Editing History of France (section)

=== Wartime losses ===
The war was fought in large part on French soil, with 3.4&nbsp;million French dead including civilians, and four times as many military casualties. The economy was hurt by the 1913 German invasion of major industrial areas in the northeast, which produced 58% of the steel, and 40% of the coal.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hardach |first=Gerd |title=The First World War: 1914–1918 |date=1977 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-5200-3060-2 |pages=87–88}}</ref>{{Sfnp|McPhail|2014}} In 1914, the government implemented a [[war economy]] with controls and rationing. By 1915 the war economy went into high gear, as millions of French women and colonial men replaced the civilian roles of many of the 3 million soldiers. Considerable assistance came with the influx of American food, money and raw materials in 1917. This war economy would have important reverberations after the war, as it would be a first breach of liberal theories of non-interventionism.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hautcoeur |first=Pierre-Cyrille |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/economics-of-world-war-i/was-the-great-war-a-watershed-the-economics-of-world-war-i-in-france/B79D9AC76799B804C607B53C716C18ED |title=The Economics of World War I |date=2005 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-5218-5212-8 |editor-last=Broadberry |editor-first=Stephen |pages=169–205 |chapter=Was the Great War a watershed? The Economics of World War I in France |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511497339.007 |editor-last2=Harrison |editor-first2=Mark}}</ref> The damages caused by the war amounted to about 113% of the GDP of 1913, chiefly the destruction of productive capital and housing. The national debt rose from 66% of GDP in 1913 to 170% in 1919, reflecting the heavy use of bond issues to pay for the war. Inflation was severe, with the franc losing over half its value against the British pound.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Beaudry |first1=Paul |last2=Portier |first2=Franck |date=2002 |title=The French depression in the 1930s |journal=[[Review of Economic Dynamics]] |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=73–99 |doi=10.1006/redy.2001.0143}}</ref>

The richest families were hurt, as the top 1 percent saw their share of wealth drop from about 60% in 1914 to 36% in 1935, then plunge to 20 percent in 1970 to the present. A great deal of physical and financial damage was done during the world wars, foreign investments were cashed in to pay for the wars, the Russian Bolsheviks expropriated large-scale investments, postwar inflation demolished cash holdings, stocks and bonds plunged during the Great Depression, and progressive taxes ate away at accumulated wealth.{{Sfnp|Piketty|2014|pp=339–345}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Piketty |first=Thomas |title=Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901–1998 |date=2018 |pages=101–148, 468–477 |author-link=Thomas Piketty}}</ref>