André Fontaine


André Fontaine was a French historian and journalist. He started working at Temps Présent, and then was director at Le Monde in 1947, at the official beginning of the Cold War. He became the newspaper's editor from 1969 to 1985, and director from 1985 to 1991. As of February 2007 he was still contributing articles to the paper. André Fontaine is famous for his historical thesis according to which the Cold War in fact started as soon as 1917 with the cordon sanitaire policy.
Fontaine died in Paris on 17 March 2013, aged 91.