Parisians entered the First World War in August 1914 on a wave of patriotic fervor, but within a few weeks Paris was close to the front lines and bombarded by German aircraft and artillery. The Parisians endured food shortages, rationing, and an epidemic of influenza, but morale remained high until near the end of the war. With the departure of young men to the front lines, women took a much greater place in the work force. The city also saw a large influx of immigrants who came to work in the defense factories. The end of the war on November 11 1918 saw huge celebrations on the boulevards of Paris.
By 1917, France was nearly exhausted by the war, and mutinies broke out among some soldiers at the front. On April 6, 1917, the Paris newspapers reported the welcome news that the United States, provoked by submarine attacks against U.S. ships, had declared war on Germany. The first American soldiers arrived on June 29, 1917, but their numbers were small, and it took nearly a year to train and prepare a large U.S. army. By the spring of 1918, ten thousand U.S. soldiers a month were arriving in France. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 had taken Russia out of the war; Germany moved its armies west and launched a huge new offensive against France, hoping to end the war quickly before the Americans could change the balance of the war.
In November 1917, Georges Clemenceau of the Radical Party became the new prime minister of France. He had been a fierce opponent of the government and now became an even more fierce proponent of carrying the war to victory; his often repeated slogan was La Guerre jusqu’au bout (“War until the end“.) He resided in an apartment on Rue Benjamin-Franklin and conducted the war not from the prime minister’s traditional residence at the Hôtel Matignon, but from the Ministry of War on Rue Saint-Dominique. He made frequent visits to the front, close to the German lines, to encourage the ordinary soldiers.
Paris once again became a target for German bombardment aimed at demoralizing the Parisians. On January 30, four squadrons of seven German Gotha bombers each appeared over the city and suburbs to drop two hundred bombs. There were more attacks on March 8 and March 11. The attacks took place at night, and Parisians took sanctuary in the Métro stations. During a new attack on the night of March 11–12, a panic took place in the crowded Bolivar Métro station that caused the deaths of seventy civilians.
On March 21 1918, the Germans launched a major new offensive, hoping to end the war before the bulk of American forces arrived. They attacked through a gap between the British and French Armies and headed directly toward Paris. On March 23, the Germans introduced a new weapon to terrorize the Parisians: the long-ranged Paris Gun. It could fire shells 120 kilometers into the heart of the city. 303 huge shells were lobbed into the city. On March 29 1918, one shell struck the Saint-Gervais church, killing 88 persons. 256 Parisians were killed and 629 were wounded by German shells.
Another enemy struck Paris in the spring of 1918, even deadlier than the German artillery: an epidemic of the Spanish influenza. At the peak of the epidemic, in October 1918, 1,769 Parisians died, including the writers Guillaume Apollinaire and Edmond Rostand.
By July 14 1918, the new German offensive had reached Château-Thierry, only seventy kilometers from Paris. The city was put back under military government. The bombardments of the city intensified; works of art were once again evacuated from the Louvre; sandbags were placed around monuments; and the street lights were turned off at ten in the evening to hide the city from German night bombers. To resist the Germans more effectively, Clemenceau insisted that the French, British and American armies be under a single commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Large numbers of American soldiers arrived in France every month, while German resources and manpower were nearly exhausted. The German offensive was turned back by an Allied counter-offensive on July 21 and the threat to Paris lifted again.
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