French National and Social Republic

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The **French National and Social Republic**(French: *République nationale et sociale française*), more commonly known as **France** or **French State**, is a country in Western Europe. Within Metropolitan France, it is bordered politically by Belgium, Luxembourg and the Rhenish Republic to the northeast, Baden-Württemberg, Switzerland, Monaco and Italy to the east, and Spain and Andorra to the south. Geographically it is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Bay of Biscay to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south.

## Recent History

### Before the Great War

Just 43 years before the Great War, France was humiliated by the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War. The war lasted just over six months and within that short time the Prussians and their allies were able to surround and force the surrender of nearly 105,000 men outside Sedan. This led to the capture of then-Emperor Napoleon III, a deep stab to the pride of France. What followed Sedan was a short but ultimately effective campaign in northern France that led to the Fall of Paris and then soon after, the fall of France as a whole. In the humiliating peace that followed. France ceded to the newly declared German Empire the territory of Alsace-Lorraine and was forced to pay a five billion franc indemnity over the next five years. It was a humiliating defeat that was only exacerbated by the rise and subsequent crushing of the first communist revolution in Europe, the Paris Commune.

The war gave rise to the unstable French Third Republic, which was plagued by political strife and sharp polarisation between the progressive left, heirs of the French Revolution, and the conservative right, rooted in the peasantry, army and the Catholic Church. France was also plagued with revanchism, a nationalist desire to restore the "Lost Provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine to their rightful homeland. This political instability, however, did not stop France from seizing most of Northwest Africa, Indochina, Polynesia, and Madagascar, building a respectable colonial empire to draw resources from. The revanchist nationalists, however, still gazed longingly at the Lost Provinces.

### The Great War

With the onset of the Great War, French men rushed to the army in droves and a patriotic fervour overwhelmed the nation. Even as the French industrial heartland, where 58% of all steel and 40% of all coal was located, was lost to the Germans, and press censorship was imposed to ensure stability, the people rallied behind the state. As with many member parties of the Second International, the SFIO (French Section of the Workers' International, *Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière*) supported its country in a "Sacred Union" (*union sacrée*), against the wishes of its radical wing and its former leader Jean Jaurès, who was assassinated shortly after the outbreak of the war. It was a massive mobilisation of the French spirit to gain the revenge so long awaited. Even as the Germans were stopped at the Marne and the Western Front descended into brutal trench warfare, the people held out, and in the end the French were able to claim a costly victory and get the revenge forty-five years in the making.

Georges Clemenceau, who had assumed the Prime Ministership at the head of a coalition government in 1917 and had gained the nickname The Tiger (*le Tigre*) for his tenacity, argued for Germany to be broken up, the Rhineland to be given to France, and Germany to never be allowed to unite again. Ultimately, France gained Alsace-Lorraine and the Saarland, and the left bank of the Rhine was eventually established as the Inter-Allied Occupation Zone, governed by France, Britain, and Belgium, which became home to many German liberals and other republicans following the completion of the Summer Offensive by Red German forces and the subsequent Treaty of Aachen. France turned inward to rebuild and heal from the bloody war. France had lost 1.7 million soldiers and civilians in the Great War and endured scars that could never be repaired. An entire generation of young men was lost, its industrial heartland was in ruins and the people were determined to never let war touch French soil ever again.

### The German Revolution

The German Revolution of May 1919 presented a crisis for the French government. Just beyond their borders, the young republican German government found itself battling fiercely for their survival against communist revolutionaries, and another revolution had already occurred in Russia in 1917. The French government feared that the war could spill over the border, or that a revolution could be sparked at home. Financial and material aid was soon supplied to the German Whites, but this failed to turn the tide in any significant way.

The French Army and the government soon became bitterly divided over the question of a military intervention. Ultimately, 120,000 French soldiers were deployed in various roles against the German Reds, primarily against revolutionaries in the Rhineland. About 20,000 soldiers were killed or wounded, mostly in the final stages of the war during the Baden-Württemberg Offensive. Due to mutinies and fears of socialist sympathies within the army, as well as political instability at home, these forces were mostly kept on the left bank of the Rhine and never played a decisive role in the war. After the Red victory, the French gained very little materialistically from their intervention, but did succeed in maintaining two buffer states between themselves and the communists: the Rhenish Protectorate and the Kingdom of Baden-Württemberg.

Several hundred French citizens aided the Red German forces both militarily and on humanitarian grounds, and most were stripped of their citizenship. Many of them remain in Germany.

In May 1920, the French government arrested a number of communist leaders, including Boris Souvarine, Pierre Monatte, and Fernand Loriot, for revolutionary plots. However, they were released soon after due to lack of substantive evidence and acquitted in March 1921, despite outcry from the far-right. Nonetheless, arrests of communists and trade unionists continued.

## Politics

France currently maintains a large colonial empire, with territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

## Foreign Relations

France has strong diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Baden-Wurrtemberg, and controls the Rhineland as a protectorate. it has poor relations with Germany and its Communist allies.