Léon Blum

Léon Blum

Léon Blum
In office
4 June 1936 – 22 June 1937
Preceded by Albert Sarraut
Succeeded by Camille Chautemps
In office
13 March 1938 – 10 April 1938
Preceded by Camille Chautemps
Succeeded by Édouard Daladier
In office
16 December 1946 – 22 January 1947
Preceded by Georges Bidault
Succeeded by Vincent Auriol (as President)
Paul Ramadier (as Prime Minister)
Born 9 April 1872
Paris, France
Died 30 March 1950 (aged 77)
Jouy-en-Josas, France
Political party Socialist (SFIO)

André Léon Blum (French pronunciation: [leɔ̃ blym]; 9 April 1872 – 30 March 1950) was a French politician, usually identified with the moderate left, and three times the Prime Minister of France.

Contents

First political experiences

While in his youth an avid reader of the works of the nationalist writer Maurice Barrès, 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 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 Socialist party leadership. In August 1914 Blum became assistant to the Socialist Minister of Public Works Marcel Sembat. 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. Believing that there was no such thing as a "good dictatorship", he opposed participation in the Comintern. Therefore, 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 SFIC.

Blum led the SFIO through the 1920s and 1930s, and was also editor of the party's new paper, Le Populaire.

The Popular Front

Blum was elected as Deputy for Narbonne in 1929, and was re-elected in 1932 and 1936. In 1933, he expelled Marcel Déat, Pierre Renaudel, and other neosocialists from the SFIO. Political circumstances changed in 1934, when the rise of German dictator 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.

On 13 February 1936, shortly before becoming Prime Minister, Blum was dragged from a car and almost beaten to death by the Camelots du Roi, a group of anti-Semites and royalists. The right-wing Action Française league was dissolved by the government following this incident, not long before the elections that brought Blum to power [1].

Blum became the first socialist and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of France. As such he was an object of particular hatred to the Catholic and anti-Semitic right, and was denounced in the National Assembly by Xavier Vallat, a right-wing Deputy and sympathizer of the Action Française (later Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in the Vichy wartime government), who said:

Your coming to power is undoubtedly a historic event. For the first time this old Gallo-Roman country will be governed by a Jew. I dare say out loud what the country is thinking, deep inside : it is preferable for this country to be led by a man whose origins belong to his soil... than by a cunning talmudist. [2]

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 believed 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 raises 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 ideological fellows, 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. He was briefly Prime Minister again in March and April 1938, but was unable to establish a stable ministry.

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. Despite the division, the government managed to engage the greatest war effort since the First World War.

Second World War

Leon Blum memorial in kibbutz Kfar Blum, Israel

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 among the "The Vichy 80", a minority of parliamentarians that refused to grant full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain. He was arrested by the authorities in September and held until 1942, when he was put on trial in the Riom Trial 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 imprisoned in Buchenwald until April 1945. He was imprisoned in the section reserved for high-ranking prisoners. His future wife, Janot Blum, chose to come to the camp voluntarily to live with him inside the camp. The Blums were the only Jews to have married inside the concentration camp system.

As the Allied armies approached Buchenwald, he was transferred to Dachau, near Munich, and in late April 1945, together with other notable inmates, to Tyrol. 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. Blum 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, the founder of the Ballet de l'Opéra à Monte Carlo, was arrested in Paris in 1942. He was deported to Auschwitz where, according to the Vrba-Wetzler report, he was tortured and killed in April 1943.

Post-war period

After the war, Léon Blum returned to politics, and was again briefly Prime Minister in the transitional postwar coalition government. He advocated the alliance between the center-left and the center-right parties in order to support the Fourth Republic against the Gaullists and the Communists. 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. The kibbutz of Kfar Blum in northern Israel is named after him.

Government

First ministry (4 June 1936 - 22 June 1937)

Changes:

Second ministry (13 March - 10 April 1938)

Social democracy

Third ministry (16 December 1946 - 22 January 1947)

Changes:

Political offices
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		 President of the Provisional Government of France
1946–1947		 Succeeded by
Vincent Auriol
(President of France)
Paul Ramadier
(Prime Minister of France)
France Republican heads of state of France
Styled President of the Republic after 1871, except from 1940–44 (Chief of State) and 1944–47 (Chairman of the Provisional Government)
First Republic
(1792–1804)

National Convention · Directory · Consulate
Second Republic
(1848–1852)

Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure · Executive Commission · Louis-Eugène Cavaignac · Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
Government of
National Defense
(1870–1871)

Louis Jules Trochu
Third Republic
(1871–1940)

Adolphe Thiers · Patrice de Mac-Mahon · Jules Armand Dufaure · Jules Grévy · Maurice Rouvier · Sadi Carnot · Charles Dupuy · Jean Casimir-Perier · Charles Dupuy · Félix Faure · Charles Dupuy · Émile Loubet · Armand Fallières · Raymond Poincaré · Paul Deschanel · Alexandre Millerand · Alexandre Millerand · Frédéric François-Marsal · Gaston Doumergue · Paul Doumer · André Tardieu · Albert Lebrun
Vichy France
(1940–1944)
Provisional
Government
(1944–1947)

Charles de Gaulle · Félix Gouin · Georges Bidault · Vincent Auriol · Léon Blum
Fourth Republic
(1947–1959)

Vincent Auriol · René Coty
Fifth Republic
(since 1959)
Italics indicate interim officeholder

References

External links