Georges Bonnet
Georges-Étienne Bonnet was a French politician who served as foreign minister in 1938 and 1939 and was a leading figure in the Radical Party. He advocated for the maximum appeasement of Hitler prior to the Second World War.
Early life and career
Bonnet was born in Bassillac, Dordogne, the son of a lawyer. Bonnet's father worked at the Cour de cassation and used his wealth to give his son the best education that money could buy in France. Bonnet was educated the elite Lycée Henri IV, École supérieure des hautes études and École des sciences politiques. Bonnet studied law and political science at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and University of Paris.Bonnet began his career as an auditeur at the Conseil d'État. In 1911, he launched his political career after he married Odette Pelletan, the granddaughter of Eugène Pelletan. Bonnet's wife, often known as Madame Soutien-Georges, ran a salon and had great ambitions for her husband. One contemporary reported that Madame Bonnet was "so wildly ambitious for her husband that when a new ministry was being formed he was afraid to go home at night unless he had captured a post for himself." Many privately mocked Bonnet for the way in which his wife dominated him. Bonnet's wife's nickname was a French pun on the word for brassiere and was both a reference to Madame Bonnet and to the size of her breasts.
In 1914, Bonnet joined the French Army. During his service during the First World War, Bonnet was a much-decorated soldier who won the Croix de guerre medal for bravery under fire. in 1918 he served as director of demobilization. Bonnet served as the editor on Alfred de Tarde's book L'âme du soldat. Bonnet highlighted the passage by de Tarde in which he wrote: "The France of 1914-1917 is more sincerely democratic than it has ever been, and she is in love with command". As an upper-class man, Bonnet was in some awe of the camaraderie and fighting spirit of the mostly lower-class poilus and saw it as his duty to record their experiences. Bonnet seemed to have been jealous of the toughness of the ordinary French soldiers, who lived under conditions that he could never accept. Bonnet often recounted the story of a poilu, named Lauteau, a happily married man with two children, who was killed while displaying a reckless disregard for his own life while he was repairing a telephone wire that had been severed by German artillery. Bonnet used the story of Lauteau as an example of the Union sacrée in action, as he argued in his 1919 book Lettres à un bourgeois de 1914 that it was love of la patrie that had inspired the poilus to resist.
In 1919, Bonnet served as a secretary to the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and wrote a book, Lettres à un bourgeois de 1914, that called for widespread social reforms. The British historian Anthony Adamthwaite noted that Lettres à un bourgeois de 1914 was the last serious interest that Bonnet was to display in social reform.
Bonnet served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1924 to 1928 and again from 1929 to 1940. He was appointed undersecretary of state in 1925, the first in a series of high ministerial positions throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. During his time as in the Chamber, Bonnet was regarded as a leading expert in financial and economic matters. As a minister, Bonnet had a reputation for working hard, being always well prepared in parliamentary debates and excelling at political intrigue. In 1931, in response to an appeal for help from China, the League of Nations sent a group of educational experts to suggest improvements to the Chinese educational system. The experts were Carl Heinrich Becker, the former education minister of Prussia; the Christian Socialist British historian R. H. Tawney who was the only member of the group who had been to China before and who could speak some Mandarin; Marian Falski, a senior bureaucrat with the Polish Ministry of Education in charge of all primary schools in Poland; and the scientist Paul Langevin of the Collège de France. Bonnet joined the group, as he was serving as the director of the Paris-based Institution of Intellectual Co-Operation, and the League wanted someone outside of the educational system to serve as the chairman of the group.
On 30 August 1931, the group left for China and saw first-hand the furious protests that erupted all over China in response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had started on 19 September 1931. Although most of the university and high school students in China were protesting the loss of Manchuria, the group was able to have cordial talks with Chinese educational officials about possible reforms and in 1932 released the book The Reorganisation of Education in China. In 1932, Bonnet headed the French delegation at the Lausanne Conference, where he first met Franz von Papen, who was serving as the German chancellor. During the Lausanne Conference, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, commenting on Bonnet's abilities, asked: "Why isn't he in the Cabinet?"
