Léon Blum
André Léon Blum was a French socialist politician and three-time Prime Minister of France. As a Jew, he was heavily influenced by the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century.
Blum was a disciple of socialist leader Jean Jaurès and became his successor after Jaurès' assassination in 1914. Despite Blum's relatively short tenures, his time in office was very influential. As prime minister in the left-wing Popular Front government in 1936–1937, he provided a series of major economic and social reforms. Blum declared neutrality in the Spanish Civil War to avoid the civil conflict spilling over into France itself. Once out of office in 1938, he denounced the appeasement of Germany.
When Germany defeated France in 1940, Blum became a staunch opponent of Vichy France and was tried by its government on charges of treason. He was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp and after the war resumed a transitional leadership role in French politics, helping to bring about the French Fourth Republic, until his death in 1950.
Early life
Blum was born in 1872 in Paris to a moderately prosperous, middle class, assimilated Jewish family in the mercantile business. His father Abraham, a merchant, was born in Alsace and moved to Paris in 1848. Blum's mother, Adèle-Marie-Alice Picart was born in Paris, but her family likewise originated in Alsace. Blum's mother observed Orthodox rituals faithfully, but his father was less religious, being only seen in the synagogue on the high holy days. Blum came from a family that very much identified with the republic, and as a child he attended the public funeral services of defenders of French republican values such as Léon Gambetta in 1882 and Victor Hugo in 1885. He came to identify with the universalism of French republicanism, which portrayed France as an especially enlightened nation that was leading the rest of the world in the right direction, and where French civilization was open to all who were willing to embrace the French language and culture regardless of religion, ethnicity, and race. Blum himself was not especially religious, but was always very proud to be Jewish and frequently affirmed his Jewish identity when subjected to anti-Semitic insults. Blum was more influenced by the rationalistic and anticlerical ideas of the French Enlightenment than by Judaism. Blum always saw himself as both French and Jewish, and he took a special pride in the heritage of the French Revolution, which for him marked the beginning of a civic and secular society in which religion did not matter. He wrote that as a Jew he belonged "to a race which owed to the French Revolution human liberty and equality, something that could never be forgotten".Blum first attended the Lycée Charlemagne, but was so successful academically that he was transferred over to the Lycée Henri-IV, the favored school of the elite. Blum entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1890 and excelled there, but he dropped out a year later, entering instead the Faculty of Law. He attended the University of Paris and became both a lawyer and literary critic. Starting in 1892, he became the critic for La Revue Blanche magazine, where he reviewed works by Anatole France, Pierre Louÿs, Jules Renard and André Gide. His reviews made him famous in Parisian intellectual circles, where he became known as a reviewer with interesting and provocative views about the state of modern French literature. He also contributed poetry to the magazines La Conque and Le Banquet. Blum was greatly influenced by Stendhal whose novels he loved, and he was to become one of the world's leading experts on Stendhal whom he often wrote about. As a young man, he affected the style of an aesthete "dandy" and was an associate of the writer Marcel Proust. Proust did not have much respect for Blum as a writer, whom he dismissed as "mediocre". Blum was usually dressed as a dandy in the salons of Paris, wearing an expensive suit, top hat, gloves and a monocle. His way of dressing led to the young Blum often being denounced as a homosexual, with the poet Charles Maurras calling Blum "the maiden" in one of his poems. Throughout his life, Blum was always subjected to accusations that he was gay, but it appears that the effeminate style that he fancied in his youth was more of an act of youthful rebellion.
Blum described himself as "a vulnerable and fragile being, 'like a girl in a novel', an overtly delicate plant". To rebut the charge that he was too "soft" and a homosexual, Blum sought to prove his "strength" by engaging in duels with rivals. In 1896, Blum married Lise Bloch at the Grand Synagogue of Paris. He was initially convinced of the guilt of Captain Alfred Dreyfus who had been convicted of treason for Germany in 1894, but in the late summer of 1897 Lucien Herr convinced Blum that Dreyfus was innocent and as an intellectual with influence he had the duty to take a stand in favor of Dreyfus. Starting in September 1897, Blum became deeply involved in the Dreyfus Affair, where he resolved to "restore the innocent man's good name". Blum was in contact with Georges Clemenceau, who served as the lawyer for the newspaper L'Aurore and Fernand Labori, who served as the lawyer for Émile Zola, writing legal briefs for both Clemenceau and Labori. Blum attended the trial in 1898 of Zola for his letter J'Accuse...! published in L'Aurore. Blum tried to recruit Maurice Barrès, whom he called "my guide" and "my teacher" to French literature to the Dreyfusard cause, and was greatly hurt when Barrès told him he was an anti-Dreyfusard. Blum described himself as "almost in mourning" when Barrès rejected his appeal, and instead wrote the article "The Protest of the Intellectuals" condemning the "Jewish signers" who championed the cause of Dreyfus. The Dreyfus Affair marked the beginning of Blum's interest in socialism, which promoted internationalism and secularism. Blum became convinced that antisemitism was largely the work of the Catholic Church and the upper classes, and socialism in France would end antisemitism forever. Despite all of the passions created by the Dreyfus Affair, in 1899 he wrote he had no fears of "a Saint Bartholomew's Day of the Jews", writing that pogroms were possible "in Poland, Galicia, or Romania or maybe in Algiers, but not in France".
