Édouard Daladier


Édouard Daladier was a French Radical-Socialist politician and the Prime Minister of France at the outbreak of World War II.
Daladier was born in Carpentras and began his political career before World War I. During the war, he fought on the Western Front and was decorated for his service. After the war, he became a leading figure in the Radical Party and Prime Minister in 1933 and 1934. Daladier was Minister of Defence from 1936 to 1940 and Prime Minister again in 1938. As head of government, he expanded the French welfare state in 1939.
Along with Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Daladier signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, giving Nazi Germany control over the Sudetenland. After Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. During the Phoney War, France's failure to aid Finland against the Soviet Union's aggression in the Winter War led to Daladier's resignation on 21 March 1940 and replacement as prime minister by Paul Reynaud. Daladier remained Minister of Defence until 19 May, when Reynaud took over the portfolio personally after the French defeat at Sedan.
After the fall of France, Daladier was tried for treason by the Vichy government in the Riom Trial and imprisoned in successively Fort du Portalet, Buchenwald concentration camp and Itter Castle. After liberation of Castle Itter, Daladier resumed his political career as a member of the Chamber of Deputies of France from 1946 to 1958. He died in Paris on 10 October 1970.

Early life

Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse, on 18 June 1884, the son of a village baker. He received his formal education at the Lycée Duparc in Lyon, where he was first introduced to socialist politics. After graduation he became a school teacher and university lecturer, employed at the Nîmes, Grenoble, Marseilles, and at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he taught history. He began his political career by becoming the Mayor of Carpentras, his home town, in 1912. He subsequently sought election to the Paris Chamber of Deputies but lost to a Radical Socialist Party candidate, a party that he subsequently joined.
Daladier had received military training before the war under France's conscription system. In August 1914, he was mobilized at the age of 30 with the French Army's 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment on the commencement of World War I, with the rank of sergeant, In mid-1915, the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment was destroyed in heavy fighting with the Imperial German Army on the Western Front, and the surviving remnant of it was assigned to other units, Daladier being transferred into the 209th Infantry Regiment. In 1916 he fought with the 209th in the Battle of Verdun, Daladier being given a field commission as a lieutenant in the midst of the battle in April 1916 having received commendations for gallantry in action. In May 1917 he received the Legion of Honour for gallantry in action, and ended the war as a captain leading a company, having also been awarded the Croix de Guerre.
After demobilization, he was elected to the Paris Chamber of Deputies for Orange, Vaucluse, in 1919.
Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck and large shoulders and determined look, but cynics also quipped that his horns were like those of a snail.

Political career

After entering the Chamber of Deputies he became a leading member of the Radical-Socialist Party, and was responsible for building the party into a structured modern political party organisation. For most of the interwar years he was the chief figure of the party's left wing, supporters of a governmental coalition with the SFIO socialist party. A government minister in various posts during the coalition governments between 1924 and 1928, he was instrumental in the Radical-Socialists' break with the Socialist Party in 1926, the first Cartel des gauches, and with the centre-right Raymond Poincaré in November 1928. In 1930 he unsuccessfully attempted to gain Socialist support for a centre-left government alongside the Radical-Socialist and similar parties; in 1933, despite similar negotiations breaking down, he formed a government of the republican left.
In January 1934, he was considered the most likely candidate of the centre-left to form a government of sufficient probity to calm public opinion after the revelations of the Stavisky Affair, a major corruption scandal. The government lasted less than a week, however, falling in the face of the riots instigated by the far right. With Daladier fell the coalition of the left, initiating two years of right-wing government.
After a year withdrawn from frontline politics, Daladier returned to public prominence in October 1934 and took a populist line against the banking oligarchy he believed had taken control of French democracy: the Two Hundred Families. He was made president of the Radical-Socialist Party and brought the party into the Popular Front coalition. Daladier became Minister of National Defence in the Léon Blum government, retaining the crucial portfolio for two years. After the fall of the Léon Blum government, he became head of government again on 10 April 1938, orienting his government towards the centre and ending the Popular Front.

