Interbellica

History & humanities

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@TheNorthWayPod

[Interbellica @interbellica]

Lord D'Abernon on the ‘special and peculiar’ Anglo-French relationship:

[Charlotte Lee @cljack]

before you waste a lot of time in therapy trying to understand men, consider that Napoleon got volunteers to man a battery position with an almost 100% casualty rate by simply renaming it "the battery of not being a little bitch"

[Interbellica @interbellica]

Because most people – everywhere, not just France –
could not tell you the first thing about Napoleon.

So, they claim to have no strong feelings about the man who brought glory and destruction to France, spread the Napoleonic Code across Europe, reintroduced slavery, etc etc

[Atelier Missor @AtelierMissor_]

How is it that the whole world admires Napoleon, but today’s French don’t care about him?

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@LOTrolhello @SyvFjell Hollow Years, by Eugen Weber

[Interbellica @interbellica]

Nationally, amongst those in their late twenties, there were over thirteen women for every ten men.

I wonder how this looked in Brittany and Corsica?

[François Valentin @Valen10Francois]

France's staggering WW1 casualty rate mapped

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@eugyppius1

[Interbellica @interbellica]

Even feminists in the 1920s detested la femme moderne:

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@Williamfrie1 Those are indeed excellent! But he was referring to the French leaders he knew in 1915 after the first German poison gas attack. Sorry, I should have specified

[Interbellica @interbellica]

Sir Douglas Haig on French military leadership:

‘These French leaders are a queer mixture of fair ability (not more than fair) and ignorance of the practical side of war.

They are not built for it by nature. They are too excitable, and they never seem to think of what the enemy may do. And they will not see a nasty situation as it really is, and take steps to meet it.’

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@497thJager I was just adding context. And I don't earn money from your replies since you're unverified, but I still respond

[Interbellica @interbellica]

You have the final say on the Treaty of Versailles.

Your task is to ensure lasting peace in Europe.

What revisions would you have made?

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@TarMormegil1 These are great points, but after WWI, nobody was in the mood for guarantees 😆

...except for France, who felt that they needed an Anglo-American guarantee to defend them from the now defenceless Germany

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@Kar_year_1785 This awaited the Prime Minister of France who gave Germany whatever they wanted

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@497thJager You problem with caps to army sizes is that:

1. you have – or so Britian & France felt – a moral obligation to defend the nation you have rendered defenceless
2. the disarmed nation can never truly be considered sovereign, as you must perpetually inspect their adherence

[Interbellica @interbellica]

@TimBitsOfWisdom True, but Leroy-Beaulieu's interpretation was that this was a universal truth and even 'necessary', and that there was basically nothing that could be done for it besides immigration.

Germany, Italy, and post-war France showed that this wasn't true

[Interbellica @interbellica]

Some Frenchmen believed that they had the lowest birthrates was because they were more civilised than everyone else.

But this was fine, since the barbarous peoples of Africa, Asia and Germany would one day, presumably, also become civilised, thus reducing their fertility:

[Athenian Stranger @Athens_Stranger]

The word “civilization” was coined by the French in the 18th century, and in its original usage by the French it was never pluralized — there was only one civilization and it was that of the French people, all other peoples were barbarians

[Napoleon Bonaparte Appreciator @NapoleonBonabot]

These same birthrates also caused panic among many leading up to the Franco-Prussian War and WW1 because French women were having 2 children while German/Prussian women were having 6.

[Mariam ☧ @Gaismair]

David Lloyd George going “what the fuck is a Slovak”