Between 1905 and 1907 he wrote Du Mariage a highly controversial and much talked about critical essay about the problems with traditional marriage as envisioned in the late 19th century, with its religious and economic background and strong stress on women remaining virgins until their marriage day. Blum stated that both men and women should enjoy a period of "polygamic" free sex life in order to experience a more mature and stable relationship during later married life: “For both men and women, the life of adventure must precede the life of marriage, the life of instinct must precede the life of reason”
Unsurprisingly he was targeted by the then-powerful Catholic Church in France, in the wake of the turmoil caused by the separation between church and state implemented by Émile Combes in 1905. Far right and royalist politicians and agitators, and most preeminently Charles Maurras, were incensed, and pelted mostly anti-semitic insults and public outrage at Blum, famously dubbing him "le pornographe du Conseil d'état" as Blum was by then a counsellor of this institution. Although Blum's views are nowadays accepted and mostly mainstream in many developed countries, the book remained an object of scandal long after WWI and the shift to the emancipation of women. On 14 October 1912, Blum fought a duel with swords with a rival theater critic Pierre Weber, which ended with Weber surrendering after Blum wounded him.
Entry into politics
While in his youth an avid reader of the works of the nationalist writer Maurice Barrès, Blum had shown little interest in politics until the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, which had a traumatic effect on him as it did on many French Jews. Blum first became personally involved in the Affair when he aided the defense case of Émile Zola in 1898 as a jurist, before which he had not demonstrated interest in public affairs. 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 Section of the Workers' International. Soon he was the party's main theoretician. It is possible that Blum's interest in politics began somewhat earlier, as Fernand Gregh mentioned in his personal memoirs that Blum had expressed interest in politics as early as 1892.In July 1914, just as the First World War broke out, Jaurès was assassinated, and Blum became more active in the Socialist party leadership. Before the war, Blum had supported the plans of Jaurès for a general strike to prevent a war, but in August 1914 he supported the war under the grounds that France was faced with German aggression. Blum in general favored a pacifistic position, but he also believed that France had the right and duty to defend itself against aggression, which he viewed as the case when Germany presented an ultimatum whose terms were designed to be rejected, followed up by an invasion of neutral Belgium as the best way to invade France. Blum did not feel that he was betraying Jaurès's vision as he believed Jaurès would have rallied to the support of the war after Germany invaded France on 2 August 1914. He supported the Union Sacrée coalition government formed to resist the German aggression. Blum was exempt from military service because he was near-sighted and 42 years old, but he was described as being full of "ardent patriotism" as he sought to do everything within his power to assist with the war effort. In August 1914 Blum became assistant to the Socialist Minister of Public Works Marcel Sembat. In 1915, when a minority of the Socialists started to become opposed to the war, Blum displayed much tact in seeking party unity as he maintained that the German threat necessitated support for the war. He disapproved of the French Socialists who attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 to seek an end to the war. The majority of the Socialists who attended the Zimmerwald conference were Russian, and Blum was struck by the extent of alienation that the Russian socialists expressed towards their country as Russian nationalism had utterly no appeal to them in the same way that French nationalism appealed to him. Blum was a lifelong Anglophile who greatly appreciated Britain's role in helping to defend France and admired the British Westminster system. Blum felt that the system of government under the Troisième République where the premier was more of a chairman of a cumbersome committee than an executive leader was inefficient, and he advocated France adopting a republican version of the Westminster system with a strong executive prime minister.
In April 1917, he welcomed the entry of the United States into world war I, which he portrayed as a struggle between the militaristic monarchy of Germany vs. the democratic French republic. On 8 April 1917, Blum wrote in an editorial in L'Humanité that: "Our victory will be the emancipation and reconciliation of men through Liberty and Justice". In the same editorial, he praised the call of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson for "peace without victory", writing that the problem was not the German people, but rather Germany's leaders such as Emperor Wilhelm II. By 1917, the Socialists had divided into an antiwar group led by Paul Faure and Jean Longuet vs. a "national defense" group led by Albert Thomas and Pierre Renaudel. Thomas and Renaudel represented a moderate, reformist, and definitely French strain of socialism while Faure and Longuet represented a more militant, pacifistic and internationalist strain of socialism that became increasing opposed to the war as it dragged on. Blum became the leader of a "centrist" group in the Socialist Party that supported the war like the "national defense" group, but in many ways were ideologically closer to the antiwar group. Blum was strongly opposed to Vladimir Lenin who called for the defeat of Russia as the best way to bring about a Communist revolution, and in November 1917 he condemned the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd. The evolution of the more left-wing French Socialists from supporting the war in 1914 to opposing it by 1918 was also reflected in Russia. In 1914, most Russian socialists had either declared their support for war or least their neutrality as many socialists could not bring themselves to supporting Emperor Nicholas II; by 1917 the radical views of Lenin who called for Russia's defeat were in the mainstream of Russian socialism. The anti-war group in the French Socialist Party followed a similar trajectory to what happened in Russia. Blum wrote he was disgusted by the "intransigent fanaticism" of the Bolsheviks along with their cruelty and their "mystical belief in the sole immediate virtue of revolution in itself, no matter what the conditions, the circumstances, the means employed". However, he charged that Thomas and Renaudel had become too moderate and had diluted their socialism. In November 1917, Blum supported the Balfour Declaration promising a "Jewish national home" in Palestine if the Allies won the war. However, Blum saw Zionism as a solution to the problems of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, not of France. Blum always saw himself as a Frenchman and wrote about he had no intention of ever going to Palestine as he was "a French Jew, of a long line of French ancestors, speaking only the language of his country, nurtured predominantly on its culture".