Munich Agreement

Daladier's last government was in power at the time of the negotiations preceding the Munich Agreement, when France pressured Czechoslovakia to settle the Sudetenland dispute in favor of Nazi Germany. In April-May 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain strongly but unsuccessfully pressed Daladier to renounce the Franco-Czechoslovak alliance, leading to Britain becoming involved in the crisis. From the British perspective, the problem was not the Sudetenland but the Franco-Czechoslovak alliance. British military experts were almost unanimous that Germany would defeat France in a war unless Britain intervened. From the British viewpoint, allowing Germany to defeat France would unacceptably alter the balance of power and so Britain would have no choice but to intervene if a Franco-German broke out. Because of France's alliance with Czechoslovakia, any German attack on Czechoslovakia would have caused a Franco-German war. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated at a Cabinet meeting in March 1938: "Whether we liked or not, we had to admit the plain fact that we could not afford to see France overrun".
At the Anglo-French summit on 28-29 April 1938, Chamberlain pressured Daladier to renounce the alliance with Czechoslovakia, only to be firmly informed that France would stand by her obligations, thereby forcing the British to be involved very much against their will in the Sudetenland crisis. As the historian Harindar Aulach wrote, the summit of 28-29 April 1938 represented a British "surrender" to the French, rather than a French "surrender" to the British, as Daladier made it clear France would not renounce the alliance with Czechoslovakia. Unlike Chamberlain, Daladier had no illusions about Hitler's ultimate goals. In fact, he told the British in a late April 1938 meeting that Hitler's real aim was to eventually secure "a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble."
Daladier went on to say, "Today, it is the turn of Czechoslovakia. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of Poland and Romania. When Germany has obtained the oil and wheat it needs, she will turn on the West. Certainly we must multiply our efforts to avoid war. But that will not be obtained unless Great Britain and France stick together, intervening in Prague for new concessions but declaring at the same time that they will safeguard the independence of Czechoslovakia. If, on the contrary, the Western Powers capitulate again, they will only precipitate the war they wish to avoid."
Nevertheless, perhaps discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government and traumatised by France's bloodbath in World War I that he had personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately chose the course of pressuring Czechoslovakia into concessions. The French economic situation was very worrying since the franc was devalued on 4 May 1938 for the third time since October 1936. Daladier, with a view to stabilising the franc, had fixed it to the pound sterling at a new exchange rate of 176 francs per pound sterling.
The crisis of 20-22 May 1938 made the franc come under immense financial pressure since many investors did not wish to hold French assets or debts if France went to war. Jacques Rueff, the director of direction générale du mouvement des fonds and special adviser to the Finance Minister, Paul Marchandeau, stated in a report that the government must either cut defense spending or find more sources of short-term loans as the French government was running out of money. Marchandeau stated that ordinary charges upon the treasury in 1938 would "exceed" 42 billion francs, and Rueff warned that France would go bankrupt once the legal limits upon short term loans from the Bank of France was reached. Marchandeau, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, stated that the government had only 30 million francs on account and 230 million francs available from the Bank of France.
As French government expenditure for the month of May 1938 alone totaled 4, 500 million francs, the British historian Martin Thomas wrote that "Daladier's government was utterly reliant upon the success of its devaluation". To provide revenue, the government needed to sell more short-term bonds, but investors were highly reluctant to buy French bonds as long as Germany was threatening Czechoslovakia, which put France on the brink of war with the Reich. Because the franc was tied to the pound, France needed loans from Britain, which were not forthcoming leaving France "with its hands tied". The unwillingness of British and American investors to buy French bonds as long as the Sudetenland crisis continued caused "severe monetary problems" for the French government in August-September 1938.. Only when Daladier moved the "free-market liberal" Paul Reynaud from Justice to Finance in November 1938 did France regain the confidence of international investors who began to buy French bonds, which they had previously shunned.
Reports from the embassy in Warsaw together with the legations in Belgrade and Bucharest emphasised that Yugoslavia and Romania would probably do nothing if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, and Poland might very well join in with Germany since the Teschen dispute had made Poland and Czechoslovakia into bitter enemies. Of France's allies in Eastern Europe, only the Soviet Union, which had no frontier with Czechoslovakia, professed a willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's aid if Germany should invade, but the unwillingness of both Poland and Romania to extend transit rights for the Red Army presented major problems.
On 25 September 1938, at the Bad Godesberg summit, Hitler rejected Chamberlain's offer to have the Sudetenland join Germany in few months time, declaring that the timeline was unacceptable as the Sudetenland must "go home to the Reich" by 1 October and that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia must also be satisfied by 1 October; otherwise, he would invade Czechoslovakia. Upon hearing of what Hitler demanded at the Bad Godesberg summit, Daladier told his cabinet that France "intended to go to war". The next day, Daladier told his close friend US Ambassador William Christian Bullitt Jr. that he would much prefer war to the "humiliation" of the Bad Godesberg terms.
Daldier ordered the French military to mobilise and put France to put on a war footing with a blackout being imposed at night so that German bombers would be not guided to French cities by their lights. On 26 September, Daladier ordered General Maurice Gamelin to London to begin staff talks with the Imperial General Staff. On 27 September, Gamelin, when asked by his chef de cabinet if Daladier was serious about war, replied, "He'll do it, he'll do it".
However on 29 September 1938, Chamberlain announced to the House of Commons that he just received a phone call from Benito Mussolini saying that Hitler had reconsidered his views and was now willing to discuss a compromise solution to the Sudetenland crisis in Munich. Ultimately, Daladier felt that France could not win against Germany without Britain on its side, and Chamberlain's announcement that he would be flying to Munich led him to likewise attend the Munich conference, which was held the next day on 30 September.
The Munich agreement was a compromise as Hitler abandoned his more extreme demands such as settling the Polish and Hungarian claims by 1 October, but the conference concluded that Czechoslovakia was to turn over the Sudetenland to Germany within ten days in October and to be supervised by an Anglo-Franco-Italo-German commission. Through Daladier was happy to have avoided war, he felt that the agreement he had signed on 30 September in Munich was a shameful treaty that had betrayed Czechoslovakia, France's most loyal ally in Eastern Europe. On his return to Paris, Daladier, who was expecting a hostile crowd, was acclaimed.

