Pergamon Hisrory o/European Ideas, Vol.

Copyright 19, 0 Nos 1-3, 1994 Elsevier pp.

41-46, 1994 Science Ltd

Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/94 $7.00+ 0.00

THE ENEMY CONCEPT IN FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS, 1870-1914

HARVEY CLARK GREISMAN *

INTRODUCTION

The years between 1871 and 1914 saw the development of enemy concepts in France and Germany that established cultural preconditions for war and which, during this period prepared a mentality which idealised sacrifice for the nation, and demonised the enemy. In France, this took the form of a revenge ideology which established the goal of recapturing lost territory and chastising a country labelled as culturally inferior. *

In this brief account of the enemy concept in France, I am using the term to mean that the prospective target is viewed as an inevitable aggressor; that is, an immutable natural law drags the two nations toward war. Further, the enemy concept entails the appraisal of the target nation as inferior, yet dangerous. The third and last component of the enemy concept I am using here involves “finality”: if the enemy is exterminated or permanently humbled, the future for the subject nation will be secure, and its happiness in the community of nations complete.

AGGRESSION AND DECLINE

By 1860, France’s position in Europe and in the world had become unquestionably inferior to that of Great Britain, its traditional competitor. In every category of industrial economy, including steel production, railway mileage, merchant marine, and heavy machinery. France had slipped far behind its ancient rival. In effect it remained a largely agricultural country with its chief industrial zones located in the northern departments. Louis Napoleon, who had made himself Emperor following a coup d’etat, indulged in a series of ill-advised aggressive manoeuvres on the international front in part to deflect attention from France’s increasingly junior status vis-a-vis Great Britain. A war against Austria was a tactical success and netted some real estate, but its long-term diplomatic results were harmful. An attempt to set up a puppet state in Mexico ended in fiasco after the close of the U.S. Civil War put that country in a position to attack French incursions on its southern flank. Schemes to gobble up Belgium and Luxembourg failed. Louis Napoleon stood aloof when Prussia attacked Austria and the South German States. When Bismarck cleverly forced his hand in 1870, France was effectively isolated, and its forces hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed by their German adversaries.2

*West Chester University, West Chester, PA 19383, U.S.A.

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42 Harvey Clark Greisman

It is with the close of this war in 187 1, the abdication of Louis Napoleon, the Treaty of Frankfurt, and the return of France to a republican form of government, that a signal reversal in European relations occurs: although accompanied by tits and starts, the ties between the historical competitors, France and England, become gradually stronger, and Germany looms larger as the focus of an enemy concept.

The development of an enemy concept in France was assisted by two factors: the desire to wipe out a humiliating defeat and, more important, the need to recover the “lost provinces” of Alsace and Lorraine. In what Gooch refers to as “the biggest blunder of his life”,3 Bismarck decided to annex these provinces as spoils of war. Until recently it was believed that he demurred at acquiring this real estate, and that the annexation was forced by the military as a hedge, or “buffer zone” against expected wars of revenge. Current scholarship has dismissed this notion of Bismarck as a temporiser. He fully intended to take these provinces, just as he had planned the acquisition of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark. The retention of this territory by Germany kept the sentiment for revenge at a fever pitch in France. At times the majority of the electorate would be distracted from this issue, but it proved to be the fuel that kept hatred of Germany burning white hot.

REVENGE AND THE ENEMY CONCEPT

Cultural exponents of revenge were kept working overtime during this period, and frequently the line between politics and art was virtually indiscernible. As a kind of literary annex to Clemenceau and Boulanger, Paul Dtroul&de was one of the more popular poets in France. Apart from his chauvinistic and xenophobic literary output, he became a political force to be reckoned with; by the late 188Os, his Ligue des Patriotes numbered over 3~,~0 members. Publications like La France ~i~~taire, Le Drapeau, La Frcmti+re, L~Anti-P~~~ien and La Revanche were under his indirect control. On one occasion, he denounced premier Jules Ferry as an “atheist of patriotism”.4 Ferry had been arguing for the policy of expanding the colonial empire instead of concentrating on regaining Alsace and Lorraine. Deroultde’s response was, “I have lost two children, and you offer me twenty domestics.“5

The annual salons showed allegorical paintings of the lost provinces, patriotic statuary was commissioned and installed in public places. The new Sacre Coeur cathedral was dedicated to the spirit of national renewal and martial virtues, RenC Bazin’s 1901 novel, Les Oberld, enjoyed an immense popularity. Its somewhat lachrymose tale of an Alsatian family torn by conflicting loyalties was dramatised, and had more success as a play than in book form. Maurice Barr&s made a contribution to this genre with his Au Service D’Allemagne and Collette Baudoche. Rene Pinon wrote that, “. . . ‘revanche’ lived as a sacred ideal in the soul of the nation.“&

Gambetta, who had organised a national defence during the war, was only the most famous politician to anchor his career to the drive for revenge. In his journal, La Rkpublique Franqaise, he and Juliette Adam worked constantly to keep the enemy concept alive. He was especially given to the use of sexual metaphor in

The Enemy Concept 43

demanding a war of revenge against the Germans: “our ravished provinces” was a phrase he used repeatedly. Imagery utilising the spectre of enemy barbarians violating or abducting women of the subject nation has consistently proven to be a powerful tool in manipulating mass opinion. The Hun-as-rapist theme was used again with similar results after the invasion of Belgium, and proved especially effective in mob~~ing American public opinion against the Japanese during the Pacific phase of World War II.’