Economic expert
In 1933, Bonnet was a prominent member of the French delegation to the London Conference and was a leading critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's actions during the conference. In 1936, Bonnet emerged as the leader of 18 Radical deputies who objected to their party's participation in the Popular Front. Bonnet was regarded as the leader of the right wing of the Radical Socialist party, which, despite its name, was neither radical nor socialist. As a result, the French Premier Léon Blum, a socialist, effectively exiled Bonnet in January 1937 by appointing him Ambassador to the United States even though Bonnet did not speak English.Upon hearing of Bonnet's appointment, the American Ambassador to France, William Christian Bullitt, Jr., wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about Bonnet:
"I don't think you'll like him. He is extremely intelligent and competent on economic and financial matters, but he's not a man of character. You may remember that he led the French delegation to the London economic conference where he led the attacks against you".Despite his short stay in the United States and his inability to speak English, Bonnet thereafter and for the rest of his life claimed to be an expert on all things American.
On 28 June 1937, Bonnet returned to France when Premier Camille Chautemps appointed him Finance Minister. Bonnet's first major act as Finance Minister was to oversee the devaluation of the franc, the second devaluation in less than nine months, with the value of the franc going from 110.8 francs per British pound to 147.20. The devaluation was forced on Bonnet since the 10 billion francs that had been set aside in September 1936 in a currency reserve fund to defend the value of the franc after that year's devaluation had been spent by mid-1937. As Finance Minister, Bonnet imposed sharp cuts in military spending. He felt that the costs of the arms race with Germany were such that it was better for France to reach an understanding that might end the arms race than continue to spend gargantuan sums on the military. Besides the economic problems associated with budgetary stability and his attempts to maintain the value of the franc against currency speculation, Bonnet was concerned with the social conflict caused by the need for increased taxation and the decreased social services to pay for arms.
In a meeting with Papen, now the German Ambassador to Austria, in November 1937, Bonnet and Chautemps expressed the hope that an understanding might be reached in which France might accept Central and Eastern Europe as Germany's exclusive sphere of influence in return for German acceptance of Western Europe as France's sphere of influence. Moreover, Bonnet became the leading spokesman within the French Cabinet for the idea that the French alliance system in Eastern Europe, the so-called cordon sanitaire, was a net liability that served only to embroil France in conflicts with Germany. Throughout his career, Bonnet was noted as an advocate of "sacred egoism": French interests should always take precedence over other nations' interests. Bonnet regarded himself as a "realist", and his thinking on foreign policy tended to be coloured in equal measure by pragmatism and insularity.
Bonnet's cuts in military spending led to a clash with War Minister Édouard Daladier, who persuaded the Cabinet to rescind the most severe cuts to the French Army budget by pointing out that in the current international climate, the Army needed more funding, not less. Since the Ministers of the Air and the Marine were not as substantial personalities as Daladier, the French Navy and French Air Force could not reverse the Finance Minister's cuts. In January 1938, after the fall of Chautemps's government, Bonnet made a serious effort to form a new government but in the end had to content himself with being appointed Minister of State.
Foreign Minister of the republic, 1938–1939
Appointment as foreign minister
In April 1938, after the fall of the second Blum government, Bonnet was appointed Foreign Minister under Daladier as premier. In 1938 and 1939, there were three factions within the French government. One, the "peace lobby" led by Bonnet, felt that France could not afford an arms race with Nazi Germany and sought a détente with the Reich. As an expert in financial matters and a former finance minister, Bonnet was acutely aware of the damages inflicted by the arms race on an economy that was already weakened by the Great Depression. A second faction, led by Paul Reynaud, Jean Zay and Georges Mandel, favoured a policy of resistance to German expansionism. A third faction, led by Daladier, stood halfway between the other two and favoured appeasement of Germany to buy time to rearm. The American historian Ernest R. May wrote: "Small and dapper with a pointed long nose and a prominent Adam's apple, Georges Bonnett was privately mocked behind his back for overdoing the bidding of his young, sensual and well-to-do wife, Odette Pelletan.... But Bonnet was no lightweight.... As a minister, he worked long hours, always knew his briefs and had formidable skill at parliamentary intrigue". The secretary-general of the Quai d'Orsay, Alexis St. Léger, later wrote that of the many foreign ministers he served, Bonnet was the worst, and he described Bonnet as a man committed to appeasement.Daladier left foreign policy largely to Bonnet as the best way of avoiding a war against Germany in 1938. In addition, Daladier felt that the best way of watching Bonnet was to include him in the Cabinet: he wished to keep the Popular Front together, but Bonnet wanted to pull the Radical Socialists out of it. Daladier's thought if Bonnet were outside of the Cabinet, his ability to engage in intrigues to break up the Popular Front and seize the premiership for himself would be correspondingly increased. Including him in the Cabinet limited his room to maneuver. The Radical Socialist Party, which had a largely-lower-middle class membership, was divided between a left-liberal wing associated with Daladier that was willing to accept participation in the Popular Front as a way to defend France from fascism both at home and abroad and a right-wing "neo-radical" wing that was associated with Bonnet and saw the participation in the Popular Front as a betrayal of the party's traditional defence of private property and capitalism. The "neo-radical" wing of the Radicals tended to support appeasement and saw the foreign policy of the Popular Front as potentially leading France into a disastrous war with Germany that would benefit only the Soviet Union. The Radicals were mostly the party of farmers, small businessmen and tradesmen but the party was dependent upon donations from wealthier businessmen, and the "neo-radical" Bonnet's presence in an influential position as the foreign minister helped Daladier resist pressure from the more conservative Radical deputies, senators and the industrialists to pull the party out of the Popular Front. An additional complication in the Daladier-Bonnet relationship was posed by Bonnet's desire for the premiership, which gradually led to a breakdown with his once warm relations with Daladier.
