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France during the First World War
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Home - > History of France -> France during the First World War
A president named Raymond Poincare became elected in France in 1913.
The most important task of the new ruler was precisely the preparation for a large scale war.
France itself wanted to return Alsace and Lorraine, which were taken from it in 1871 by Germany, to its possessions in this battle.
France also planned to seize the Saar Basin.
The most recent months, which passed before the outbreak of the First World War, were filled with a very acute struggle of an internal political nature.
Only the very moment of France's entry into this terrible war removed the rather difficult question of what course the country should follow.
The start of the First World War fell at the end of July 1914.
It was the twenty eighth day of the second summer month.
However, France entered the military process not quite at the beginning of the actions, but only on the third of August.
The German command planned to destroy France in a very short time, breaking it, and only then activate the main focus on the fight with Russia.
German troops launched serious mass offensives in the West.
In the border battle, the Germans were able to break through the front and then began to advance deeper into the French country.
The month of September 1914 was marked by the legendary Battle of the Marne.
The further fate of the campaign on the Western Front depended on the outcome of this battle.
The fighting turned out to be terribly fierce, but in the end the Germans still managed to be stopped, and then even pushed back from Paris.
Germany's plan for the lightning defeat of the French army was a failure.
Thus, the terrible struggle on the Western Front has acquired the character of a truly protracted one.
The largest scale of all the offensive operations of the Germans started in February 1916.
German troops were trying to arrange the capture of a strategically important French fortress called Verdun.
However, despite the gigantic efforts and a huge number of losses, the German troops failed to take a strong fortress.
The Anglo French command, intoxicated with success, began to make attempts to take advantage of the favorable situation that had developed.
So in the summer of 1916, they undertook a very large offensive operation in the Somme River region Here the very first attempt was made to intercept the initiative from the German troops.
But in the month of April 1917, the situation became much more favorable for everyone against Germany.
This happened because the United States decided to join the side of the Entente.
And the material and technical supply of the German opponents became guaranteed.
Realizing the fact that time, whatever one may say, began to work against them, the German troops decided to make some desperate attempts from March to July 1918 to reach a turning point in the course of those military operations that were taking place on the Western Front.
Through heavy losses, the German army, exhausted to the extreme, managed to get close to the resistant Paris at a distance of about seventy kilometers.
On the eighteenth of July in 1918, the Allies carried out a powerful transition to a counteroffensive.
And already on November 11 of the same year, Germany finally capitulated.
At the famous Palace of Versailles, at the end of June, namely, on the twenty eighth day, in 1919, a peace treaty was signed.
And thanks to its conditions, the Saar coal basin, as well as Alsace and Lorraine, passed to France.
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