<P> France relied heavily on its worldwide empire for manpower, to work in munitions factories and other civilian jobs inside France . A famous example was Ho Chi Minh who worked in Paris, and was highly active in organizing fellow Vietnamese, and even demanding a voice for them at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . The French army enlisted hundreds of thousands of colonials . From Africa came 212,000 soldiers, of whom 160,000 fought on the Western front . </P> <P> The rapid unplanned buildup of French military operations in Africa disrupted normal trade relations and all the colonies, especially disrupting food supplies for the cities and distorting the local labor markets . French administrators, focused on supporting the armies on the Western Front, disregarded or suppressed protest movements . </P> <P> The Russian economy was far too backward to sustain a major war, and conditions deteriorated rapidly, despite financial aid from Britain . By late 1915 there was a severe shortage of artillery shells . The very large but poorly equipped Russian army fought tenaciously and desperately despite its poor organisation and lack of munitions . Casualties were enormous . By 1915, many soldiers were sent to the front unarmed, and told to pick up whatever weapons they could from the battlefield . </P> <P> The onset of World War I exposed the poor administrative skills of the czarist government under Nicholas II . A show of national unity had accompanied Russia's entrance into the war, with defense of the Slavic Serbs the main battle cry . In the summer of 1914, the Duma and the zemstva expressed full support for the government's war effort . The initial conscription was well organized and peaceful, and the early phase of Russia's military buildup showed that the empire had learned lessons from the Russo - Japanese War . But military reversals and the government's incompetence soon soured much of the population . Enemy control of the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its foreign supplies and markets . </P>

How much damage did world war 1 cause