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
A French journalist who moved from antimilitarist socialism toward nationalist authoritarian politics.
“When war comes, do not fire on your brothers ... You will not march to defend the capitalists’ strongbox.”
A former history teacher, Hervé was dismissed from teaching in 1901 after publishing an antimilitarist article and became a socialist journalist. He took part in founding the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1905 and was active in the General Confederation of Labour (CGT); through his paper La Guerre sociale, he advocated antimilitarism and insurrection in the event of war. At the outbreak of the First World War he turned to patriotism and support for the war, and in 1919 he helped launch the National Socialist Party. Between the wars he attacked parliamentary government and called for an authoritarian republic led by Philippe Pétain. He briefly supported German Nazism in the 1930s but condemned its persecution of Jews.
Career timeline
1901Dismissed from teaching after an antimilitarist article.
1905Took part in founding the SFIO and was active in the CGT.
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 woman Bolshevik closest to Lenin: death saved her from the Purge
In 1914 Lenin sent her alone as the Bolshevik representative to the Brussels International Socialist Bureau conference. He wrote: "I am convinced that you are one of those who develops, grows stronger, becomes more energetic and bolder when alone in a responsible post."
A French-born Bolshevik revolutionary and one of Lenin's closest comrades. As the first head of the Zhenotdel (the party's Women's Department) in 1919, she built the framework for Soviet women's emancipation policy and presided over the First International Conference of Communist Women in 1920.
Career timeline
1904Joins RSDLP, becomes Bolshevik
1905–1908Active in 1905 Revolution; arrested, exiled to Mezen; escapes
1909–1911Meets Lenin; head of studies, Longjumeau party school
1912–1913Writes On the Women's Question; returns to Russia illegally, re-arrested
1917.04Returns with Lenin in 'sealed train'; elected to Moscow City Duma
1919–1920First head of Zhenotdel; organizes 1st Intl Communist Women's Conference
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
The naval engineer who led the Black Sea mutiny and rose to the Comintern Secretariat
On 19 April 1919, the red flag rose above the battleship Jean Bart in the Black Sea. André Marty, ringleader of the sailors who refused to fight the Bolsheviks, was arrested and sentenced to twenty years at hard labour by a Constantinople court-martial.
A French naval mechanic who in 1919 led the mutiny aboard the battleship Jean Bart in the Black Sea, refusing intervention against the Bolsheviks. He was sentenced to 20 years' hard labour. Pardoned in 1923, he joined the PCF as a deputy and Central Committee member, rising to Comintern Secretary and Presidium member in 1935. As political commissar of the International Brigades in Spain, he organized the Albacete base and earned the epithet 'Butcher of Albacete' for his harsh discipline. Expelled from the PCF in 1952, he remained a central figure in French communism and Comintern work for three decades.
Career timeline
1908Enlists in the French Navy as a mechanic
1919Leads the Black Sea mutiny aboard the Jean Bart; court-martialed, 20 years' hard labour
1923Pardoned after international campaign; joins the PCF
1924–1955National Assembly deputy for Seine-et-Oise; PCF Central Committee member
1931–1935Active in the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI)
1935–1943Comintern Secretary and Presidium member
1936–1938Political Commissar of the International Brigades; organizes from Albacete
1939–1943Works for Comintern in Moscow; 1943 liaison with de Gaulle in Algiers
1944Returns after Liberation; attempts revolution — vetoed by Stalin
1952Marty-Tillon affair: accused as police spy; expelled from the PCF
The deputy who founded the Jeunesses Patriotes, holding a street force and a seat in the Chamber at once
He kept a parliamentary seat and a paramilitary organisation at the same time, on the principle that the street belonged to his side too. The Jeunesses Patriotes were among the columns that reached the Concorde on the night of 6 February 1934, and several of the fifteen dead were their members
A First World War veteran turned deputy who founded the Jeunesses Patriotes in 1924 against the incoming Cartel des Gauches and built it into a paramilitary body tens of thousands strong. Equipped with blue raincoats and berets, it broke up Communist meetings and fought for the streets, while its leader kept his seat inside parliament: a doubleness characteristic of the French leagues. On 6 February 1934 the Jeunesses Patriotes formed one of the main columns on the Place de la Concorde, and some of the dead came from its ranks. He voted full powers to Pétain in 1940, presided over the Paris municipal council under the occupation, and was detained and then released after the liberation.
Career timeline
1887–1918Born in Paris; serves in the First World War
1919–1940Deputy in the Chamber
1924Founds the Jeunesses Patriotes
1925–1936Commands a paramilitary league tens of thousands strong
1934.02.06The Jeunesses Patriotes form one of the main columns on the Concorde
1940.07Votes full powers to Pétain
1943–1944Presides over the Paris municipal council under the occupation
1944–1945Detained after the liberation, then released
SFIO general secretary who led the Tours vote to join the Comintern, became the first PCF general secretary and left in 1923
At the 1920 Tours Congress, Frossard led the move to join the Comintern and became the French Communist Party’s first general secretary, but left in 1923. Later a minister, he joined Pétain’s cabinet in 1940, voted for his full powers, and was acquitted of collaboration after the war.
A teacher from the Belfort region, he joined the SFIO and became its general secretary in 1918. After visiting Moscow with Cachin in 1920 he backed joining the Comintern at the Tours congress and became the first general secretary of the new French Communist Party. Clashing with the Comintern’s demands for discipline, he left in January 1923 and returned to the SFIO. He served as a minister in several governments in the 1930s and joined Pétain’s first cabinet in June–July 1940, but declined to serve Vichy; after the war he was tried for collaboration and acquitted.
Career timeline
1918–1920General secretary of the SFIO
1921–1923General secretary of the French Communist Party
1923Left the Communist Party and founded the Unitary Communist Party (PCU)
1928–1936Socialist deputy for Martinique and Haute-Saône
1935–1940Minister in several governments
1940Minister of Public Works in Pétain’s cabinet; voted in July to grant Pétain full powers
The general who defied Vichy and led the Liberation Army
In January 1945, defying a retreat order, he commanded that the symbolic city of Strasbourg be defended, anticipating de Gaulle's own instruction by twenty-four hours 'with perfect convergence.'
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was a French professional soldier shaped by the First World War and the Moroccan war, and a commander who preserved his division’s cohesion amid France’s defeat in 1940. He remained in Vichy’s army, but in November 1942 he refused orders not to resist the German occupation of southern France, and joined the Free French after imprisonment and escape. Commanding Army B and then the French First Army, he led the liberation of Toulon and Marseille after the Provence landings, advanced to the Rhine and Danube, and represented France at the German surrender in Berlin in 1945. He later commanded the French colonial war in Indochina, where illness ended his life in 1952; he was posthumously made Marshal of France.
Career timeline
1911Graduated from the cavalry school and commissioned as an officer
1914–191812th Dragoons and 93rd Infantry Regiment, First World War
1921–1926Served in Morocco during the Rif War
1940Commanded the 14th Infantry Division in the Battle of France
1942–1943Commander of the 16th Military Division; imprisoned after defying Vichy and later escaped
1943–1945Commanded Army B and the French First Army in the Liberation campaign
1950–1951High Commissioner in Indochina and Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Expeditionary Corps
