Albert François Lebrun

Albert François Lebrun (1871–1950) was a French statesman and the last President of the Third Republic (1932–1940), a member of the centre-right Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD).

Basics

Born 29 August 1871 at Mercy-le-Haut, Meurthe-et-Moselle, he died in Paris on 6 March 1950, aged 78. A French national, he was head of state of France as President of the French Republic from 10 May 1932 to 11 July 1940. He was of French origin, born into a Lorraine farming family in the part of the Moselle that remained French after the Treaty of Frankfurt. This is birthplace and nationality evidence, not an ethnic claim.

Biography

Trained as a mining engineer, he graduated top of his class from the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines de Paris and worked at Vesoul and Nancy before entering politics. In 1900, at 29, he was elected deputy for Meurthe-et-Moselle (Briey) as a moderate Republican, and from 1906 he presided the Meurthe-et-Moselle general council for 26 years. He was Minister for the Colonies from 1911/1912 to 1914, briefly Minister of War in January 1913 and Minister for the Blockade and Liberated Regions from 1917 to 1919; he entered the Senate in 1920, was Vice-President from 1925/1926 to 1929 and President of the Senate from 1931 to 1932. Elected President of France on 10 May 1932 after Paul Doumer's assassination, he was re-elected on 5 April 1939 with 506 votes of 904. Under Third Republic practice (the 'Constitution Grévy') he had little freedom to intervene politically. He appointed Gaston Doumergue after the 6 February 1934 crisis and, in 1936, consented 'la mort dans l'âme' to appoint Léon Blum of the Popular Front.

The 1940 transfer of power

With military collapse imminent and the cabinet seeking an armistice, Lebrun appointed Pétain to head the government after Reynaud's resignation. The date of that appointment is documented inconsistently: the French Albert Lebrun article states 16 June 1940, the English one 17 June 1940, and Reynaud's own article dates his resignation to 16 June. On 10 July the National Assembly voted the Constitutional Law by 569 to 80 (20 abstentions, 176 absent), and Lebrun signed and promulgated it the same day. The first constitutional act of 11 July abrogated article 2 of the 1875 constitutional laws and proclaimed Pétain head of state. Lebrun refused to resign on 14 July and was placed under Vichy police house arrest. He had earlier opposed the armistice and favoured continuing the fight from French North Africa.

After the fall: captivity and the end of his mandate

Lebrun never signed a resignation and retired to Vizille (Isère) under house surveillance. Hitler had him abducted by Klaus Barbie on 27 August 1943 and held at Itter Castle in the Tyrol, from where he returned to France on 9 October 1943 on health grounds. Legally re-elected in 1939 for a term running to 4 April 1946, he did not regain the presidency after the war. The ordinance of 9 August 1944 restored Republican legality and declared constitutional acts after 16 June 1940 void, and jurists raised the possibility of his returning precisely because he had not resigned. He met de Gaulle on 11 October 1944, maintained he had never formally resigned while the press wrongly reported that he had, and de Gaulle denied him a return to the presidency. Living in retirement, he died of acute pneumonia on 6 March 1950 after an illness contracted returning from a lecture. During the Pétain trial he again argued that he had never officially resigned. De Gaulle wrote of him: 'As a head of state he lacked two things: there was no state, and he wasn't a head.'