Radical French prime minister at the end of the First World War who pressed harsh terms on Hungary at the Paris Peace Conference
A physician turned journalist from the Vendée, he became mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris in 1870 and the next year tried to broker a compromise between the Paris Commune and the government. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he advocated the separation of church and state. As interior minister in 1906 he ordered repressive policies toward the workers’ movement and was nicknamed “the Tiger”, and he was prime minister in 1906–1909 and 1917–1920. Appointed in November 1917 at one of the darkest hours of the war, he demanded total victory over Germany and achieved the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference. Seeking to weaken Hungary as Germany was weakened, he brought about the stringent terms of the Treaty of Trianon. He died in 1929.
French marshal who as Allied supreme commander in 1918 led the counter-offensive and dictated the armistice
Born into a Catholic family in Tarbes, he made his name commanding the Ninth Army at the Marne in 1914. Facing the German spring offensive in March 1918 he became Allied supreme commander, coordinating the French, British and American armies, and after the Second Battle of the Marne was made marshal and led the counter-offensive that ended the war. In November he received the German armistice at Compiègne. At the peace conference he called for separating the Rhineland, and when this was reduced to a fifteen-year occupation he criticised the Treaty of Versailles as too lenient. For his advice to Poland in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he was made a Marshal of Poland. He died in Paris in 1929.
Career timeline
1914Commander of the Ninth Army at the Marne
1918Allied commander-in-chief (26 March); Marshal of France (August)
A marshal whose Verdun prestige ended in Vichy collaboration
On 17 June 1940, Pétain broadcast that France must cease fighting.
Philippe Pétain was a French general who became a national hero through his command at Verdun and his effort to restore the army’s morale after the 1917 mutinies. In 1940 he opposed continuing the war against Germany and sought an armistice; after parliament granted him constituent powers, he became head of the French State at Vichy and replaced the republic with an authoritarian regime. His government collaborated with Nazi Germany and enacted antisemitic laws, binding French state institutions to the occupation order. After liberation, the High Court condemned him to death for treason and intelligence with the enemy, but Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Career timeline
1876Entered Saint-Cyr military academy
1916Commanded French forces at Verdun
1917–1918Commander-in-chief of the French Army
1934Minister of War
1939–1940French ambassador to Spain
1940.06President of the Council of Ministers of France
1940–1944Head of the French State at Vichy
1945–1951Convicted of treason and imprisoned for life
The voice of Action Française, the polemicist who pushed a scandal from the page into the street day after day
Through January 1934 his columns called out the implicated deputies one by one, and on the morning of 6 February the paper urged its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. At the front of the columns that filled the square that night were the Camelots du Roi, the action squads of Action Française
The son of the novelist Alphonse Daudet, a medical student turned polemicist, who founded the daily Action Française with Maurras and set its tone. He sat as a deputy for Paris from 1919 to 1924, and his method of personal attack and denunciation left its mark on a generation of French political language. After losing a libel case brought over his claim that the police had killed his son Philippe in 1923, he fled to Belgium in 1927 and returned under an amnesty in 1930. In January 1934 he printed the names of the politicians touched by the Stavisky affair day after day, building the picture of a 'republic of thieves' that carried the paper's readers to the square on 6 February.
Career timeline
1867–1890Born in Paris, son of Alphonse Daudet; studies medicine
1900–1908Turns royalist and joins Action Française
1908–1942Co-founder and leading writer of the daily Action Française
1919–1924Deputy for Paris
1923–1927The lawsuits over his son Philippe's death; convicted of libel and flees to Belgium
1930Returns under an amnesty
1934.01–02The press offensive over the Stavisky affair that produced the demonstration of 6 February
From Foch's brilliant staff officer to a general of defeat and accommodation
On 12 June 1940, Weygand advised the French government to capitulate.
Maxime Weygand was a French general who served as Ferdinand Foch's key staff officer in the First World War, coordinating Allied operations and reading the armistice terms to the German delegation in 1918. Between the wars he carried French military influence in Poland and the Levant, then became commander-in-chief of the French armies in May 1940 and, after the German breakthrough, judged that continued fighting in metropolitan France was no longer feasible and advised an armistice. He joined the Vichy government and later directed French North Africa, choosing limited accommodation with Germany while enforcing antisemitic measures harshly. Detained after the war on treason charges and cleared in 1948, he later defended Marshal Pétain's memory.
