Was there risk of revolution in France at end of World War I?

A very important factor in the revolutions that happened in Central and Eastern Europe is that losing armies of WW1 came back home with plenty of individual weapons, and the soldiers separated themselves between loyalist forces and soldiers entering the different groups.

This was true for the Bavarian fights in Germany, for the Hungarian revolution that needed Romanian intervention, and of course for the Bolshevik revolution.

EDIT:

The link of question is, obviously, that France was not on the losing side of WW2, so it did not suffer from angry military men coming home.

The question is asked around the common point of communism being implanted in Germany as well as France. But a big bifurcation point for the two countries is that one of them had lost the war, the other not, so the first one (Germany), was far more likely to suffer from the revolution.

If someone can give a better, more well-researched answer, then good, but for now I offer this "educated guess": Germany had simply suffered more economically as a result of the First World War, since due to geography they could be subjected to a naval blockade with comparative ease.

Therefore conditions and the state of mind in Germany were simply more desperate, compared to England or France.

As a reference:

The German Board of Public Health in December 1918 claimed that 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease caused by the blockade up until the end of December 1918. An academic study done in 1928 put the death toll at 424,000.

From Blockade of Germany

Short Answer

The risk was minimal for a number of reasons, key among them being: (1) a divided political left (see SFIO) facing a basically unified centre-right, (2) firm political and military leadership from 1917, and (3) the increasing likelihood of victory on the battlefield, especially with the US entering the war made a revolution highly unlikely.

Also, the aims of the army mutineers of 1917 and the strikers in 1919-20 did not, except in isolated incidents, include demands for the overthrow of the political system.

DETAILS

Concerning the mutinies in the French army which started in May 1917, these were indeed serious and widespread, but were dealt with effectively and decisively by Petain who was appointed Commander-in-Chief on May 15th. In addition to “addressing the atrocious conditions in the trenches and reinstating a revised leave policy”,

Judicial courts-martial of targeted key offenders defused the most outspoken resistance. A final phase allowed for the airing of lingering grievances and a gradual return to order, as long as Pétain kept his soldiers’ losses minimal through limited engagements...

...Instead of killing masses of insubordinate men, courts-martial identified leaders, who were then punished and served as an example of military justice at its highest level. Addressing the legitimate grievances of the men, particularly through the intervention of junior officers, allowed the time and space for morale to begin to recover....

... in the end, French soldiers chose to obey orders and return to the trenches, with a tacit agreement that no further futile offensives would be launched.

Further, the mutinies in France did not take on a political dimension in the way that they did in Germany where the Kiel mutineers rapidly fanned out across Germany with demands for not just an end to the war but also a change in the political system. French mutineers were not demanding a change in the political system; they simply wanted better conditions in the trenches and an end to futile mass attacks against almost impregnable defensive positions.

France was on the winning side of the war. With American soldiers arriving in increasing numbers from June 1917 onwards, and with increasing numbers of British and French tanks being deployed, both French soldiers and civilians had good cause for optimism at a time when defeatism was spreading through the German army. Victory in a foreign war, especially a victory leading to the acquisition of territory, is rarely (if ever) fertile ground for a revolution.

Georges Clemenceau provided firm political leadership after being appointed Prime Minster in November 1917.

... from the outset, Clemenceau gave evidence of his firm determination to revive the will to fight. He struck out against defeatism, whether on the Right or the Left, and dealt directly with trade union leaders with a mixture of coercion and improved conditions.... Clemenceau's position waxed steadily stronger and was never seriously in jeopardy in the chamber.

Source: Keith Robbins, The First World War

A key (though not the only) element in the collapse of the German will to fight was defeatism at the top level; this was in marked contrast to the attitudes of leaders in France and Britain. The French government skilfully trod a fine line between dealing with workers' (mostly financial) concerns and maintaining firm political control. In the election of November 1919, Clemenceau’s Bloc National won 412 of the 613 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

There were divisions in the labour movement and the political left. In 1918, for example:

On 11 May Renault delegates voted for an immediate strike both for pay and for the government to announce its war aims, a demand popular among those opposed to an offensive war. Within two days the strike spread to the Peugeot and Citroën plants to include a total of 200,000 workers. Strike rallies at Billancourt ended with cries of “Down with war!”63 This unleashed the fury of the metal workers’ union with one full-time official condemning the strike for putting the country at risk in the context of a new German offensive. On 16 May the union leaders gave an unconditional surrender to the new armaments minister; Renault dismissed the strike leaders and 146 workers were sent to the front.

Divisions in the working class were also evident on issues such as family allowances. As Paul Dutton in Origins of the French Welfare State (2002) says:

Employer control of family allowances and parliament’s consideration of social insurance prompted rancorous debates within the working class. Union leaders failed to stop the family allowance movement because at virtually every turn they were confounded by divisions among their own rank and file.

Further,

This division in the working class was exacerbated in 1919 with the creation of a new union based on social Catholic ideals, the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC). The 1920 Congress at Tours, where the French left split into rivaling socialist and communist parties further fragmented the working class on the question of social welfare.

Note:

The question seems to be partially based on a false premise – that Germany had to surrender because of the “fifth column of communists who were threat for stability of country”. This well-sourced Wikipedia article refutes this cause for the German defeat. Rather, the failure (after initial successes) of the German offensive led to the tide turning decisively from July 1918. Suffering from heavy losses and over-extended supply lines, and facing ever increasing numbers of newly-arrived American troops, the Germans were forced back and had little choice but to surrender.

Other sources

Sian Reynolds, France between the Wars: Gender and Politics (1996)

The Anatomy of Revolution

C. L. Mowat (ed) The Cambridge Modern History, vol XII: The Shifting Balance of World Forces, 1898-1945

Edward Shorter, Strikes in France 1830-1968

History of the French Communist Party