The most quoted, and most influential, pronouncement of the revenge campaign was made by Gambetta in a speech at St Quentin: “Think of it always, speak of it never.” The unwritten policy that developed from this was that there were to be no official government pronouncements on the revenge issue, but that private adherence to it was the price of political survival. Art, literature, and especially journalism were left to work up the masses into a fever pitch. “The hysteria of the press” is the phrase Anderson uses to describe the sometimes inexplicable behaviour of French journalists vis-a-vis the enemy concept. Hence the enemy mentality smouldered, the fires always being banked by a sometimes articulated, frequently unspoken, but always virulent passion for revenge. “Le chemin de revanche” was the slogan Gambetta used to characterise the ceaseless campaign of animosity which would end in a war of retribution. Gambetta’s rhetoric cooled somewhat as he mellowed with age, but the fundamental message was unchanged. Bismarck compared him to a man beating a snare drum in a hospital ward. Essentially, he, along with many other politicians and journalists, wanted a jihad.*

There were politicians like Charles Grtvy who favoured a less bellicose, less vulgar course, but they risked oblivion Xthey made their thoughts public. Jules Ferry attempted to temporise on this issue, and suffered the consequences. The pressure to conform to the revenge mentality was excruciating. Arnim, the German ambassador following the war, was quick to appreciate the popular mood. He wrote of a revenge instinct that was so deep seated it blinded people to all else and concluded that “The German Empire can no more co-exist with the France of today than Rome with Carthage.“’

Following the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871, the new edition of French grade school textbooks informed students that the treaty was false; it was not a peace, but a truce. Hatred of Prussia found its way into popular prints and lithographs where the barbarians were lampooned and mercilessly satirised. “Prussian” became a swear word, an insult, and charges of libel and slander were filed premised on this meaning. It wasn’t until 1900 that a court finally decided that “to call someone a Prussian does not qualify as abusive language.. . it would be different if the expression was dirty Prussian.“”

THAWS, THEN DELUSION

While these examples are reflective of the popular mood, this is not to say that the whole period in question was poisoned with hatred and on the brink of war, There was a brief period following the war during which many believed that reconciliation with Germany was possible. This ended in 1875 with a war scare, which brought threats and bullying from Germany. During the early 188Os,

44 Harvey Clark Greisman

Bismarck, who characterised Germany as a “satiated power”, encouraged French colonial expansion. The idea was that Germany would not oppose, and would even encourage, French colonies if France accepted the Treaty of Frankfurt. Enormous overseas territories were acquired, but this expansion failed to “compensate” (the diplomatic code-word of the time) for the “lost

provinces”. In 1890, when William II fired Bismarck, this was taken as a good omen in France. Following this, the German Kaiser made some flattering remarks about the new, bigger French army. Some “cultural exchanges” followed. But several German newspapers interpreted the nascent detente as republican weakness. There followed demonstrations in Paris, and the diplomatic situation went back to Square One. Also, in 1898, the slow and persistent thaw in Anglo-French relations came to an abrupt halt when a tiny band of Frenchmen had an almost comedic stand-off with Lord Kitchener’s army in a virtually uncharted region of Africa. I’ During the short-lived Fashoda crisis there was talk of modifying the attitude toward Germany. But Britain and France managed to work things out in their colonial empires, and the two nations established a rapprochement in 1903, then undertook the Entente Cordiale the next year. Apart from these episodes, France and Germany related to one another chiefly as intractable enemies during the period in question.

Following the successful conclusion of the France-Russian alliance in 1892, and the completion of secret military treaties with Great Britain, elements ofthe French military, among whom revenge and chauvinistic sentiments were always the strongest, became convinced that a war with Germany could only end successfully for France. Here the revenge mentality enters a delusional phase: neither the drastic reforms of the French army during the 187Os, which included a general staff and selective service on the Prussian model, nor the increased expenditures on fortifications and armaments, could bring France to anything like an equal footing with, let alone superiority against, the German Empire.12 The French population and industrial base lagged woefully behind the German; France remained inferior militarily and had to struggle to maintain even a rough parity with Germany. For example, France had to call up 83% of those liable for service, while Germany needed only 53% to maintain their respective strengths of 524,000 and 645,000. These realities in no way dampened the enthusiasm of the revanchistes among the military, many of whom tossed off French military and economic weakness vis-a-vis Germany and stressed increasingly, and unreal- istically, the role of Imperial Russia. On the eve of the war, Colonel Boucher, formerly of the General staff, turned out a series of influential books on the subject: La France victorieuse dans la Guerre de Demain, L’Offensive contre L’AlIemagne and L’Allemagne en Peril all retailed the idea that Germany would be crushed in a vice given a two front war against France and Russia, while Great Britain starved her to death with a suffocating blockade. Hazy visions of obliterating the “boche” infected military thinking as Bergson’s notions of “Clan vital” filtered down into infantry tactics. “L’attaque ri outrance” as developed by Grandmaison became the signal for useless sacrifice in suicide attacks in 1914, while Joffre’s assumption of supreme command in 19 11 guaranteed this strategy, and the dreadful price paid for a Phyrric victory.