Rearmament

Daladier had already been made aware in 1932 by German rivals to Hitler that Krupp was manufacturing heavy artillery and the Deuxième Bureau had a grasp of the scale of German military preparations but lacked hard intelligence of hostile intentions.
In October 1938, Daladier opened secret talks with the Americans on how to bypass American neutrality laws and allow the French to buy American aircraft to make up for productivity deficiencies in the French aircraft industry. Daladier commented in October 1938, "If I had three or four thousand aircraft, Munich would never have happened," and he was most anxious to buy American war planes as the only way to strengthen the French Air Force. A major problem in the Franco-American talks was how the French were to pay for the American planes, and how to bypass the American neutrality acts. In addition, France had defaulted on its World War I debts in 1932 and so fell foul of the American Johnson Act of 1934, which forbade loans to nations that had defaulted on their World War I debts. In February 1939, the French offered to cede their possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific together with a lump sum payment of 10 billion francs, in exchange for the unlimited right to buy, on credit, American aircraft.
After tortuous negotiations, an arrangement was worked out in the spring of 1939 to allow the French to place huge orders with the American aircraft industry, but as most of the aircraft ordered had not arrived in France by 1940, the Americans arranged for French orders to be diverted to the British.
At a rally in Marseilles in October 1938, Daladier announced a new policy: J'ai choisi mon chemin: la France, en avant!, and he stated that his government's domestic and foreign policies were to be based on "firmness". What that meant in practice was to end the social reforms of the Popular Front government to increase French productivity, especially by ending the 40-hour work week. In a series of decree laws issued on 1 November 1938 by the Finance Minister Paul Reynaud that bypassed the National Assembly, the 40-hour work week was ended; taxes were sharply increased; social spending was slashed while defense spending was increased; the power of unions were restricted and, most controversially, Saturday was once again declared a workday. In a radio broadcast on 12 November 1938, Reynauld stated: "We are going blindfold towards an abyss" and argued that however much pain his reforms might cause, they were absolutely necessary. As part of the effort to put the French economy on a war footing, Reynauld increased the military budget from 29 billion francs to 93 billion francs. In response, the French Communist Party called for a general strike to protest the decrees that ended almost all of the reforms of the Popular Front.
The one-day general strike of 30 November 1938, which pitted the government against unions supported by the Communist Party, proved to be the first test of Daladier's new policy of "firmness". Daladier declared a national emergency in response to the general strike, ordered the military to Paris and other major cities; suspended civil liberties; ordered the police to disperse striking workers with tear gas and storm factories occupied by the workers and announced that any worker who took part in the strike would be fired immediately, with no severance pay. After one day, the strike collapsed. At the time, Daladier justified his policy of "firmness" under the grounds that if France was to face the German challenge, French production would have to be increased, saying that this was the price of freedom. At the same time, the energetic Colonial Minister, Georges Mandel, set about organising the French colonial empire for war, established armament factories in French Indochina to supply the French garrisons there to deter the Japanese from invading; increased the number of colonial "colored" divisions from 6 to 12; built defensive works in Tunisia to deter an Italian invasion from Libya; and organised the colonial economies for a "total war". In France itself, Mandel launched a propaganda campaign emphasising how the French colonial empire was a source of strength under the slogan: "110 million strong, France can stand up to Germany".
While the 40-hour work week was abolished under Daladier's government, a more generous system of family allowances was established, set as a percentage of wages: for the first child, 5%; for the second, 10%; and for each additional child, 15%. Also created was a home mother allowance, which had been advocated by pronatalist and Catholic women’s groups since 1929. All mothers who were not professionally employed and whose husbands collected family allowances were eligible for the new benefit. In March 1939, the government added 10% for workers whose wives stayed home to take care of the children. Family allowances were enshrined in the Family Code of July 1939 and, with the exception of the stay-at-home allowance, are still in force. In addition, a decree was issued in May 1938 to authorise the establishment of vocational guidance centres.
In July 1937, a new law, which was followed by a similar law in May 1946, empowered the Department of Workplace Inspection to order temporary medical interventions.
