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Léon Blum (9 April 1872 - 30 March 1950), French socialist leader and Prime Minister, was born in Paris, into a middle-class Jewish family. He studied law at the Sorbonne and graduated in 1894. He worked as a government lawyer while developing a second career as a literary critic, in particular as an authority on Goethe. He soon became one of France's leading literary figures.
Blum had little interest in politics until the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, which had a traumatic effect on him as it did on many French Jews. Campaigning as a Dreyfusard brought him into contact with the socialist leader Jean Jaurès, whom he greatly admired. He began contributing to the socialist daily, L'Humanité, and joined the French socialist party, then called the SFIO. Soon he was the party's main theoretician.
In July 1914, just as the First World War broke out, Jaurès was assassinated, and Blum became more active in the party leadership. In 1919 he was chosen as chair of the party's executive committee, and was also elected to the National Assembly as a representative of Paris. In 1920 he worked to prevent a split between supporters and opponents of the Russian Revolution, but the radicals seceded, taking L'Humanité with them, and formed the French Communist Party.
Blum led the SFIO though the 1920s and 1930s, and was also editor of the party's new paper, Le Populaire. As an orthodox Marxist, though not a Leninist, he was opposed to participating in "bourgeois" governments, though he was willing to support Radical Party governments from the sidelines. In any case the election of a socialist government was impossible without the co-operation of the powerful Communists, who followed Stalin's orders in treating the SFIO as "social fascists."
Blum was elected as Deputy for Narbonne in 1929, and was re-elected in 1932 and 1936. Circumstances changed in 1934, when the rise of Adolf Hitler and fascist riots in Paris caused Stalin and the French Communists to change their policy. In 1935 all the parties of left and centre formed the Popular Front, which at the elections of June 1936 won a sweeping victory. Blum became the first socialist and the first Jew to be Prime Minister of France. As such he was an object of particular hatred to the Catholic and anti-Semitic right.
The industrial workers responded to the election of the Popular Front government by occupying their factories, confident that "the revolution" was imminent. For Blum, as a Marxist, this was an agonising moment. He did not believe that socialism could be achieved by parliamentary means. But he could not encourage the workers to launch an attempt at a revolution: he knew that the army would intervene and the workers would be massacred as they had been at the Paris Commune in 1871. He persuaded the workers to accept pay rises and go back to work.
Similarly, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Blum was forced to adopt a policy of neutrality rather than assist his comrades, the Spanish socialists, for fear of splitting his alliance with the centrist Radicals, or even precipitating a civil war in France. But this policy strained his alliance with the Communists, who followed Soviet policy and urged all out support for the Spanish Republic. The impossible dilemma caused by this issue led Blum to resign in June 1937.
Despite its short life, the Popular Front government passed much important legislation, including the 40-hour week, paid holidays for the workers, collective bargaining on wage claims and the nationalisation of the arms industry. Blum also passed legislation extending the rights of the Arab population of Algeria. In foreign policy, his government was divided between the traditional anti-militarism of the French left and the urgency of the rising threat of Nazi Germany.
When the Germans occupied France in June 1940, Blum made no effort to leave the country, despite the extreme danger he was in as a Jew and a socialist leader. He was arrested by the Vichy authorities in September and held until 1942, when he was put on trial in Riom on charges of treason, for having "weakened France's defences." He used the courtroom to make a brilliant indictment of the French military and pro-German politicians like Pierre Laval. The trial was such an embarrassment to the Vichy regime that the Germans ordered it called off.
In April 1943 the Germans deported Blum to Germany, where he was kept in prison. In the last weeks of the war the Nazi regime gave orders that he was to be executed, but the local authorities decided not to obey them, and he was rescued by Allied troops in May 1945. While in prison he wrote his best known work, the essay À l'échelle Humaine ("For all mankind"). His brother René Blum, founder of the "Ballet de l'Opera a Monte Carlo," was not so fortunate. He was murdered by the Germans at Auschwitz concentration camp.
