[muawiyah]

The French regime was the kingpin in the interlocking treaties prior to WWI. They could have stopped the war very early on ~ like from DAY 1.

In that sense France is responsible for all the carnage in Europe in the 20th century, much as it was responsible for most of the carnage in Europe in the 19th century!

[jmacusa]

France between the wars was a nation riven with socialism, communism and pacifism, you name it. Though it's army was the largest at the time(4 million) it, like the French people had no desire to go to war again. The first one had bled France white, the horror of Verdun was still fresh in every Frenchmen's mind.And even before that the French Army had mutinied, in 1915 and later in 1917. The carnage of the First World War made a profound impact on the French people and particularly the French generals. And so they built the Maginot Line, a marvel of engineering with underground barracks, hospital rooms and mess halls all buried and encased in thick concrete with pill boxes of machine guns, mortars and artillery above to vanquish the fool hardy Germans should they decide to attack. The construction of it damn near bankrupted the nation but it was a small price to pay to never again have to face an enemy and suffer the horrible slaughter. Trouble the Germans didn't oblige the French by attacking it, they just went around it. Thus was born the phrase ''Maginot Thinking'', an enormous out lay of blood and treasure for a weapons system that doesn't work. The French hardly had the stomach for the first war and they weren't about to want to do it again.