Ammunitionettes
While France did not expect the war to drag on and the men were all at the front, the year 1914 ran out of ammunition. The solution that was found to make them again was to mobilize the women to do the work that their husbands would have done themselves if they had not been mobilized.
These women, ready to provide the material to kill the husbands of German women, were popularly nicknamed the "munitionettes." But the women were not only used to manufacture the ammunition. For the trades that the men were accustomed to exercise, there were many replacements, and it was they. Whether it was for agricultural, industrial or commercial work, they knew how to get out of their life as housewives, they too in the service of the country.
Yet, despite the dismissive appearances, these kinds of events allowed women to show that they were as capable as men. While in England women were demanding the right to vote through feminist movements already before the war, this gradually led them towards the path of equality.
The year 1916, the “cancelled” birth
As the men were at the front, most of them never returned, and the women therefore had no more children, the year 1916 marked the fewest births. Women were asked to bear children to repopulate the country. But some protested, refusing to make soldiers who would die at twenty, refusing to serve as cannon fodder. But these women were seen as non-patriots, and their refusal could even put them at risk of death, not to mention the midwives who provided abortions.
In addition to the lack of birth, the departure of all the young men at the front returned many young girls who were already "widowed" and who were called white widows, because they were in mourning for a husband they did not have. Twenty-year-old young men filled the war memorials the most. It even took until 1950 to regain the population level of August 1, 1914.
The War Memorials
In each commune of France, one can find a monument to the dead, on which are written the names of the Heroes of the Fatherland . Sometimes those of the Second World War, of the Seventies, of Algeria, but above all of the First World War, which mobilized the most men to put them to death in Verdun.
The war memorials of rural municipalities often contain the most names. But it is suspected that these monuments have aroused a desire for revenge in the minds of the French; because if they were there for the memory of all the soldiers who gave their lives for the fatherland, they recalled that one or more members was missing from each family, and that if it was because of the war, it was the fault of the Germans.
Thus, the war memorials would have acted on the morale of the French, having stirred up the hatred they bore to the Germans, and one could think that they had an effect on the Second World War worldwide.