4 - The crises of 1917

Summary

On November 20, 1917, George Clemenceau gave the customary speech of investiture in the Chamber of Deputies preceding the vote of confidence in his newly formed government. Never in more than three years of war had the prospects for victory seemed so dim. In March, the tsar's regime had fallen in Russia, inaugurating what would become Russia's year-long collapse into revolution and defeat by Germany. In April, the French would launch the last of their major “over-the-top” offensives against entrenched German positions this time along the Chemin des Dames. Following the dissipation of this offensive would come the most serious mutiny among troops on the Western Front. Also in the grim spring of 1917, strikes simmering since the winter came to a boil, some of them in key armaments factories. The autumn brought still more bad news – the slaughter of British and Dominion troops to no effect at Passchendaele, the defeat of the Italians at Caporetto in October, and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in November. Increasingly, signs of disunion appeared within French politics. Socialist Albert Thomas had resigned as minister of armaments in September 1917, thereby ending Socialist participation in wartime governments. The Left in France became more and more divided as to how and whether to go on.