The British historian Richard Overy wrote: "The greatest achievement of Daladier in 1939 was to win from the British a firm commitment", the so-called "continental commitment" that every French leader had sought since 1919. Daladier had a low opinion of Britain and told Bullitt in November 1938 that he "fully expected to be betrayed by the British... he considered Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the King a moron; and the Queen an excessively ambitious woman... he felt that England had become so feeble and senile that the British would give away every possession of their friends rather than stand up to Germany and Italy". In late 1938 to early 1939, the British embassy was bombarded with rumours from reliable sources within the French government that France would seek an "understanding" with Germany that would resolve all problems in Franco-German relations. The fact that the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet was indeed seeking such an understanding lent credence to the rumors. Daladier let Bonnet pursue his own foreign policy in the hope that it might finally spur the British into making the "continental commitment" since a France aligned with Germany would make the Reich Europe's strongest power and leave Britain with no ally of comparable strength in Europe.
In January 1939, Daladier let the Deuxième Bureau manufacture the "Dutch War Scare" as French intelligence fed misinformation to MI6 that Germany was about to invade the Netherlands with the aim of using Dutch air fields to launch a bombing campaign to raze British cities to the ground. As France was the only nation in Western Europe with an army strong enough to save the Netherlands, the "Dutch War Scare" led the British to make anxious inquiries in Paris to ask the French to intervene if the Netherlands were indeed invaded. In response, Daladier stated that if the British wanted the French to do something for their security, it was only fair that the British do something for French security. On 6 February 1939, Chamberlain in a speech to the House of Commons finally made the "continental commitment" as he told the House: "The solidarity that unites France and Britain is such that any threat to the vital interests of France must bring about the co-operation of Great Britain". On 13 February 1939, staff talks between the British Imperial General Staff and the French General Staff were opened.
Daladier supported Chamberlain's policy of creating a "peace front" that was meant to deter Germany from aggression, but he was unhappy with the British "guarantee" of Poland that Chamberlain had announced to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939. Through France had been allied to Poland since 1921, Daladier was extremely unhappy with the German-Polish Nonaggression Pact of 1934 and with Polish actions towards Czechoslovakia in 1938 and, in common with other French leaders regarded the Sanation regime, which ruled Poland, as fickle and unreliable friends of France. The rise in French industrial output and greater financial stability in 1939 as a result of the Reynauld reforms led Daladier to view the possibility of war with the Reich more favourably than had been the case in 1938. By September 1939, French aircraft production was equal to that of Germany while 170 American planes were arriving per month. Through American neutrality laws were still in effect, the supportive stance of President Franklin Roosevelt led Daladier to assume that the United States would maintain a pro-French neutrality and that the tremendous industrial resources of the United States would be behind France if the Danzig crisis ended in war.
Daladier was far keener than Chamberlain to bringing the Soviet Union into the "peace front" and believed that only an alliance with the Soviet Union could deter Hitler from invading any of the East European states. Daladier did not want a war with Germany in 1939 but sought to have such an overwhelming array of forces arranged against Germany that Hitler would be deterred from invading Poland. Daladier believed that the British "guarantee" of Poland would encourage the Poles to object to having the Soviet Union join the "peace front", which indeed proved to be the case. The Poles refused to grant the Red Army transit rights, and the Soviets made the granting of such transit rights a precondition for their joining the "peace front". Daladier felt that Chamberlain should not have made the "guarantee" until the Poles agreed to grant transit rights to the Red Army first and charged that British and French diplomats had no leverage over the Polish Foreign Minister, Colonel Jozef Beck, who was widely disliked by other diplomats for his stubbornness and haughty manners.
Daladier felt that on economic and military grounds, it was better to have the Soviet Union serve as the "eastern pivot" of the "peace front" rather than Poland; by contrast, the British preferred for the "eastern pivot" to be Poland. Through Daladier disliked the Poles, France was still allied to Poland, and he believed that France should stand by its commitments. A public opinion poll in June 1939 showed that 76% of the French believed that France should immediately declare war if Germany tried to seize the Free City of Danzig. For Daladier, the possibility that the Soviet Union might join the "peace front" was a "lifeline" that was the best way of stopping another world war, and he was deeply frustrated by the Polish refusal to permit transit rights for the Red Army. On 19 August 1939, the Polish Foreign Minister, Colonel Jozef Beck, in a telegram to Daladier stated: "We have not got a military agreement with the USSR. We do not want to have one".
Through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August ruined Daladier's hopes of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet "peace front", he still believed that France and Britain could face down Germany together. On 27 August 1939, Daladier told Bullitt that "there was no further question of policy to be settled. His sister had put in two bags all the personal keepsakes and belonging he really cared about, and was prepared to leave for a secure spot at any moment. France intended to stand by the Poles, and if Hitler should refuse to negotiate with the Poles over Danzig, and should make war on Poland, France would fight at once".