Bonnet was extremely critical of what he regarded as the "warmongers" of the Quai d'Orsay, and from the very beginning of his time as Foreign Minister, he tended to exclude his senior officials from the decision-making progress and preferred instead to concentrate authority in his own hands. In Bonnet's opinion, the Franco-Czechoslovak Treaty of 1924 committing France to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia in the event of a German invasion was a millstone and could lead France into a disastrous war with Germany. Bonnet believed that the best course for France in 1938 was to pressure the Czechoslovak government into conceding to German demands to prevent a Franco-German war. Alternatively, if the Czechoslovaks refused to make concessions, that refusal could be used as an excuse for ending the alliance. While pursuing that course, Bonnet not only kept his senior officials at the Quai d'Orsay uninformed but sometimes also Daladier. That led the Premier to rebuke his Foreign Minister several times for behaving as if French foreign policy was made by "one minister".
Between 27 and 29 April 1938, Bonnet visited London with Daladier for meetings with Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax to discuss the possibility of a German-Czechoslovak war breaking out and what the two governments could do to stop such a war. During the talks, the French ministers argued for firm declarations that both nations would go to war in the event of a German aggression and agreed to a British suggestion that the two nations pressure Prague into making concessions to the Sudeten Heimfront of Konrad Henlein. The London summit marked the beginning of a pattern that was to last throughout 1938 in which the French would begin talks with the British by demanding a harder line against the Reich and then agree to follow the British line. In the view of Bonnet and Daladier, those tactics allowed them to carry out their foreign policy goals but provide them with a cover from domestic critics by presenting their foreign policy as the result of British pressure. As Bonnet told Bullitt, his "whole policy was based on allowing the British full latitude to work out the dispute" because otherwise, France would have to bear the main responsibility for pressuring concessions on Czechoslovakia. Throughout summer 1938, Bonnet allowed most of the diplomatic pressure that was applied to Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš for concessions to Henlein to come from London. That led to sharp complaints from the British that Bonnet should do more to apply pressure on Beneš.
Bonnet's relations with Wellington Koo, the Chinese ambassador in Paris, were difficult, as Bonnet was in favour of ending arms shipments to China as a way of improving relations with Japan. One of the main supply lines that kept China fighting was the railroad linking of French Indochina to China. The arms from the Soviet Union were landed at the port of Haiphong and were taken via trains to China. Bonnet's great rival, Colonial Minister Georges Mandel allowed the Soviet arms to be transshipped via French Indochina over the intense protests of Bonnet, who warned him that the Japanese would invade French Indochina in response. Mandel argued against Bonnet that to allow the Japanese to conquer China would make it more likely that the Japanese would try to seize French Indochina and so it was in France's own self-interest to keep China fighting. When the dispute between Bonnet and Mandel reached Daladier, Daladier listened to Mandel.
Between 9 and 14 May 1938, Bonnet attended the spring sessions of the League of Nations in Geneva. There, Bonnet met with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov, who offered vague and evasive answers to Bonnet's questions about what the Soviet Union proposed to do in the event of a German attack on Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, Bonnet was informed by the Polish and Romanian delegations at the League that if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, they would refuse the Red Army transit rights to Czechoslovakia's aid and that any Soviet violation of their neutrality would be resisted with force. After his return to Paris, Bonnet met a visiting Lord Halifax and urged him to "work as hard as he could for a settlement in Czechoslovakia so that the French would not be faced with a crisis which they definitely did not want to face". As Halifax reported to the British Cabinet, Bonnet "wanted His Majesty's Government to put as much pressure as possible on Dr. Beneš to reach a settlement with the Sudeten-Deutsch in order to save France from the cruel dilemma between dishonouring her agreement or becoming involved in war".