Career timeline
1885–1888Studied at Saint-Cyr and the Saumur Cavalry School
1914–1918Chief of staff to Foch and senior staff officer at Allied Supreme Headquarters
1918Read the armistice terms at the Compiègne negotiations
1920Military adviser to the Inter-Allied Mission in Poland
1923–1924High Commissioner of the Levant
1931–1935Vice-president of France's Superior War Council and Inspector-General of the Army
1940.05–06Commander-in-chief of the French armies; advised an armistice
1940.06–1941.11Vichy Minister for Defence and Delegate-General in North Africa
1942–1945Held by Germany, including internment at Itter Castle
The brain of Action Française, the royalist theorist who denied the republic itself in the name of integral nationalism
'It is the revenge of Dreyfus!', on hearing his life sentence in the court at Lyon, 27 January 1945
A poet and polemicist from Martigues in Provence, deaf from his youth, who led Action Française for half a century after the movement formed out of the Dreyfus affair. His 'integral nationalism' called for the restoration of the monarchy and the abolition of the parliamentary republic, and named Jews, Protestants, Freemasons and foreigners as the 'four confederate states' eating France from within. The movement survived the Vatican's condemnation of 1926, and in 1938 he was elected to the Académie Française. Through January 1934 his paper named 'the thieves' day after day, and on the morning of 6 February it called on its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. He welcomed Pétain's accession in 1940 as a 'divine surprise', backed Vichy, and denounced resisters and Jews in print throughout the occupation. In January 1945 he was sentenced to life imprisonment and national degradation for collusion with the enemy.
Career timeline
1868–1890Born at Martigues; loses his hearing; begins writing in Paris
1899–1908Joins Action Française out of the Dreyfus affair; the daily is founded in 1908
1908–1939Theorist of integral nationalism, shaping the whole of the French far right
1926The Vatican condemns Action Française
1934.01–02Press offensive over the Stavisky affair; calls for the demonstration of 6 February
1938Elected to the Académie Française
1940–1944Backs Vichy; denounces resisters and Jews in print
1945.01Sentenced to life and national degradation for collusion with the enemy
1952Released in ill health and dies at Tours the same year
Leader who took the SFIO majority into the Comintern at Tours in 1920, founding the French Communist Party, and ran L’Humanité
At the 1920 Tours Congress, he backed SFIO affiliation with the Comintern, led the majority split, and helped found the French Communist Party. Arrested in 1923 for opposing France’s Ruhr occupation, he was cleared by the Senate sitting as a High Court.
Born in Paimpol in Brittany, he joined Guesde’s French Workers’ Party in 1891 and the unified SFIO in 1905, and from 1918 ran L’Humanité for the rest of his life. As his supporters swung towards the October Revolution after the war, he led the vote to join the Comintern at the Tours congress of 1920 and became a founder of the French Communist Party. He was jailed in 1923 for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr. A deputy and senator, he remained the party’s elder statesman until his death in 1958.
Career timeline
1892Joined the Gironde section of the French Workers’ Party, founded by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue.
1905Took part in the founding congress of the unified Socialist Party (SFIO) and became its propaganda delegate.
1918Elected director of L’Humanité, which he led until his death in 1958.
1920At the Tours Congress, supported SFIO affiliation with the Comintern and helped found the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), predecessor of the French Communist Party.
1923Arrested for opposing France’s Ruhr occupation and brought before the Senate sitting as a High Court; it ruled there was no case to answer.
1936Elected senator for the Seine, becoming the first senator from the French Communist Party.
French socialist and teachers’ union activist who led the Committee for the Third International
He organised internationalist socialists against the war and served as secretary of the Committee for the Third International during the founding of the French Communist Party.
A teacher, Loriot joined the Socialist Party in 1901 and became active in the teachers’ union. During the First World War he opposed support for the war and backed the Zimmerwald position, serving as secretary of the Committee for the Resumption of International Relations and later the Committee for the Third International. At the Tours Congress in 1920 he joined the leadership of the newly formed French Communist Party.
