User:OnBeyondZebrax/sandbox/France in the 20th century

The History of France from 1914 to the present includes the later years of the Third Republic (1871–1941), World War I (1914–18), the Interwar Period (1918-1939), World War II (1939–45), the Fourth Republic (1946–58) and the Fifth Republic (1958-present). The early days of the Third Republic were dominated by the Franco-Prussian War, which resulted in the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. The Third Republic, which was originally intended as a transitional government, instead became the permanent government of France. The French Constitutional Laws of 1875 gave the Third Republic its shape and form. The Third Republic established many French colonial possessions.

WW I was viewed by some French people as an opportunity to avenge the humiliation of defeat and loss of territory to Germany following the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. However, the war brought great losses of manpower and resources. Fought in large part on French soil, it led to approximately 1.4 million French dead including civilians, and four times as many wounded. During the Interwar period, the Popular Front (1936–38) won the 1936 elections, which led to France's first socialist prime minister. The French far right expanded greatly and anti-semitism proliferated in many quarters. In the 1920s, France established an elaborate system of border defenses. In September, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, and France and Great Britain declared war, leading to WW II. France signed an armistice with Nazi Germany on June 22, 1940. Nazi Germany occupied three fifths of France's territory, leaving the rest to the new Vichy collaboration government established on July 10, 1940. Those who refused defeat and collaboration with Nazi Germany, such as Charles de Gaulle, organized the Free French Forces in the UK and coordinated resistance movements in occupied and Vichy France.

France emerged from World War II to face a series of new problems. After a short period of provisional government initially led by General Charles de Gaulle, a new constitution (October 13, 1946) established the Fourth Republic under a parliamentary form of government controlled by a series of coalitions. The mixed nature of the coalitions and a consequent lack of agreement on measures for dealing with colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria caused successive cabinet crises and changes of government. The war in Indochina ended with French defeat and withdrawal in 1954.

The threat of a coup d'état in May 1958 by French army units and French settlers opposed to concessions in the face of Arab nationalist insurrection led to the fall of the French government and a presidential invitation to de Gaulle to form an emergency government to forestall the threat of civil war. Swiftly replacing the existing constitution with one strengthening the powers of the presidency, he became the elected president in December of that year, inaugurating France's Fifth Republic.

In 1965, in an occasion marking the first time in the 20th century that the people of France went to the polls to elect a president by direct ballot, de Gaulle won re-election with a 55% share of the vote, defeating François Mitterrand. Meanwhile, the Algerian War went on raging, with de Gaulle progressively adopting a stance favouring Algeria's independence. This was interpreted by his supporters in 1958 as a form of treason, and part of them, who organized themselves in the OAS terrorist group, rebelled against him during the Algiers putsch of 1961. But De Gaulle managed to put an end to the war by negotiating the Evian Agreements of March 1962 with the FLN.

In the end of the 1960s, however, French society grew tired of the heavy-handed, patriarchal Gaullist approach, and of the incompatibilities between modern life and old traditions and institutions. This led to the students' revolts of events of May 1968, with a variety of demands including educational, labor and governmental reforms, sexual and artistic freedom, and the end of the Vietnam War. The student protest movement quickly joined with labor and mass strikes erupted. At one point, de Gaulle went to see troops in Baden-Baden, possibly to secure the help of the army in case it were needed to maintain public order. But after a month-long general strike, most of French people aspired to order, and the June 1968 legislative elections saw a majority of Gaullists in parliament. Still, May 1968 was a turning point in French social relations, with the Grenelle Agreements, in the direction of more personal freedoms and less social control, be it in work relations, education or in private life.

In April 1969, de Gaulle resigned following the defeat in a national referendum of government proposals for decentralization, through the creation of 21 regions with limited political powers. He was succeeded by the Gaullist Georges Pompidou (1969–74), who died during his term. Pompidou's succession pitted the Gaullists against the more classical conservatives who eventually won, headed by the Independent Republican Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (1974–81).

Social movements continued after May 1968. They included the occupation of the Lip factory in 1973, which led to an experience in workers' self-management, supported by the CFDT, the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and all of the far-left movements. LIP workers participated to the Larzac demonstrations against the extension of a military camps (in which José Bové was present). Maoism and autonomism became quite popular in far-left movements, opposing both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party.

While France continues to revere its rich history and independence, French leaders increasingly tie the future of France to the continued development of the European Union (EU).

The 1972 Common Program between the Socialist Party (PS), the Communist Party (PCF) and the Left Radical Party (PRG) prepared the victory of the Left at the 1981 presidential election, during which for the first time in the Fifth Republic a left-wing candidate won. François Mitterrand, re-elected in 1988, followed a left-wing inspired social and economic program, formulated in the 110 Propositions for France electoral program. However, reforms came to a stop in 1983. Mitterrand's two terms were marked by two cohabitations, the first one in 1986-88 with Jacques Chirac as Prime minister.

Mitterrand stressed the importance of European integration and advocated the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty on European economic and political union, which France's electorate narrowly approved in September 1992.

The conservative President Jacques Chirac assumed office May 17, 1995, after a campaign focused on the need to combat France's stubbornly high unemployment rate. The center of domestic attention soon shifted, however, to the economic reform and belt-tightening measures required for France to meet the criteria for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) laid out by the Maastricht Treaty. In late 1995, France experienced its greatest labor unrest in at least a decade, as employees protested government cutbacks.

On the foreign and security policy front, Chirac took a more assertive approach to protecting French peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia and helped promote the Dayton Agreement negotiated in Dayton, Ohio and signed in Paris in December 1995. The French have stood among the strongest supporters of NATO and EU policy in the Balkans.