Interwar defence debate resisted institutional reassessment

The Joffre programme emerged from France's unsettled politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Public debate praised victory and the wartime marshals more readily than it examined whether their First World War decisions had been effective. Acknowledging grave mistakes would also have made the country's immense losses still harder to bear. This atmosphere rewarded reassuring slogans over the frank, inclusive defence debate needed for coherent rearmament. Later French carrier choices therefore reflected institutional and political constraints as well as naval requirements.