has taken a severe knock, while the popular left is on the upswing and holds the reigns. IOTL, the hard line stance in the Great War was seen as having paid off, and the softening and coward ness in the interwar period having been one of the causes of France's rapid lose in 1940 (Not to mention the fact that no left-winger could have gotten power in a Fascist dominated Europe). ITTL, generals, bankers (cutting off loans) and autocrats are to blame for the lose and the Socialist negotiators having brought peace. I fail to see how the Right is going to offer solutions to the problems France will be facing; if anything, I see the radical left being the one to push for major changes and purging the reactionaries.

Interesting perspective. And certainly agree with most of your points.

However I wouldn't ignore the fact that the right can be populist too. Maybe the French version of Fascism is isolationist, heavily corporatist and republican. So a right actually attractive to large segments of the working class.

I think the (moderate) Socialists governing will have used up their "bonus" after a decade or so. Assuming that postwar France is plagued by economic and social problems.

When your life is still shitty after 12 years of left wing rule, you might be ready to listen to the right again.

However your assumption that the hard left might be the driving factor of French politics is really interesting.

Do you have any ideas about the concrete shape of a CP victory radical French left?
 
Interesting perspective. And certainly agree with most of your points.

However I wouldn't ignore the fact that the right can be populist too. Maybe the French version of Fascism is isolationist, heavily corporatist and republican. So a right actually attractive to large segments of the working class.

I think the (moderate) Socialists governing will have used up their "bonus" after a decade or so. Assuming that postwar France is plagued by economic and social problems.

When your life is still shitty after 12 years of left wing rule, you might be ready to listen to the right again.

However your assumption that the hard left might be the driving factor of French politics is really interesting.

Do you have any ideas about the concrete shape of a CP victory radical French left?

The right can be Populist, but you need to look at what the Right has been in France during the "Long 19th century" in order to understand what you're working with. These are the monarchists, Revachists, and clericalist of the pre-Revolutionary culture; very provincial/catholic-Corprotist/localist in character. This naturally limits it's appeal to the secular bougious, urbanites, and industrialists/industrial workers and Darwinian scientists who were so key to the rise of Nazism in Germany by providing a back door to institutional power. Further, the French Left isn't revolutionary here, so they generate less fear among the traditional power brokers which the military survivors of a right-leaning persuasion can exploit (as well as no Big Red Soviet boogeyman), and as I pointed out your post-war veterans culture is bound to be Leftist. The Republican and isolationist/non-interventionist position is already staked out by the Socialists.

I also doubt France is going to be in a permanent economic malaise, particularly when you consider that, comparatively, France wasn't on nearly as meteoric a rise as Germany was pre-war meaning expectations of growth are lower (and the terms of peace aren't going to be as harsh as Versailles). Indeed, because they're a skilled labor system and can hook into the growing German economy France is in a better position to get moderate, stable growth by co-operating with Germany and Britain than Weimer ever was against governments with a policy of keeping her down on her back.

As for the French left being a force for change, see my first post as to its likely structure (Futurist, Democratic, "Enlightened Imperialism"... more Trotskyist )
 
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