Career timeline
1901Joined the Socialist Party
1917Became secretary of the Committee for the Resumption of International Relations
1919Secretary of the Committee for the Third International
1920Elected to the Executive Committee of the newly formed Communist Party and as international secretary at the Tours Congress
1925Active in opposition to the party’s Bolshevisation
1926Left the party and joined the revolutionary syndicalist movement
Last president of the Third Republic, who signed the 1940 transfer of power
After Paul Reynaud's cabinet fell on 16 June 1940, he appointed Philippe Pétain to head the government; Pétain requested an armistice the next day. He signed the Constitutional Law on 10 July, and Pétain became head of state the day after.
A French centre-right republican politician trained as a mining engineer, he entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1900 at 29 for Meurthe-et-Moselle and presided that department's general council for 26 years from 1906. He was Minister for the Colonies in 1911–1914, briefly Minister of War in 1913 and Minister for the Blockade and Liberated Regions in 1917–1919, entered the Senate in 1920 and became its president in 1931. Elected last president of the Third Republic in 1932 after Paul Doumer's assassination, he was re-elected in 1939 but had little executive room under Third Republic practice. On 16 June 1940 he appointed Pétain to head the government; on 10 July he signed the Constitutional Law carried 569 to 80, and on 11 July Pétain became head of state. He never resigned and was seized by German forces in 1943. He died in Paris on 6 March 1950, aged 78.
Career timeline
1896–1901Mining engineer, Vesoul and Nancy
1900–1920Deputy, Briey
1911–1914Minister for the Colonies, briefly Minister of War in 1913
1917–1919Minister for the Blockade and Liberated Regions
1920–1931Senator, then Vice-President and President of the Senate
1932–1940President of France, last president of the Third Republic
1940Promulgated the 10 July Constitutional Law, transferring power without resigning
France's first Socialist prime minister, who left behind paid holidays and the 40-hour week
'I rarely left my desk while in power; but whenever I went out and crossed the Paris suburbs and saw the roads covered with processions of jalopies, motorcycles and tandems, with working-class couples in matching pullovers, I had the feeling that, despite everything, I had brought a kind of clearing, a break in the clouds, into difficult and obscure lives', statement at the Riom trial, March 1942
A literary critic drawn into politics by the Dreyfus affair, he kept the Socialist SFIO's 'old house' standing at the 1920 Congress of Tours when the majority left to found the Communist Party. As prime minister of the 1936 Popular Front government he brokered the Matignon Agreements and enacted two weeks of paid holidays and the 40-hour week, becoming France's first Socialist and first Jewish head of government and a target of the far right. One of the eighty parliamentarians who voted against full powers for Pétain in 1940, he turned Vichy's Riom trial into a platform for defending the Popular Front, survived internment near Buchenwald, and briefly headed a caretaker government in late 1946.
Career timeline
1894–1906Conseil d'État jurist and literary critic; the Dreyfus affair draws him to Jaurès and socialism
1914–1919Chef de cabinet to a Socialist minister in the war government; elected deputy in 1919
1920.12At the Congress of Tours, keeps 'the old house' as the majority founds the Communist Party
1921–1936Rebuilds the SFIO; political director of Le Populaire; parliamentary leader
1936.02Beaten nearly to death by the royalist Camelots du Roi
1936.06–1937.06Prime minister of the Popular Front: Matignon Agreements, paid holidays, the 40-hour week
1938.03–04Second Blum government collapses within a month against the Senate
1940.07One of the eighty who vote against full powers for Pétain at Vichy
1942–1945Defends the Popular Front at the Riom trial; interned in a special camp near Buchenwald
1946.12–1947.01Heads the caretaker government; postwar reconstruction and the Blum-Byrnes loan agreement
A commander-in-chief caught between defensive doctrine and forward deployment
On 16 May 1940, when Churchill asked him 'Where are the strategic reserves?', Gamelin answered: 'There is none.'
Maurice Gamelin was a French general who rose through the high command on the strength of his First World War staff experience and his reputation as a republican military coordinator. Expecting a long war against Germany, he built strategy around the Maginot Line, yet he limited the Saar Offensive and committed the main Allied movement toward the Dyle and the Belgian frontier when Germany invaded in 1940. After the German breakthrough at Sedan in May 1940, he was dismissed, later detained by Vichy and Germany, and became a central figure in the contested assignment of responsibility for France's defeat.
