ABSTRACT
By early 1917, many leading politicians had become convinced that a military victory was unattainable. Some French leaders opposed the granting of any armistice until Allied troops had actually entered German territory and made their victory unmistakable. A wave of disturbances, some amounting to outright mutinies, swept through the French units, affecting more than half the army’s divisions. Rigorous secrecy kept news of the army’s disaffection from reaching the civilian population and, more importantly, the Germans. The crisis at the front in the spring of 1917 coincided with growing unrest among the civilian population. Changes in the treatment of soldiers and civilian workers after the protests in mid-1917 had convinced members of both groups that their concerns had been heard. France’s political leaders were not immune to the concerns that affected soldiers and ordinary civilians. The postwar redistribution of the territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire—which had entered the war on Germany’s side—brought further additions to the French empire.
