By early June 1917, fifty-four divisions of the French army were taking part in protests. Some men refused to attack. Others rioted, and a few talked of marching on Paris to set up a new government. The army was, in one historian’s phrase, in a state of “mutiny,” though the authorities preferred the term “collective disobedience.”
War-weariness is what historians call this kind of collapse in patience with a long war, and 1917 France is one of its starkest examples.
France, 1917
Three years of fighting had cost France more than one million casualties for minimal gains. Soldiers on leave came back with stories of food shortages, strikes and protests at home, and antiwar leaflets reached them in transit. General Robert Georges Nivelle took over as commander in chief and promised victory. His offensive opened on April 16, 1917, and produced over 130,000 casualties and no breakthrough.
Small refusals to obey orders began almost at once. By mid-May whole divisions were involved. Discipline began returning by late June. Marshal Pétain, who replaced Nivelle, executed ringleaders but also improved conditions for the troops, and he never launched another full-scale offensive. The men at the front, according to the account in Aspects of History, kept holding the line throughout.
Germany, 1918
A year later the same exhaustion reached the German navy. With defeat close, commanders planned a last sortie. Sailors at Kiel refused to risk their lives for what the US Holocaust Memorial Museum calls “a lost cause.” Many mutineers were jailed, and on November 3, 1918, thousands protested the arrests. Workers and civilians who wanted the war ended joined them. Soldiers sent to put down the demonstrations switched sides.
The revolt spread across Germany, and councils of soldiers and workers formed. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 9, 1918, six days after the Kiel protest.
Vietnam, 1968
American weariness was slower and came through the television screen. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive on January 30, 1968, hitting Hue and Saigon and even attacking the US Embassy. US and South Vietnamese forces beat the attacks back. The damage was to what Americans had been told. The State Department’s historians conclude that vivid media coverage “made clear to the American public that an overall victory in Vietnam was not imminent.” Protests intensified. On March 31, 1968, President Johnson announced he would not seek reelection.
Counting the cost
Political scientists argue over how casualties turn into opinion. Scott Sigmund Gartner and Gary M. Segura, writing in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1998, reexamined Vietnam and Korean War data and found that temporary spikes in deaths moved public opinion during periods of accelerating losses. The running total, which Mueller’s model emphasized, did not tell the whole story.
Sources
- Mutiny of German Sailors in Kiel (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia)
- The Tet Offensive, 1968 (U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones)
- War, Casualties, and Public Opinion (Scott Sigmund Gartner and Gary M. Segura, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1998)
- The Mutiny of the French Army (Aspects of History, drawing on David Murphy's analysis)