Career timeline
1893Graduated first from Saint-Cyr
1906–1914Staff officer to General Joffre
1914–1918Served in the First World War; commanded the 9th Infantry Division
1919–1924Head of the French military mission in Brazil
1924–1929Commander of French forces in the Levant
1931–1939Chief of the Army General Staff; senior coordinator of the armed forces
1939–1940Commander-in-chief; directed the Saar Offensive and Dyle Plan
The perfume magnate who bought both the far-right leagues and a mass newspaper
In 1928 he launched a daily at ten centimes a copy and drove its circulation toward a million. The paper lost money, which was not the point: it was cheap enough to be read everywhere, and the language grown on its pages became the language of the columns that filled the square in February 1934
A Corsican who built the largest fortune in the European perfume industry of his day. He bought Le Figaro in 1922 and founded the cheap mass daily L'Ami du peuple in 1928, using both as instruments of anticommunist, antisemitic and antiparliamentary agitation. He financed Georges Valois's Faisceau and the early Croix-de-Feu, and in 1933 created and funded Solidarité Française outright. His career is a large part of the answer to the question that hangs over the French leagues of the 1930s: who paid for them. The organisation he had founded was on the Place de la Concorde as a column on 6 February 1934, and he died that July, ruined by a divorce settlement and his debts.
Career timeline
1874–1904Born at Ajaccio in Corsica; starts in perfumery in Paris
1905–1920Builds one of the great fortunes of the perfume industry
1922Buys Le Figaro
1925–1928Finances Valois's Faisceau and the early Croix-de-Feu
1928Founds the mass daily L'Ami du peuple
1933Creates and funds Solidarité Française
1934.07Dies after a divorce settlement and financial ruin
French officer who headed the Entente military mission in Budapest and delivered the Vix note in March 1919
An Alsatian-born French professional soldier, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1898 and served as a staff officer of the colonial troops. At the end of the First World War he was on the staff of the French Army of the Orient in Belgrade, and on 26 November 1918 he arrived in Budapest as a lieutenant colonel at the head of the Entente military mission, charged with overseeing the Padua armistice and the Belgrade military convention. He passed several notes demanding withdrawals to the Hungarian government; the note he handed President Károlyi on 20 March 1919 brought the government down the next day. Harassed after the Soviet Republic was proclaimed, the mission left by train for Szeged on 26 March. He later served with colonial troops in the Levant and elsewhere, became a général de division in 1933 and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1941.
Career timeline
1898Graduated from Saint-Cyr
1918–1919Head of the Entente military mission in Budapest
From syndicalism through the Comintern to the Fourth International: a French internationalist across a century of revolution
Lenin described Rosmer as "a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut in five or six languages." — quoted in Philippe Robrieux's internal history of the French Communist Party
American-born French revolutionary syndicalist and a key figure in the Comintern leadership. With Pierre Monatte he published La Vie ouvrière and organised anti-war internationalism; he spent seventeen months in Moscow helping found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern). A Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party, he was expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, thereafter committing to the Left Opposition and Trotskyism. In 1938 he hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny. In his later years he signed the Manifesto of 121 against the Algerian War and wrote the classic memoir Lenin's Moscow.
Career timeline
1909–1914Co-editor of the CGT journal *La Vie ouvrière* with Pierre Monatte; leading figure in revolutionary syndicalism
1915–1918Organised French participation in the Zimmerwald Conference; sustained anti-war activity throughout WWI as an internationalist
1919–1920Active in the Committee for Adhesion to the Third International; sent to Moscow, elected to the ECCI during a seventeen-month stay
1921Helped found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) at its inaugural congress; served on the provisional council with Lozovsky and Tom Mann
1922–1924Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party and general secretary of *L'Humanité*; core leader of the party's Left current
1924.10Expelled from the PCF alongside Boris Souvarine and Pierre Monatte for opposing the anti-Trotsky campaign
1929–1931Co-founded the Communist League, France's first Trotskyist organisation; resigned in 1931 over tactical differences
1938.09Hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny, held clandestinely under threat of GPU assassinations
1939Visited Trotsky in Mexico; served on the Dewey Commission and acted as guardian to Trotsky's grandson Sieva
1940–1947Stranded in the United States by WWII; returned to France in 1947
1953Published *Lenin's Moscow* (*Moscou sous Lénine*), with a preface by Albert Camus
1960Signed the Manifesto of 121, supporting those who refused to fight in the Algerian War
The Paris prefect of police, hard on the left and indulgent to the leagues, whose dismissal lit the fuse of 6 February
'Then I shall be in the street', on the telephone with Daladier as he was removed, 3 February 1934. The right-wing press read it as notice that he would take to the streets; Chiappe said he had meant only that he would be out of a job
A Corsican from Ajaccio who rose through the police administration and served as prefect of police of Paris from 1927 to 1934. He had a standing reputation for severity toward left-wing demonstrations and indulgence toward the street actions of the far-right leagues, and was popular with the right-wing press and the veterans' associations. When Prime Minister Édouard Daladier removed him on 3 February 1934, the right read it as the republic striking down its own policeman, and three days later the Place de la Concorde erupted. He remained a central figure of Paris right-wing politics after his dismissal, and died in 1940 when the aircraft carrying him to take up the Vichy post of high commissioner in the Levant was shot down over the Mediterranean.