What I have not had the opportunity to discuss here is the German contribution to the flourishing of the enemy concept. Schoolchildren in the

The Enemy Concept 45

German Empire read in their textbooks that England was an enemy, but France was the archenemy. William II’s clumsy and truculent public statements merely served to heighten tensions that had been built up by Tirpitz’ campaign to build a navy to challenge Britain. A similar examination of the German Empire at this time would find aggressive and chauvinistic propaganda and the predatory mentality of a state which was virtually a military dictatorship with the fig leaf of a parliamentary system. While neither nation should be cast as the villain, one must try to account for the effectively propagated enemy concept in France, a nation which did enjoy a republican form of government.

ANALYSIS

In attempting to account for the ultimate hegemony ofthe enemy concept and success of the revanchards, the influence of the press should not be underrated. While I can give no analysis of it here, the print media at this time can be compared to the electronic media today. The right wing press was most effective in galvanising their forces through incendiary rhetoric which encouraged the most unpleasant instincts. This is not difficult to imagine, especially in the USA and the UK: in 1991 public opinion was mobilised practically overnight to support the Gulf War, while 10 years ago substantial numbers of Britons of all classes signalled their approval of the Falklands War in which an English fleet sailed halfway around the world to evict a force of frozen and disorganised Argentine conscripts from a few bleak islands near the South Pole. So France was not immune to the forces of manipulated opinion which were somewhat successful even before the Treaty of Frankfurt, and continue to enjoy victories today.

In the sphere of diplomacy, one would have expected more, especially from figures who owed no allegiance to the military interests in France, and there was sure to be a substantial opposition to these, socialist and otherwise. In the tradition of French politics, it was fragmentary and quarrelsome, but hardly powerless. The difficulty was that no international forum for arbitrating disputes of this nature existed, and there were few recent precedents for even impromptu ones. The few episodes of mediation never addressed the question at hand. At two separate Congresses of Berlin, the major powers had successfully arbitrated territorial disputes, but these were of a colonial nature. There were two Peace Conferences at The Hague, one in 1899, the other in 1907. The first was more of an attempt to set up structures to handle future disputes. It ended with some very weak resolutions on “civilizing” war, although even these were compromised when the American delegate, Admiral Mahan, vetoed the ban on asphyxiating gases on the grounds that it would compromise American inventiveness and free enterprise. The attempt to set up an arbitration commission, such as the Alsace-Lorraine problem cried out for, was crushed by Germany, with William II himself wading in to protest that arbitration of disputes would undercut Germany’s ~military advantages. During the second conference, an American proposal for compulsory and binding arbitration of disputes was derailed, largely because several European powers did not want Latin American countries to be included. When the conference adjourned after four months, and agreed to

46 Harvey Clark Greisman

meet again in 1915, the primary source of European tension and the issue most likely to provoke war was never discussed publicly.”

Although it is now almost fashionable to look for the origins of the enemy concept in the late Pleistocene consciousness of earlier humans, even the cursory discussion given here shows that aggression can be manipulated, and when there is no outlet for arbitration, the worst can be expected. With all respect to the sociobiological paradigm, one must still isolate the two chief purely social factors which permitted the formation of an unbridled enemy concept in Franco- German relations, i.e. the media, in those days the press, which functioned as a highly effective mobilising tool for the military and extreme right, and the lack of any international forum of arbitration.

West Chester University Harvey Clark Greisman

NOTES

1. See Eugen Weber, The Nationalist Revival in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).

2. Robert David Anderson, France, 1870-1914: PoliticsandSociety(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977).

3. G.P. Gooch, France-German Relations, 1871-1914 (New York: Russel and Russel, 1967), p. 26.

4. Ibid., p. 21. 5. Ibid. 6, RenC Pinon, France et Allemagne, quoted in ibid. 7. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York:

Pantheon, 1989). 8. Roland W. Stromberg, Redemption by War (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press,

1982). 9. Gooch, op. cit., p. 9.

10. Eugen Weber, France, fin-de-si&cie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 107-l 17.

11. Daniel Levering Lewis, The Race to Fashoda (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson,

1987). 12. Alistair Horne, The French Army and Politics, 1870-1970 (New York: Peter Bedrick

Books, 1984). 13. For a general overview of peace efforts preceding World War I, see Barbara

Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York: Macmillan, 1966).