Economic Transformation

France's economy underwent forced modernization. Prewar assumptions—short conflict, existing stockpiles sufficient—proved disastrously wrong. By winter 1914, shell shortages threatened military collapse. Industrial mobilization, initially chaotic, gradually organized into history's first total war economy.

The transformation was remarkable. France, having produced 13,000 shells daily in 1914, manufactured 250,000 daily by 1918. Aircraft production rose from 50 monthly to 2,000. The Renault factory, producing 100 vehicles monthly prewar, delivered 1,000 monthly by war's end. This expansion required complete economic reorganization.

State intervention, anathema to prewar liberalism, became essential. The government controlled prices, allocated raw materials, directed labor. Private enterprise continued but under state direction. André Citroën epitomized this partnership—his factory, built from nothing in 1915, produced millions of shells using American mass production methods. Workers called it "creating death on assembly lines."

Regional economies transformed completely. The Paris basin became an vast arsenal. Lyon's silk industry converted to parachute production. Marseille's port handled colonial troops and American supplies. Only the occupied northeast's absence—France's primary industrial region—prevented even greater production.

Labor shortages drove social change. Colonial workers arrived in hundreds of thousands. 200,000 Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians worked in French factories. 150,000 Indochinese, recruited through traditional chiefs, labored in munitions plants. 50,000 Chinese, contracted through British intermediaries, worked ports and railways. These workers faced discrimination, segregation, and violence from French workers fearing wage competition.

Women workers, as noted, transformed industry. But elderly men, boys, and disabled veterans also filled gaps. The "mutilés de guerre"—war cripples—received priority in civilian employment. Factories adapted work stations for one-armed or one-legged operators. This integration of disabled workers, driven by necessity, pioneered concepts later formalized as occupational rehabilitation.