The Point of View of France’s Foreign Minister
WWI JOURNAL
A TIME OF TOTAL WAR
France 8
YEAR 1913
To start the year of 1913, it is no surprise that it will be a challenging war. As Foreign Minister of France, I know how important each and every decision the President and I make is. Our alliance made with Belgium today was the start to WWI for us. This ensures that we will send defense if Belgium is attacked. Once we mobilize our troops tomorrow I will feel much more secure when it comes to Germany taking action against us. The President and I plan to keep close with our alliances and make decisions as a team to be successful. We know that we can’t win the war without the help of our allies. Today was a surplus of thinking ahead and making sure we will be as prepared as possible for the next war years coming. This will be no easy challenge for us, but we strongly believe that with smart movement of our troops and with helping each and every one of our allies, we will be able to make an impact. The allied powers have high hopes for WW1.
France 8
YEAR 1914
The start of 1914 was slow moving. This was a bit nerve wracking for us Allies, because we had no clue what the Central powers had up their sleeves. The first few battles did not affect us, so we choose to highlight our own country and securing it for safety. We chose to move troops inward and way from the coastlines to protect our borders. Our reasoning behind this was because we do not feel threatened by our coastlines. We feel more danger by the borders because we have Germany and Austria-Hungary that could come for us. As an alliance we came up with and strategized for our first battle. It was a little defeating seeing Russia lose to the first battle in the war so easily. But I think our alliance did and outstanding job making a comeback. As a group we started to plan for the attack on the Ottoman Empire. We began to prepare troops to travel by sea over to began the attack. Both the President and I were very eager to see Italy join our alliance. We feel they have a lot to offer, including a shared border with Austria-Hungary. This will help us attack them in the future. They also have an inside look on the Central Powers motives and strategies as the Central Powers were working to get Italy in with them. I see success in the years coming.
France 8
YEAR 1915
1915 was the most eventful year yet. Here we saw every country in the Allied powers getting involved in battles and helping each other out. To start off, we were more focused on helping other countries defend from invasions and planning for attack. We did not worry about defense for France, as we feel the entire country is off the Radar of the Central Powers. We moved troops into another allied country for the first time, which was a huge stepping stone for us. This felt like a true start to the war for France. We moved over troops to Italy as backup as we were suspecting an invasion from Austria-Hungary. We were indeed correct. This battle we were successful, managing to hold off the central powers. The year 1915 was a successful year for us Allied Powers. We also developed poison gas, which was a game changer for battle. We helped Serbia hold off Austria-Hungary yet again. I feel it was our luck though as they chose to not use poison gas. It was a close battle. Finally our biggest success was winning part of the Ottoman Empire. This was the battle that we had been preparing for, for 2 years. We were successful in doing so and managed to get Bulgaria too. I am proud to be an Allied Power, and feel we have conquered so much, and are still not finished.
France 8
YEAR 1916
This year was something else, to say the least. As soon as we started this year, The President and I were bombarded by the rest of our group to sign this treaty. The treaty was to make peace with Germany. We as leaders of France were extremely hesitant and knew that this HAD to be violating more than just our objectives. After talking things over and deeply thinking about this, we chose to agree. Our reasoning behind this was because we were the last country in the Allied Powers to sign and without our signature, we were afraid to cause conflict with the rest of the alliance. If we chose to decline the treaty, we were potentially risking loosing 3 of our objectives. Plus we just straight up knew that isn’t what we were to be doing in the first place. It was a tough decision for us, but we chose to sign. It ended up throwing Germany out of the game, which I guess was a bonus for us. Later that year we were victorious with the Russians as the Central powers attacked us in Russia. That whole year kind of honestly through us off, but we came to realization that we needed to focus on our original country, before we put the alliance first. So that is what we plan to do for the years coming.
France 8
YEAR 1917
This year, France decided we shall focus on our individual country. We focused on how we were going to achieve each and every one of our objectives. We got in touch with the United States, and learned that they wanted to take a part of Germany too. We formed a secret alliance with the US and it was this year, 1917, that it officially became one of us. We are gaining many countries that benefit France and we all are plotting something big. This year overall was a year of preparation and placement. We prepared our troops to go after Germany and Austria Hungary. We have troops waiting in Russia, Romania, Italy and France. The Unites States and us have come to an agreement to go after the same place, G2. With this we can finally achieve our 5th and final objective. All of the allied power troops are patiently but also eagerly ready to take on war. We have completely surrounded the Central Powers. We are ready for year 1918.
France 8
YEAR 1918
And just like that, WWI is over. As foreign minister of France I am more than impressed with how both the President and I went through this war. To end things off, both the United states and I had plotted a huge, game changing attack. Unfortunately we lost time within the snap of a finger. We managed to get our troops moved and planned to carry out our attack on Germany. We were devastated to learn we would no longer receive an offensive turn. We were forced to make quick thoughtless decisions. This put our countries leaders, including myself into a quick panic and we made decisions that was going to help us in the next turn, little did we know it would end shortly after. The allied powers as a whole worked tremendously together and there are was nobody else both the President and I would want to work with. Although the war did not end that way would have liked to, looking back we were more than happy with our success. We managed to achieve 5 of the 6 objectives. We will call this a win for France.