Union sacrée

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L'union sacrée (French for Sacred Union) was a truce in France to which the left-wing agreed, during World War I, of not opposing the government nor starting any strike. Made in the name of patriotism, it opposed the SFIO's internationalism and its late former leader Jean Jaurès' pledge not to enter any "bourgeois war." Although an important part of the Socialist movement joined the Union sacrée, some trade unionists such as Pierre Monatte opposed it.

On the first of August, 1914, the President of the French Republic, Raymond Poincaré, declares the war on Germany. Three days later, Prime Minister Rene Viviani made a speech:

« Dans la guerre qui s'engage, la France […] sera héroïquement défendue par tous ses fils, dont rien ne brisera devant l'ennemi l'union sacrée »

(« In the coming war, France will be heroically defended by all its sons, who in a sacred union will not break in the face of the enemy »).

This political movement may have been an attempt to create solidarity during a time when the largely pacifist French Socialist Party threatened a general strike and French Catholics felt slighted by the 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State. Elements of nationalism (see "August Madness" in World War I ), anti-German propaganda and loss of the former French territory of Alsace-Moselle after 1870 (revanchism) may have been used to strengthen the movement.

By any measure the movement was success: the French mobilization went forward and there was less than 1.5% of French defections during that time.^{[citation needed]}