The Industrial Revolution of Warfare

France entered the war catastrophically unprepared for industrial conflict. The army possessed 4,000 machine guns against Germany's 12,000. French factories produced 13,000 shells daily when battles consumed that amount hourly. The doctrine of offensive à outrance had prioritized élan over equipment, leaving France facing modern warfare with near-medieval inadequacy.

Louis Loucheur, the industrialist who became Minister of Armaments, described the transformation: "We had to create in months what Germany built over decades. Every factory became an arsenal, every worker a soldier of production. We learned that modern war is won in workshops as much as trenches."

The mobilization of industry was revolutionary. Automobile factories converted overnight to shell production. André Citroën's new factory on the Quai de Javel, built in 1915, employed 13,000 workers producing 10,000 shells daily using American assembly-line methods. The Renault works at Billancourt transformed from luxury car manufacturer to producer of trucks, tanks, and aircraft engines. By 1918, French industry produced 261,000 shells daily—a twenty-fold increase.

This transformation required complete reorganization of labor and capital. The state, previously committed to laissez-faire economics, directed production, allocated resources, and set prices. Private property became subordinate to national need. Factory owners who resisted found their plants requisitioned. Workers lost the right to strike but gained unprecedented wages and social protection.

Women drove much of this innovation. Faced with unfamiliar machinery, they developed new techniques that increased productivity. At the Schneider works in Le Creusot, women operating lathes achieved production rates exceeding prewar male workers. Madeleine Pelletier, observing women in munitions factories, wrote: "Necessity has accomplished what decades of feminist argument could not—proving women's technical capabilities equal to any task."