On 21 March 1918, Germany launched Operation Michael, an offensive intended to win the war. As the German Army advanced within 50 miles of Paris in the spring of 1918, Blum called for a "Jacobin" defense of Paris with every citizen to be handed a gun. In a bitterly divided Socialist Party, Blum's "centrist" faction had an oversized importance despite being outnumbered by the two other factions, which along with Blum's reputation as a protégé of Jaurès made him into one of the leaders of the Socialist Party by the end of the war. In 1914, almost all Socialists had supported the union sacrée as Blum had done, but as the war continued, many Socialists felt the burden of the war had not been shared equally with the working class making all the sacrifices while the bourgeoise made no such sacrifices. Renaudel and Thomas had discredited themselves by serving as ministers in the union sacrée government who had fought against strikes to maximize war production with many Socialists such as Longuet and Faure charging Renaudel and Thomas had failed to achieve concessions to the workers in exchange for no strikes. By 1918, the more left-wing antiwar group in the Socialist Party was in the ascendency and many of the younger members of the party expressed much admiration for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who had done what the Socialists only merely talked about. By July 1918, the antiwar group had come close to taking control of the Socialist Party executive. In an attempt to hold the Socialist Party together, Blum tried to paper over the chasm between the pro-war socialists vs. the anti-war socialists by writing on 19 August 1918 in L'Humanité that the Socialists were "republicans and socialists, socialists and French patriots, French patriots and champions of working-class internationalism". Blum wrote that the choice "between Wilson and Lenin, between democracy and Bolshevik fanaticism" was a false one as "I chose neither Wilson nor Lenin. I chose Jaurès".
Only the victory of the Allies with Germany surrendering on 11 November 1918 prevented the Socialist Party from breaking up with Blum attempting to reconcile the two factions after the war. Blum worked hard at rebuilding Socialist Party unity, but the wounds left by the split between the antiwar and prowar Socialists was too deep and visceral, and set the stage for most of the antiwar Socialists breaking off to found the French Communist Party in 1920. In the two years that followed 1918, Blum's reputation as the leader of a "centrist" group who might be able to hold the Socialists together raised his profile immensely. In an editorial in L'Humanité on 19 July 1919, Blum attacked the Treaty of Versailles, which he called "a denial, a betrayal" of the Allied principles held during the war. Blum opposed French intervention in the Russian Civil War, but was cautious about calls from the more radical Socialists to affiliate with the Comintern that had been founded in Moscow in 1919.
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 the election of November 1919, the center-right coalition bloc national won the majority of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies while the Socialists went from holding 103 seats down to 68. Many of the wartime Socialist leaders such as Renaudel, Faure, and Longuet lost their seats while Blum was elected, giving him a greater prominence. Blum's maiden speech on 30 December 1919 gave him a reputation as one of the finest speakers in the National Assembly. In the fall of 1920, Grigory Zinoviev, the chief of the Comintern, in an open letter to "all French Socialists and proletarians" denounced in the most violent terms the leaders of the French Socialists for supporting World War One and demanded "21 conditions" for affiliation with the Comintern. Zinoviev demanded that the French Socialists reorganize along Leninist lines, merge the trade unions into the Socialist Party instead of being merely allied to them, expel all reformist Socialists and accept the guidance of the Comintern in all matters. At the time, the Bolsheviks had tremendous prestige in left-wing circles as the first Communist government in the world and most of the more radical Socialists supported accepting Zinoviev's "21 conditions". Believing that there was no such thing as a "good dictatorship", Blum opposed participation in the Comintern and fought hard against accepting Zinoviev's terms, writing that the Bolsheviks were too extreme in their beliefs and methods. Therefore, in 1920, he worked to prevent a split between supporters and opponents of the Russian Revolution at the Congress of Tours, but the radicals seceded, taking L'Humanité with them, and formed the French Section of the Communist International. Throughout the 1920s, Blum saw the French Communists as his main rivals, and hence often took a rhetorical stance that made him sound more extreme left-wing than what he really was in an attempt to keep Socialist voters from defecting over to the Communists.