Alexandre Millerand: Organizing French War Production

Alexandre Millerand served as Minister of War from August 1914 to October 1915 during the initial crisis of World War I. Facing an acute shortage of munitions, he mobilized French industry, retooling civil factories and organizing private manufacturers to massively scale up artillery shell and armament production. Although Millerand strongly defended military autonomy under General Joseph Joffre, his policies laid the necessary industrial foundation for prolonged trench warfare. He later directed the reintegration of recovered Alsace-Lorraine in 1919 and became Prime Minister in 1920, continuing to champion a firm foreign policy regarding German treaty compliance.

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