World War II

When the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed, Daladier responded to the public outcry by outlawing the French Communist Party on the basis that it had refused to condemn Joseph Stalin's actions. During the Danzig Crisis, Daladier was greatly influenced by the advice he had received from Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, that Hitler would back down if France made a firm enough stand in favor of Poland. On 31 August 1939, Daladier read out to the French cabinet a letter he received from Coulondre: "The trial of strength turns to our advantage. It is only necessary to hold, hold, hold!"
In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, he was reluctant to go to war but did so on 3 September 1939, inaugurating the Phoney War. On 6 October, Hitler offered France and Britain a peace proposal. There were more than a few in the French government prepared to take Hitler up on his offer, but in a nationwide broadcast the next day, Daladier declared, "We took up arms against aggression. We shall not put them down until we have guarantees for a real peace and security, a security which is not threatened every six months". On 29 January 1940, in a radio address delivered to the people of France entitled , Daladier left little doubt about his opinion of the Germans. In his radio address, he said, "For us, there is more to do than merely win the war. We shall win it, but we must also win a victory far greater than that of arms. In this world of masters and slaves, which those madmen who rule at Berlin are seeking to forge, we must also save liberty and human dignity".
In March 1940, Daladier resigned as Prime Minister in France because of his failure to aid Finland's defence during the Winter War, and he was replaced by Paul Reynaud. Daladier remained Minister of Defence, however, and his antipathy to Reynaud prevented Reynaud from dismissing Maurice Gamelin as Supreme Commander of all French armed forces. As a result of the massive German breakthrough at Sedan, Daladier swapped ministerial offices with Reynaud, taking over the Foreign Ministry while Reynaud took over Defence. Gamelin was finally replaced by Maxime Weygand on 19 May 1940, nine days after the Germans began their invasion campaign.
Under the impression the government would continue in North Africa, Daladier fled with other members of the government to French Morocco, but he was arrested and tried for treason by the Vichy government during the "Riom Trial".
Daladier was interned in Fort du Portalet in the Pyrenees. He was kept in prison from 1940 to April 1943, when he was handed over to the Germans and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. In May 1943, he was transported to the Itter Castle in North Tyrol with other French dignitaries, where he remained until the end of the war. He was freed after the Battle for Castle Itter.

Post-war political career

After the war ended, Daladier was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946, where he acted as a patron to the Radical-Socialist Party's young reforming leader Pierre Mendès-France. He also was elected as the Mayor of Avignon in 1953. He opposed the transferral of powers to Charles de Gaulle after the May 1958 crisis, but, in the subsequent legislative elections of that year, failed to secure re-election. He withdrew from politics after a career of almost 50 years at the age of 74.

Death

Daladier died in Paris on the 10 October 1970, at the age of 86. His body was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Portrayals in visual media

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