what was the end result for france in wwi?

Answer 1

Population: 1,357,800 dead, 4,266,000 wounded (of whom 1.5 million were permanently maimed) and 537,000 made prisoner or missing -- exactly 73% of the 8,410,000 men mobilized, according to William Shirer in The Collapse of the Third Republic. Some context: France had 40 million citizens at the start of the war; six in ten men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight died or were permanently maimed.

Territory: France regained Alsace-Lorraine, which it had lost in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871.

Reparations: France was promised substantial reparations from Germany, both in cash and in resources (ex: 7 million tons of coal for 10 years). However, Germany did not pay the full reparations.

Colonies: France was forced to conscript troops from all over their empire. When these troops returned home and were still treated badly, many formed pro-independence groups that would plague France for years.

Politics: A major change was that the Socialists in France split over whether to support the government during the war. This caused the majority to work more with the government, and a minority to leave and form new parties. This would exacerbate the instability inherent to the Third French Republic.