The Popular Front's interior minister, hounded to death by the far-right press
In a note to Blum before turning on the gas, he wrote: "If they could not succeed in dishonouring me, they will at least bear responsibility for my death. I am neither a deserter nor a traitor."
A Socialist politician, mayor of Lille, and Blum's interior minister. In the strike wave of June 1936 he refused to clear the occupied factories by force, and he carried out the dissolution of the far-right leagues, the first item of the Popular Front programme. When the far-right weekly Gringoire barraged him with a fabricated story of desertion in the First World War, a military court of honour and an overwhelming vote of the Chamber cleared him twice over; the campaign did not stop, and on 17 November he took his own life at his home in Lille. Hundreds of thousands came to his funeral, and his death set off the debate on legislating against press defamation.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1890–1914Socialist student politics in Lille; party journalist
- 1914–1918Captured retrieving a comrade's body; German prison camps
- 1925–1936Mayor of Lille
- 1928–1936Deputy; leader of the SFIO's Nord federation
- 1936.06Interior minister: no force against the occupations; dissolves the leagues
- 1936.07–11Gringoire's fabricated desertion campaign; cleared by a court of honour and the Chamber
- 1936.11.17Takes his life in Lille; vast crowds at his funeral
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarFrench prisoner who resisted forced labourCaptured by German forces in October 1915, he urged fellow prisoners to refuse forced labour.
- 1934–1938The French Popular Front and the Strikes of 1936Interior minister, target of the far-right press warHe refused to clear the occupied factories by force and dissolved the leagues, then was hounded to suicide in November 1936 by Gringoire's fabricated desertion campaign.
Wartime captivity and the revival of the desertion slander
Captured by German forces in October 1915, Salengro urged fellow prisoners in a Bavarian camp to refuse forced labor and was consequently confined in a disciplinary camp for thirteen months. His health deteriorated; he was repatriated through Switzerland, and a French court-martial dismissed the suspicion of desertion and acquitted him in January 1916. In 1936, however, far-right newspapers distorted his captivity and medical repatriation to revive the old accusation. After Henri Becquart raised the matter, L'Action française and Gringoire launched a campaign that continued even after a commission led by General Gamelin cleared Salengro and Blum's government won a vote of confidence in the Chamber by 427 votes on 13 November. Salengro, already distressed by his wife's death and his mother's illness, took his own life during the night of 17–18 November. The National Assembly's biography records both the acquittal based on his military record and the subsequent campaign of slander.