1938 in France

Events from the year 1938 in France.

Fandom france:1938

Incumbents

Events

1 January – Creation of SNCF, bringing the country's principal railway companies together under government control.
14 March – Premier Léon Blum reassures the Czechoslovak government that France will honor its treaty obligations to aid Czechoslovakia in event of German invasion.
10 April – Édouard Daladier becomes prime minister of France. He appoints as Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, an advocate of appeasement.
4 September – During the ceremony marking the unveiling of a plaque at Pointe de Grave celebrating Franco-American friendship, American ambassador William Bullitt in a speech states, "France and the United States were united in war and peace".
30 September – Munich Agreement is signed by France, Germany, Britain and Italy permitting German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
24 October – Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet carries out a major purge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dismissing or exiling a number of anti-appeasement officials such as Pierre Comert and René Massigli.
12 November – Finance Minister Paul Reynaud brings into effect a series of laws aiming at improving French productivity and undoes most of the economic and social laws of the Popular Front.
25 November – Bonnet informs Léon Noël, the French ambassador to Poland, that France should find an excuse for terminating the 1921 Franco-Polish alliance.
30 November
*A general strike is called by the French Communist Party to protest the laws of 12 November.
*Benito Mussolini and his Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano order "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies demanding that France cede Tunisia, Nice, Corsica and French Somaliland to Italy, beginning an acute crisis in Franco-Italian relations that lasts until March 1939.

Sport

4 June – 1938 FIFA World Cup begins, hosted by France.
19 June – World Cup ends, won by Italy.
5 July – Tour de France begins.
31 July – Tour de France ends, won by Gino Bartali of Italy.

Births

7 January – Roland Topor, illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker
18 February – Louis-Marie Billé, cardinal
13 April – Janine Rozier, politician
2 July – Marcel Artelesa, international soccer player
9 August – Michèle Girardon, actress
20 August – Alain Vivien, politician
3 September – Liliane Ackermann, community leader, writer, and lecturer
23 September – Jean-Claude Mézières, artist and illustrator
25 October – Claude Minière, essayist and poet
10 November – Claude Serre, cartoonist
30 November – Jean Eustache, filmmaker

Full date unknown

Michel Pêcheux, philosopher

Deaths

20 January – Émile Cohl, caricaturist, cartoonist and animator
21 January – Georges Méliès, filmmaker
13 May – Charles Édouard Guillaume, physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920
26 June – Abbie Pratt, golfer
4 July – Suzanne Lenglen, tennis player
17 July – Robert Wiene, German film director