Beginning in the fall of 1914, every French soldier on the Western Front received a daily ration of wine from the army. At first it was a modest quarter litre, but by 1917 it had increased to the equivalent of a full bottle each day. The wine ration was intended to sustain morale in the trenches, making the men more willing to endure suffering and boredom. The army also supplied soldiers with doses of distilled alcohol just before attacks to increase their ferocity and fearlessness. This strategic distribution of alcohol was a defining feature of French soldiers’ experiences of the war and amounted to an experimental policy of intoxicating soldiers for military ends.

A Thirst for Wine and War explores the French army’s emotional and behavioural conditioning of soldiers through the distribution of a mind-altering drug that was later hailed as one of the army’s “fathers of victory.” The daily wine ration arose from an unexpected set of factors including the demoralization of trench warfare, the wine industry’s fear of losing its main consumers, and medical consensus about the benefits of wine drinking. The army’s related practice of distributing distilled alcohol to embolden soldiers was a double-edged sword, as the men might become unruly. The army implemented regulations and surveillance networks to curb men’s drinking behind the lines, in an attempt to ensure they only drank when it was useful to the war effort. When morale collapsed in spring 1917, the army lost control of this precarious system as drunken soldiers mutinied in the thousands. Discipline was restored only when the army regained command of soldiers’ alcohol consumption.

Drawing on a range of archives, personal narratives, and trench journals, A Thirst for Wine and War shows how the French army’s intoxication of its soldiers constituted a unique exercise of biopower deployed on a mass scale.

Adam Derek Zientek is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Davis.

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“Alcohol was the agent that both energized soldiers with combative valor and reconciled them to their endurance of the horror. It provoked the lethal conduct to which it then became the antidote. … When would it end? What right had officers to keep sending exhausted and demoralized men—who had already seen enough atrocity to last them a lifetime—back to the front? It remains one of the ghastliest aspects of the pathos of World War I that shattered men kept obediently returning to the trenches … [It is a] tale that Zientek tells with admirable narrative drive.” World of Fine Wine Magazine

“This book not only contributes substantially to the history of intoxicants and their consumption, but it also extends well beyond these topics to expand our understanding of the histories of France, of the Great War, and of war more generally. It is hard to see the events of the First World War in France in quite the same way after reading this work.” Richard S. Fogarty, University at Albany, SUNY and author of Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918

“Zientek provides insight into how psychotropic drugs have been used and implemented during and after wars, not only in the French armies but also other fighting forces over the ages. Wars continue to rage, and although weaponry and logistics may have changed, the use of different forms of drugs is still prevalent in battles. I found this book captivating: a perfect marriage between history and the place of drugs in war.” The Culinary Historians of Canada newsletter

“Wine kept the men cheerful and able to put up with foul conditions; but when they went over the top with the high likelihood of being killed or dreadfully maimed, a little extra pick-me-up was called for. Did it matter that men often went into battle as drunk as lords? Not in the larger scale of things, Zientek concludes. Whether it is easier, indeed preferable, to die when drunk or sober is a question none can answer, because we only enjoy the experience once.” Julian Barnes, London Review of Books