How many french people died in ww1

Between March and August , Paris was regularly the target of air-raids or of shelling by a long-range German gun positioned about eighty miles away from the French capital. These attacks caused about 1, deaths among the Paris population.

One must also not forget that the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic , which caused approximately , civilian and soldier deaths. In addition, it is possible to calculate an approximate population deficit of about 1,, births resulting from the premature death, and absence during the war, of young men who were of marrying and reproductive age.

Antoine Prost very aptly remarked that the French parliamentary member Louis Marin who was at the head of a statistical review of war casualty numbers, also worked on an ad hoc parliamentary report investigating what the burden of paying pensions to the survivors of the war would be for the state. This concern lay at the heart of the claims of veterans who expected a fair compensation from the state and the Republic for the efforts they had made.

Both the state and the French citizenry recognized that the sacrifices made for the war extended beyond the number of military dead. There was also material recognition of these newly interpreted casualties of war. From onwards, the legislative framework recognized war orphans, as well as war widows , who were permitted to receive pensions from the state. In general, the recognition of all the different types of war casualties implied having an accurate perception of the casualties and a policy concerning the restitution of bodies.

Since it was impossible to repatriate all the bodies of those who had fallen, they were gathered in cemeteries and necropoles as a testimony of the sacrifice they had accepted. In return for accepting on-the-spot burials for their loved ones, the state bore the cost of burials abroad on behalf of the bereaved families, and also made tentative promises to try to return the bodies to France eventually. Proportionally, all the categories of drafted military men did not suffer the same amount of casualties.

There were also large disparities between different age groups and the different services performed, and the ranks held, by soldiers. Men killed in , , and , were respectively in percentage Gross figures for each age group of approximately , dead paid the highest tribute for they made up the bulk of the infantry battalions in and , the deadliest years of the conflict.

As would be expected, the last contingents drafted suffered fewer losses because they were engaged in the war for a shorter period of time and because a higher proportion of them were spared from going to the front line. Infantrymen also experienced more losses than artillery men, On average, infantry losses would reach between 16 percent and 17 percent according to the figures recorded.

It is not possible to know what occupations the soldiers held before their participation in the war. The birth and death registries from the village of Lot-et-Garonne [10] demonstrates the complexity of the occupations of the different rural components of the population, and points to the predominance of craftsmen and small farmers in the ranks. Yet, one should remember that the rural population, mainly drafted into the infantry sustained, on the whole, more casualties than the other army services.

This was also true of state employees, such as elementary schoolteachers a little over 7, were killed , high school teachers and teachers in training, who more exposed than others as junior officers or non-commissioned officers. For the many soldiers returned to civilian life after their demobilization between and , their new identity as war veterans was shaped by their awareness of their own sacrifices and deaths of their comrades.

Without forming a social group properly speaking, they drew their legitimacy from their memories of those who never came back. The war books by Maurice Genevoix are all stamped by a seal representing the survivor who only sees himself through his comrades-in-arms laid to rest on the battlefields. The importance of the casualties recorded within the context of the increasing individualization of societies and of their more complex relationship to death, accelerated the process of commemoration of victimhood in the interwar period.

Many communities and organizations discovered that, through the significance accorded to the large number of casualties, they were able to mobilize public opinion. Depending on the intended purpose, the large number of deaths, and the meaning imparted to them would change. Yet the losses incurred by the Breton conscripts relative to the national population is more important, namely Other regions also proclaim themselves casualties of the Jacobin management of the army.

Historical research has since demonstrated the falsity of both of these claims. Thus, from as early as the beginning of the war until its aftermath, one can speak of a remobilization around the issue of the war casualties. Verdun, where , French and , Germans lost their lives, eclipsed many other significant was episodes, such as the battle of Charleroi in , or Champagne and Artois in , which are for many years were not prominent in French collective memory.

This despite the fact that historians demonstrated very early that the losses incurred by the French army in were far superior to those sustained in There is another aspect of memory that has been gaining prominence over the last twenty years concerning those soldiers who were sentenced to death by military justice. Several historians have been trying to figure out the number of casualties incurred at the hands of military justice, estimated to be between and Some researchers account for this difference by pointing to the learning curve experienced by court martials as they adjusted to the rhythm of the war, while others stress the fact in the early years of the war, it was necessary for military authorities to resort to coercion in order to manage an army made up of conscripts who were unwilling to fight.

Importantly, the number of executions is less important than the condemnations of death, because of the many political interventions, in particular between and , which commonly altered the outcome of martial decisions.

Sentiments such as these can lead to a reassessment of the civilian dead. As a result, the appropriation of the memory of the war by the veteran lobby after the war, focused on the conflict as a confrontation between armies, in which only the military contributed to the sacrifice.