Career timeline
1878Born at Ajaccio in Corsica
1900s–1926Rises through senior posts in the police administration
1927–1934Prefect of police of Paris
1934.02.03Removed by Daladier; refuses the residency-general in Morocco
1935–1940Remains a central figure of the Paris right
1940.11Appointed Vichy high commissioner in the Levant; shot down on the way
A French general whose 1940 command exposed the tension between mountain-war expertise and an old command system
On Christmas night 1914, wounded, he led his company in holding the Tête des Faux summit against a numerically superior German attack, earning two citations.
Robert Touchon was a French general who built his reputation through mountain warfare and infantry instruction, rising on the strength of First World War combat and Alpine commands. After the German breakthrough in May 1940, he commanded the Sixth Army, hastily placing forces moved from the Maginot Line along the Aisne and committing Charles de Gaulle’s 4th Armoured Division at Montcornet. The armoured force lacked full integration and coordinated support, while his army could only hold parts of the front before retreating. Retired after the armistice, Touchon later served on Vichy’s National Council and the Lyon section of its State Court, leaving a record that joins military authority to collaboration with an authoritarian regime.
Career timeline
1899–1901Cadet at the Saint-Cyr military academy
1914–1918Commanded Alpine Chasseur battalions; served in the First World War and received multiple citations
1928–1930Commander of the 159th Infantry Regiment at Briançon
1932–1935Commandant of the Infantry and Combat Tanks Application School at Saint-Maixent
1938–1939Military governor of Lyon and commander of the 14th Military Region
1939.11–1940.02Commander of the XXIII Army Corps
1940.02–07Commander of the Sixth Army during the Aisne defence and the Montcornet counterattack
1941–1942Member of Vichy’s National Council and judge on the Lyon section of the State Court
A republican statesman who urged resistance in the face of defeat
In June 1940, he argued that France should continue the war from North Africa.
Paul Reynaud was a French republican statesman and lawyer whose independent positions ranged across economics, colonial policy, and defence. Facing Nazi Germany, he pressed for wartime financial mobilisation and modern warfare built around tanks and air power. When France collapsed in 1940, he sought to preserve the alliance with Britain and continue the war from North Africa, but resigned as premier after the armistice camp prevailed and was subsequently detained by Vichy and Germany. After liberation he returned to parliament and remained a prominent defender of parliamentary government.
Career timeline
1910First secretary of the Paris Bar Conference
1919–1924Deputy for Basses-Alpes
1928–1940Deputy for Paris
1930Minister of Finance
1931–1932Minister of Colonies
1938Minister of Justice
1938–1940Minister of Finance
1940President of the Council, also Foreign Affairs and War Minister
A tank-war innovator who became the Secret Army's first commander
On 9 June 1943, the Secret Army commander Vidal was arrested at Paris's La Muette station.
Charles Delestraint was a French general shaped by captivity in the First World War and by command of armoured units, whose advocacy of tanks reflected a changing theory of modern war. After France's defeat and the armistice, he chose resistance and, selected by Charles de Gaulle, became the first commander of the Secret Army, bringing several movements' military structures together. Working with Jean Moulin, he helped extend the organisation across occupied France, but his arrest on 9 June 1943 created the succession crisis behind the Caluire meeting. Deported to Natzweiler-Struthof and Dachau, he was killed shortly before liberation and posthumously made a Companion of the Liberation.
