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The French Army Mutinies of 1917 during World War I, took place amongst the French Army troops on the Western Front in Northern France. They started just after the conclusion of the disastrous Second Battle of the Aisne, the main action in the Nivelle Offensive, and involved, to various degrees, nearly half of the French infantry divisions stationed on the western front. The mutinies were kept secret at the time, and their full extent and intensity has only been revealed recently.

French Army Mutinies in Southern Victory[]

Toward the end of the Great War, the soldiers of the French Army mutinied on mass due to the incompetence of their Generals and sheer waste of human life. Many soldiers either threw down their guns, or turned them on their own officers.

The French Army Mutinies were so great, that news of it leaked out to the whole world. After the fall of Nashville, US Army General George Armstrong Custer cited the mutinies as proof that France couldn't go on much longer.

French Army Mutinies in The War That Came Early[]

The French government were very aware of the army's 1917 mutiny in the first years of the Second World War. By 1940, mutiny seemed to be in the air again as French troops once again were locked in a stalemate with German troops on French soil.[1] The threat of mutiny was one of several reasons the French government agreed to Germany's proposal for a ceasefire and a joint war against the Soviet Union.[2]

References[]

  1. The Big Switch, pg. 227.
  2. Ibid., pg. 236.
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