‘On Vient de Fusiller un des Nôtres’: A Quantitative Study of Military Executions in the French Army during WW1

Abstract

Early Access : OCT 2022International audienceThis paper explores the issue of French executions during the Great War in a quantitative perspective. Based on the 'Shot in the First World War' database of the Ministry of Defense, we first provide a statistical portrait of the French soldiers who were sentenced to death by courts-martial or summarily executed. Then, we analyze the temporal distribution of executions using a regression approach. More specifically, we investigate whether the variations in the number of executions over time were related to the intensity of engagements. Finally, focusing on the soldiers' place of birth, we examine the differences across counties (departements) in the execution rate. Our results suggest that the vast majority of the executed soldiers were 'poilus' like the others who found themselves before a firing squad for having committed a fault in a moment of weakness, often after being involved in particularly bloody fighting, and sometimes under the influence of alcohol. Their acts were probably, in most cases, much more driven by survival instinct than by pacifist motives or other political considerations