>>64014250>I think the demographic problem was more indirect,I'd argue that it wasn't. Before WW1 France already had the lowest birthrate in Europe and a comparatively old population. Like 1/4th of the population younger than 16 compared to Germany's 34%.
That made it inherently harder for France to compensate the losses from the war.
They had around 1,325,000 military dead and missing at a population of 39.6 million.
Roughly half of those are women and thus mostly found in the additional 340,000-640,000 civilian deaths.
That's ca. 4.4% of the population dead, 3.346% just from the military. So ca. 6.69% of the male population.
If we also exclude the <16 and >59 age groups for men it is a whooping 10.68% of the military aged men, which are also the main labor force and could have been fathers.
And then you need to add in the ca. 4,266,000 military wounded, 34.41% of the previous age group. Now not all of them are long term wounded but a substantial part will have suffered from permanent injuries and disabilities.
Even if it is just 1/3rd it would mean 20% of the men at their best age were no longer available.
Almost every second man in that age group was somehow directly harmed in one way or another.
Germany started that whole game with a population more 50% larger and they maybe lost 1 million more with the same number of wounded people.
France was fucked from the get go.
