France is an old nation, one of the oldest in Europe 🌍. It emerged in the late Middle Ages as one of the continent's most powerful monarchies, enduring countless wars, revolutions and restorations across centuries of upheaval. France's republican experiment of the late eighteenth century, following the French Revolution, lit the fires of liberty across Earth, tempered by centuries of authoritarianism and reaction. Napoleon Bonaparte drew and redrew the maps of Europe, as did his successor Napoleon III, but this era of grandeur came crashing down with the rise of Germany.
The German victory in World War I, and the humiliating terms to which it was subjected by the Treaty of Versailles, marked a catastrophic break in French history. Crushed on the battlefield and abandoned by its exhausted allies, France was forced to accept the imposition of a Hohenzollern monarch upon its throne and the gutting of the Republic. This puppet monarchy, beholden to Berlin, governed through repression and economic dependency, sowing resentment across the country.
In 1930, amidst a climate of mass discontent and national humiliation, fostered exponentially by the Great Depression the monarchy collapsed in the Fourth French Revolution. The Neosocialists, a radical fusion of marxist theory and ultranationalist fervour led by Marcel Déat and Jacques Doriot, seized power. Their regime sought to purge France of “decadence”, restore its territorial sovereignty, and finish Germany for good, aided by The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Not all of France submitted. Republican officers, politicians, and civilians fled across the Mediterranean, establishing Free France in Algeria. From Algiers, the exiled republic built strong ties with the The United States of America, The Republic of Great Britain and other democratic powers, presenting itself as the “true France” while the Neosocialists ruled the metropole.
In 1939, the Neosocialists began World War II by invading Alsace-Lorraine, seeking to recover territory held by Germany since 1871 and to establish communist domination over Europe. French soldiers fought with ideological zeal, embracing total war and terror tactics that shocked even their Soviet allies. For the Neosocialists, this new war was one of total annihilation. Either France would finally free itself of nearly a century of humiliation at the hands of Germany, and vanquish it as a concept, or they would all perish. Yet the tide turned against them; after years of attrition and the Allied landings of Operation Overlord in 1944, Paris fell. The Neosocialist state collapsed under the combined pressure of German and Anglo-American forces. In the aftermath, Free France returned from Algiers to re-establish the Republic. A process of de-neosocialisation began, parallel to German denazification, so that the two nations would find peace at last. Party leaders were executed or imprisoned, propaganda purged, institutions dismantled, and a liberal constitution drafted under Allied supervision.
By the 1960s, the Republic of France has re-emerged as a liberal democracy aligned with the Western Bloc 🦅. Its politics remain stained by memories of ideological extremism. Economically, America's Marshall Plan and the establishment of the Euro-Gemein (EUG) have brought about historically unprecedented prosperity, though cultural tensions linger between the metropolitan homeland and its remaining colonial possessions, evidenced by the currently ongoing Algerian War, considered by some as a theatre of the Second Colonial War. France’s role in the Cold War is paradoxical: a loyal ally of the United States and Britain, as a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), but also a state deeply wary of both German imperialism and Soviet aggression. This posture has forced them to become a Nuclear State ☢️ despite their own allies' complaints. Its liberal institutions stand as a repudiation of the Neosocialist experiment, but their very fragility remind the world how easily liberty could be lost. Today, France is led by President Charles de Gaulle, hero of the Republic and perhaps the most French man to have ever lived.