Regional Diversity and Local Identities

France's regions maintained distinct identities that would profoundly shape their war experiences. Normandy's apple orchards and dairy farms supported a conservative, Catholic population suspicious of Parisian anticlericalism. The Mediterranean coast, from Nice to Perpignan, mixed French natives with Italian and Spanish immigrants drawn by construction work and agricultural labor.

The northeast—soon to bear war's heaviest burden—thrived on heavy industry and mining. Cities like Nancy and Metz (the latter under German control) had developed distinctive frontier cultures, their residents speaking multiple languages and maintaining cross-border family ties that politics could not sever.

In the Alps and Pyrenees, mountain communities lived in near-isolation, their young men departing for military service often marking their first encounter with the French state. A prefect in Hautes-Alpes reported: "They speak of going to France when leaving for the regiment, as if it were a foreign country."