Career timeline
1897–1900Cadet, Saint-Cyr military academy
1914–1918First World War service, German prisoner of war
1923–1936Armoured-unit commander, colonel
1936–1939Commander, 3rd Tank Brigade; brigadier general
1939–1940Commander of the 7th Army's tanks and 1st Armoured Group
1942–1943First commander of the Secret Army, code name Vidal
1943–1945Imprisoned at Natzweiler and Dachau; executed
The syndicalist who led the CGT for 31 years, signed the Matignon Agreements and won the Nobel Peace Prize
'The labour movement has never won a greater victory', radio address just after the conclusion of the Matignon Agreements, June 1936
A match-factory worker who became secretary-general of the CGT at thirty in 1909 and led it until 1940, the public face of French trade unionism. Starting as a revolutionary syndicalist, he moved to reformism when he accepted the union sacrée in 1914, helped draft the labour clauses of the Versailles Treaty and co-found the International Labour Organization. He led the reunified CGT into the Matignon Agreements in 1936, was interned under Vichy and deported to Germany, and after the war became founding president of Force Ouvrière, the 1948 breakaway from the communist-led CGT, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951.
Career timeline
1895–1906Match-factory worker at Aubervilliers; sacked for striking against the white phosphorus that blinded his father
1909–1940Secretary-general of the CGT
1914.08Abandons the antiwar general strike for the union sacrée; speaks at Jaurès's funeral
1919–1921Helps draft the Versailles labour clauses and found the ILO; the CGT's revolutionary wing splits off as the CGTU
1936.03–06Leads the reunified CGT into the Matignon Agreements; membership soars from one to four million
1940–1945CGT dissolved by Vichy; house arrest, then deported to Germany in 1943
1947–1948Breaks with the communist-led CGT; founding president of Force Ouvrière
1947–1954President of the French Economic Council; Nobel Peace Prize, 1951
A general who embodied the military case for defeat and armistice
On 22 June 1940, he signed the armistice for France in the Compiègne forest.
Charles Huntziger was a French Army general who built his career in the colonial infantry, on the Balkan front in the First World War, and in overseas commands and negotiations between the wars. Commanding the Second Army at Sedan in 1940, he failed to stop the German breakthrough, and his decisions remained part of the dispute over responsibility for France’s defeat. He judged that the capacity to continue fighting was nearing its limit and chaired Pétain’s delegation that signed the 22 June armistice. As Vichy’s Minister of War, he then helped reorganize the military of the collaborationist state until his death in a plane crash in 1941.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from Saint-Cyr, second lieutenant in the colonial infantry
1918Operations chief, Allied Army of the Orient, planner of the Vardar offensive
1924–1928Commander of French occupation troops in the Tianjin concession
1934–1938Commander-in-chief of French forces in the Levant
1939–1940Commander of the Second Army at Sedan
1940Commander of Fourth Army Group; chairman of France’s 22 June armistice delegation
1940–1941Vichy Minister of War and commander-in-chief of the Armistice Army
In Moscow in August 1939 he negotiated a military accord with the USSR, but his own delegation's written powers were limited, the British head had none, and the talks stalled on Red Army transit through Poland.
French army general Aimé Doumenc organized motor transport in the First World War and later drafted a design for an autonomous armored division. In August 1939 he headed France's military delegation in Moscow, negotiating a military accord with the USSR on limited written powers; the talks stalled on Red Army transit through Poland and were suspended as the German-Soviet pact was concluded. In 1940 he served in the high command through the collapse in the Ardennes, and afterwards was Commissioner-General for National Reconstruction and wrote military history.
Career timeline
1898–1900Student at the École polytechnique
1907–1909Student at the École supérieure de guerre
1916–1918Deputy director and director of the Automobile Service, organizing Verdun supply and relief
1925Served in the Rif War
1928Proposed an autonomous armored-division design
1938Member of the Superior Council of War
1939Head of the French military delegation in Moscow
1940–1942Major general at army headquarters, Commissioner-General for National Reconstruction, then left active service
A republican politician who became an architect of Vichy collaboration
In 1942, while calling for labor mobilization, he publicly declared that he desired a German victory.
