Raymond Poincaré in the context of July Crisis

The Democratic Alliance (French: Alliance démocratique, AD), originally called Democratic Republican Alliance (Alliance républicaine démocratique, ARD), was a French political party created in 1901 by followers of Léon Gambetta such as Raymond Poincaré, who would be president of the Council in the 1920s. The party was originally formed as a centre-left gathering of moderate liberals, independent Radicals who rejected the new left-leaning Radical-Socialist Party, and Moderate Republicans (Gambetta and the like), situated at the political centre and to the right of the newly formed Radical-Socialist Party. However, after World War I and the parliamentary disappearance of monarchists and Bonapartists it quickly became the main centre-right party of the Third Republic. It was part of the National Bloc right-wing coalition which won the elections after the end of the war. The ARD successively took the name "Democratic Republican Party" (Parti Républicain Démocratique, PRD), and then "Social and Republican Democratic Party" (Parti Républicain Démocratique et Social), before becoming again the AD.

The ARD was largely discredited after supporting the Vichy regime during World War II, an option strongly supported by its major leader Pierre-Étienne Flandin and other members such as Joseph Barthélemy. The centre-right party tried to reform itself under the direction of Joseph Laniel, who had taken part in the Resistance. It temporarily joined the Rally of Republican Lefts (Rassemblement des gauches républicaines, RGR) before merging into the National Center of Independents and Peasants (Centre national des indépendants et paysans, CNIP). The AD, which in contrast to the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) or the French Communist Party (PCF), never became a mass political party founded on voting discipline (in these left-wing parties deputies usually vote in agreement with the party's consensus), turned at that time in little more than an intellectual circle whose members met during suppers. However, it was dissolved in only 1978, long after its effective disappearance from the political scene.

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who was prime minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A physician turned journalist, he played a central role in the politics of the Third Republic, particularly amid the end of the First World War. He was a key figure of the Independent Radicals, advocating for the separation of church and state, as well as the amnesty of the Communards exiled to New Caledonia.

After about 1,400,000 French soldiers were killed between the German invasion and Armistice, he demanded a total victory over the German Empire. Clemenceau stood for reparations, a transfer of colonies, strict rules to prevent a rearming process, as well as the restitution of Alsace–Lorraine, which had been annexed to Germany in 1871. He achieved these goals through the Treaty of Versailles signed at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920). Nicknamed Père la Victoire ("Father Victory") or Le Tigre ("The Tiger"), he continued his harsh position against Germany in the 1920s, although not quite so much as President Raymond Poincaré or former Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch, who thought the treaty was too lenient on Germany, prophetically stating: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years." Clemenceau obtained mutual defence treaties with the United Kingdom and the United States, to unite against possible future German aggression, but these never took effect due to the U.S. Senate's failure to ratify the treaty, which thus also nullified British obligation.

The National Bloc (French: Bloc national) was the name given to two loose coalitions formed by various parties of the right in France, characterised by an alliance between former enemies of Independent Radicals, Conservative Liberals and Catholic nationalists. The first Bloc, led by Clemenceau, was in power from 1919 to 1924. Later, the name was often used to describe a governing alliance of a similar range of parties, led by Poincaré and in power from 1926 to 1932.