War and the Economy

Abstract

Soldiers of course bore the brunt of the almost continuous conflict, but civilians were by no means insulated from the events or from their repercussions on economic activity and daily life. Having observed French soldiers in a range of situations — exposed to shelling and battlefield horrors, bivouacked on the freezing steppes of Russia and Eastern Europe, fighting on warships and in the Egyptian desert, or in the scarcely less chaotic and dangerous conditions of field hospitals — it is now time to look at the group that formed the majority of the French population, the civilians. Few civilians had exposure to the physical reality of combat, but all had to endure the war’s consequences. The next two chapters are given over to this other facet of war: the ‘home front’ and the war experience of civilians.