Pierre Laval began as a lawyer and Socialist politician, then moved rightward and became a leading minister and prime minister of the Third Republic. After France's defeat in 1940, he helped secure Pétain's full powers and the dismantling of the constitutional order, making himself central to the Vichy regime. He believed collaboration with Germany could preserve France's position, and after returning to power in 1942 he expanded labor provision and police cooperation. Convicted of treason after liberation, he was executed in 1945.
Career timeline
1903–1922Socialist activist and lawyer
1914–1919Deputy in the Chamber of Deputies
1923–1944Mayor of Aubervilliers
1931–1932President of the Council
1934–1936Foreign minister and President of the Council
1940.06–12Vice-President of the Vichy Council of Ministers
The Radicals' 'Bull of Vaucluse', who helped build the Popular Front and dismantled it with his own hands
'Ah! les cons! s'ils savaient...', the words attributed to him on seeing the crowds cheering at Le Bourget airfield on his return from Munich on 30 September 1938. Whether he said them, and where and to whom, is disputed.
A baker's son and history teacher who rose to lead the Radical Party. He quit as premier after the 6 February 1934 riot, then as defence minister from June 1936 helped sustain the Popular Front, but after returning as premier in April 1938 he ended the 40-hour week by decree in November and broke the general strike. He signed the Munich accords in September 1938, declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and banned the Communist Party after the Nazi-Soviet pact. He fell over the failure to aid Finland in March 1940, stood trial at Riom and was interned near Buchenwald and at Itter Castle until 5 May 1945. Back in the Chamber after the war, he opposed de Gaulle's full powers in 1958 and died in Paris on 10 October 1970.
Career timeline
1884–1914Baker's son from Carpentras; history teacher
1914–1918Fights the First World War, rising from private to lieutenant
1919–1933Radical deputy; rises to lead the party
1934.01–02Premier; resigns the day after the riot of 6 February
1936–1940Defence minister, also premier from 1938
1938.04–09Returns as premier; signs the Munich agreement
1938.11Dismantles the 40-hour week by decree and breaks the general strike
1939.09Declares war on Germany; bans the Communist Party after the Nazi-Soviet pact
1940.03Falls over the failure to aid Finland
1940–1945Defendant at the Riom trial; interned near Buchenwald and at Itter Castle
1946–1958Returns to the Chamber; elder of the Radical Party
The colonel of the Croix-de-Feu who turned his columns away from the Chamber
That night his columns reached the rear of the Chamber and he ordered them to disperse rather than storm it. The left saw a dress rehearsal for fascism in the same night; the far right called him a traitor. Both verdicts followed him for the rest of his life
The son of a general, trained at Saint-Cyr, who served in Morocco and the First World War and retired as a lieutenant-colonel. From 1931 he led the veterans' association Croix-de-Feu and built it into a mass movement of several hundred thousand, whose discipline and motorised rallies looked to the French left like the face of fascism. On the night of 6 February 1934 his columns reached the rear of the Chamber and he ordered them to disperse rather than storm it, a caution for which the far right called him a traitor. When the Popular Front government dissolved the leagues in 1936 he founded the Parti Social Français and turned toward electoral politics, building what became the largest party of the French right by the late 1930s. He backed Pétain and sat on Vichy's National Council while running an intelligence network that passed information to the British, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and interned in Germany, and after the liberation was detained again by the French authorities as a Vichy man before dying of illness in 1946. Whether he was a fascist or the French form of authoritarian conservatism has been the central argument in the study of the French right from Sternhell onward.
Career timeline
1885Born at Lorient, the son of a general
1907–1918Saint-Cyr, service in Morocco and the First World War
1919–1928Staff service; retires as a lieutenant-colonel
1929–1931Joins the Croix-de-Feu and becomes its president
1931–1936Expands the Croix-de-Feu into a mass movement of hundreds of thousands
1934.02.06Disperses his columns at the Chamber
1936.06Founds the Parti Social Français after the leagues are dissolved
1936–1939Builds the PSF into the largest party of the French right
1940–1942Backs Pétain; sits on Vichy's National Council
1942–1943Runs an intelligence network for the British; arrested by the Gestapo in March 1943
1943–1945Deported to Germany and interned
1945–1946Detained by the French authorities after the liberation; dies the next year
1961Posthumously recognised as a deported member of the Resistance