Yet, the First World War was also the cause of several thousand civilian casualties who were killed either in the course of the fighting, or who died as a consequence of the lack of food or other liberties. In the early s, Guy Pedroncini, evaluated those civilian deaths to be about 40, More recent estimates revise this figure upwards.

The First World War could be characterized as mass death. Yet it is not the final statistical body count we must remember, but the impact of the war casualties and bereavements on remembrance and the image of the war. There does not exist, nor will there ever be, more reliable data concerning the number of war dead.

For many societies, the aims of the war were eventually obliterated by the trauma experienced by societies. There remains without any doubt the need to provide a more accurate assessment of the total number of war dead across French society and within various social categories as a way to aid in our understanding of this lingering trauma. Lafon, Alexandre: War Losses France , in: online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed.

DOI : Version 1. War Losses France. By Alexandre Lafon. Table of Contents 1 War losses: an issue in the global assessment of the war 2 Assessing military and civilian casualties: Policy regarding how to handle military casualties 2.

War years Losses recorded What was symbolically and materially at stake with war casualties? A History of Denial, New Haven Regimental records of the 14 th Infantry regiment. Retrouver la guerre , Paris Gallimard. Le Naour, Jean-Yves: Le soldat inconnu. Prost, Antoine: Compter les vivants et les morts. Winter, Jay: Victimes de la guerre. Metadata Subjects.

Author Keywords. GND Subject Headings. LC Subject Headings. Rameau Subject Headings. By the end of the war no-one could say for sure where the Winterberg tunnel had actually been. They weren't French bodies inside, so it was decided to let them lie - as countless other bodies still lie unfound along the Western Front.

The woods grew back and the shell-holes became mere undulations in ground. Today the spot is popular with dog-walkers. But a local man called Alain Malinowski could not get the tunnel out of his head. It was out there somewhere on the ridge. For 15 years he accumulated descriptions, maps and prisoner interrogations - but to no avail. The landscape had been too badly disfigured by bombardment to make any meaningful comparison.

But then in he chanced on a contemporary map showing not just the tunnel but also a meeting of two paths that had survived till today. With painstaking care, he measured out the angle and distance and arrived at the spot, now just an anonymous bit of woodland. I knew I was near. I knew the tunnel was there somewhere beneath my feet," Alain Malinowski told Le Monde. For 10 years nothing happened. He told the authorities of his find but they refused to follow it up, either because they did not believe him or because they had no desire to open up a mass war-grave.

Into the story stepped his son Pierre Malinowski, at 34 years old a maverick ex-soldier who once worked for Jean-Marie Le Pen and now runs a foundation in Moscow dedicated to tracing war-dead from the Napoleonic and other eras. Angered by official obfuscation, Pierre decided to force the hand of the French and German governments by opening up the tunnel himself. This was illegal, but he thought it was worth the punishment.

One night in January last year he led a team that brought a mechanical digger to the spot his father had identified. They dug down four metres, and what they found proved they were indeed at the entrance to the tunnel.

There was the bell that was used to sound the alarm; hundreds of gas-mask canisters; rails for transporting munitions; two machine-guns; a rifle; bayonets and the remains of two bodies. Nothing had moved," said one of the team. Pierre Malinowski then covered up the hole, leaving the place as anonymous as he had found it, and he contacted the authorities. Ten months later, again frustrated by the slowness of the official response, he went public and told the story to Le Monde. It is fair to say that Pierre Malinowski is not a popular figure in the archaeological and historical establishments.

They believe he has not only broken the law. Without any authority of his own, and overriding the argument that the dead are best off resting where they are, he has also twisted the arm of government, forcing it either to open the tunnel or at least protect it. And by his example he has encouraged other go-it-alone excavations - most of which will be conducted for purely mercenary motives. Official reluctance to proceed with an investigation is clear.

In fact we find it all most unfortunate". It is hard to imagine the Commonwealth War Graves Commission taking a similar line if the bodies of UK troops were found. But then World War One is often described in Germany as its "forgotten war". In fact efforts are under way now to track descendants of those who died in the tunnel - and with some success. The th Regiment recruited men in the Baden region of the Swabian Alps, and nine soldiers have now been identified who died on 4 and 5 May Then what would be fitting is that they leave this cold eerie tomb and be buried together as comrades.

That is what happened to the more than German soldiers who were found in , having died in a similar tunnel at Mont Cornillet east of Reims. Pierre Malinowski also wishes that due honours be paid to the men. He is scrupulous in his respect for human remains. The bodies he has found have been returned to the ground, and he will not let them be photographed. But alongside the soldier's solidarity, there is also the fascination. Every soldier will have a story. It will be the biggest ever reserve of human material from the First World War.

More stories from Hugh. My search for British novelist's famed French summer. Image source, Pierre Malinowski. Image source, Hohenzollern memorial book