After the war Blum returned to politics, and was again briefly Prime Minister in the transitional postwar coalition government. He also served as an ambassador on a government loan mission to the United States, and as head of the French mission to UNESCO. He continued to write for Le Populaire until his death at Jouy-en-Josas, near Paris, on 30 March 1950.
| Contents |
Blum's First Government, 4 June 1936 - 22 June 1937
- Léon Blum - President of the Council
- Édouard Daladier - Vice President of the Council and Minister of National Defense and War
- Yvon Delbos - Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Roger Salengro - Minister of the Interior
- Vincent Auriol - Minister of Finance
- Charles Spinasse - Minister of National Economy
- Jean-Baptiste Lebas - Minister of Labour
- Marc Rucart - Minister of Justice
- Alphonse Gasnier-Duparc - Minister of Marine
- Pierre Cot - Minister of Air
- Jean Zay - Minister of National Education
- Albert Rivière - Minister of Pensions
- Georges Monnet - Minister of Agriculture
- Marius Moutet - Minister of Colonies
- Albert Bedouce - Minister of Public Works
- Henri Sellier - Minister of Public Health
- Robert Jardillier - Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones
- Paul Bastid - Minister of Commerce
- Camille Chautemps - Minister of State
- Paul Faure - Minister of State
- Maurice Viollette - Minister of State
Changes
- 18 November 1936 - Marx Dormoy succeeds Roger Salengro as Minister of the Interior.
Blum's Second Ministry, 13 March - 10 April 1938
- Léon Blum - President of the Council and Minister of Treasury
- Édouard Daladier - Vice President of the Council and Minister of National Defense and War
- Joseph Paul-Boncour - Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Marx Dormoy - Minister of the Interior
- Charles Spinasse - Minister of Budget
- Albert Sérol - Minister of Labour
- Marc Rucart - Minister of Justice
- César Campinchi - Minister of Military Marine
- Guy La Chambre - Minister of Air
- Jean Zay - Minister of National Education
- Albert Rivière - Minister of Pensions
- Georges Monnet - Minister of Agriculture
- Marius Moutet - Minister of Colonies
- Jules Moch - Minister of Public Works
- Fernand Gentin - Minister of Public Health
- Jean-Baptiste Lebas - Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones
- Ludovic-Oscar Frossard - Minister of Propaganda
- Vincent Auriol - Minister of Coordination of Services of the Presidency of the Council
- Pierre Cot - Minister of Commerce
- Paul Faure - Minister of State
- Théodore Steeg - Minister of State
- Maurice Viollette - Minister of State
- Albert Sarraut - Minister of State in charge of North African Affairs
Blum's Third Government, 16 December 1946 - 22 January 1947
- Léon Blum - Chairman of the Provisional Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- André Le Troquer - Minister of National Defense
- Édouard Depreux - Minister of the Interior
- André Philip - Minister of Familial Economy and Finance
- Robert Lacoste - Minister of Industrial Production
- Daniel Mayer - Minister of Labour and Social Security
- Paul Ramadier - Minister of Justice
- Marcel Edmond Naegelen - Minister of National Education
- Max Lejeune - Minister of Veterans and War Victims
- François Tanguy-Prigent - Minister of Agriculture
- Marius Moutet - Minister of Overseas France
- Jules Moch - Minister of Public Works, Transport, Reconstruction, and Town Planning
- Pierre Segelle - Minister of Public Health and Population
- Eugène Thomas - Minister of Posts
- Félix Gouin - Minister of Planning
- Guy Mollet - Minister of State
- Augustin Laurent - Minister of State
Changes
- 23 December 1946 - Augustin Laurent succeeds Moutet as Minister of Overseas France.
| Preceded by: Albert Sarraut | Prime Minister of France 1936–1937 | Succeeded by: Camille Chautemps |
| Preceded by: Camille Chautemps | Prime Minister of France 1938 | Succeeded by: Édouard Daladier |
| Preceded by: Georges Bidault | Chairman of the Provisional Government of France 1946–1947 | Succeeded by: Vincent Auriol (President of France) Paul Ramadier (Prime Minister of France) Bibliography
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