Pierre Laval
Pierre Jean Marie Laval was a French politician. He served as Prime Minister of France three times: 1931–1932 and 1935–1936 during the Third Republic, and 1942–1944 during Vichy France. After the war, Laval was tried as a Nazi collaborator and executed for treason.
A socialist early in his life, Laval became a lawyer in 1909 and was famous for his defence of strikers, trade unionists and leftists from government prosecution. In 1914, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the French Section of the Workers' International, and he remained committed to his pacifist convictions during the First World War. After his defeat in the 1919 election, Laval left the SFIO and became mayor of Aubervilliers. In 1924 he returned to the Chamber as an independent, and was elected to the Senate three years later. He also held a series of governmental positions, including Minister of Public Works, Minister of Justice and Minister of Labour. In 1931, Laval became prime minister, but his government fell only a year later.
Laval joined the conservative government of Gaston Doumergue in 1934 and served as Minister of the Colonies and then Foreign Minister. In 1935, Laval again became prime minister. Seeking to contain Nazi Germany, he pursued foreign policies favourable to Italy and the Soviet Union, but his handling of the Abyssinia Crisis, which was widely denounced as appeasement of Benito Mussolini, prompted his resignation in 1936.
After France's defeat by the blitzkrieg invasion of Nazi Germany, Laval, by this time a well-known Fascist sympathizer, served in prominent roles in Philippe Pétain's Vichy France, first as the vice-president of the Council of Ministers from July 1940 to December 1940 and later as the head of government from April 1942 to August 1944. During this time he displayed harsh treatment towards the people of France, sending thousands of French people, including Jews, to slavery in Germany and occupied Poland, and often relied on heavy handed tactics to keep the populace in line, which only fueled opposition to the already unpopular government.
After the Liberation of France in 1944, Laval was imprisoned by the Germans. In April 1945, he fled to Spain but was soon extradited back to France, where he was arrested by the French government under Charles de Gaulle. After what has been described as a flawed trial, much like those many under the Vichy regime underwent, Laval was found guilty of plotting against the security of the state and of collaboration with the enemy. After a thwarted suicide attempt, Laval was executed by firing squad in October 1945. There was a widespread belief, particularly in the years that followed, that de Gaulle was trying to appease both the Third Republic politicians and the former Vichy leaders who had made Laval their scapegoat.
Early life
Pierre Jean Marie Laval was born on 28 June 1883 in Châteldon, near Vichy in the northern part of Auvergne, the son of Gilbert Laval and Claudine Tournaire. His father worked as a café proprietor and postman. The family was comfortably off compared to the rest of the village: the café also served as a hostel and a butcher's shop, and Gilbert Laval owned a vineyard and horses. The last name "Laval" was widespread in the region at that time. The family branch was commonly named Laval-Tournaire, and his father had himself called "Baptiste Moulin".Laval was educated at the village school in Châteldon. At age 15, he was sent to the lycée Saint-Louis in Paris where he obtained his baccalauréat in July 1901. He then continued his studies in Southwestern France, in Bordeaux and Bayonne, where he learnt Spanish and met Pierre Cathala. Returning to Lyon, he spent the next year reading for a degree in zoology and served as a supervisor in various collèges and lycées of Lyon, Saint-Étienne and Autun to pay for his studies.
Laval joined the socialist Central Revolutionary Committee in 1903, while he was living in Saint-Étienne, 55 km southwest of Lyon. During this period, Laval became familiar with the left-wing doctrines of Georges Sorel and Hubert Lagardelle. "I was never a very orthodox socialist", he declared more than forty years later in 1945, "by which I mean that I was never much of a Marxist. My socialism was much more a socialism of the heart than a doctrinal socialism... I was much more interested in men, their jobs, their misfortunes and their conflicts than in the digressions of the great German pontiff."
In 1903, he was called up for military service and, after serving in the ranks, was discharged for varicose veins. Laval returned to Paris in 1907 at the age of 24. In April 1913 he said that "barrack-based armies incapable of the slightest effort, because they are badly-trained and, above all, badly commanded." Laval favoured abolition of the army and replacement by a citizens' militia.
Lawyer
Abandoning natural science studies, Laval eventually turned to law and became in 1909 a "lawyer of the poor people", who was near syndicalists of the CGT. The years before the First World War were characterised by labour unrest, and Laval defended strikers, trade unionists and left-wing agitators against government attempts to prosecute them. At a trade union conference, Laval said:The first case that led him to fame was the acquittal of Gustave Manhès, a revolutionary trade unionist who had been charged with possession of explosives and anarchist manuals.
Laval married Jeanne Claussat in 1909, the daughter of the Socialist politician Dr Joseph Claussat. Their only child, a daughter named Josée, was born in 1911. Josée married René de Chambrun, whose uncle, Nicholas Longworth III, married Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of US President Theodore Roosevelt. Although Laval's wife came from a political family, she never participated in politics. Laval was generally considered to be devoted to his family.
In 1911, he stood for the National Assembly in the Neuilly-Boulogne electoral district and caused the conservative candidate Édouard Nortier to win since Laval stood in the second round despite the Radical candidate, Alexandre Percin, doing so as well.
First World War
Socialist deputy for Seine
In April 1914, as fear of war swept the nation, the Socialists and Radicals geared up their electoral campaign in defence of peace. Their leaders were Jean Jaurès and Joseph Caillaux. The Bloc des Gauches denounced the law passed in July 1913 that extended compulsory military service from two to three years.In the 1914 legislative election, held three months before the outbreak of World War I, the trade unions sought Laval as the Socialist candidate for the Seine, the district comprising Paris and its suburbs. Laval was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the second electoral district of Saint-Denis. At nearly 31, he was the youngest member of the Chamber.
The Radicals, with the support of Socialists, held the majority in the French Chamber of Deputies. Together, they hoped to avert war, but the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914 and of Jean Jaurès on 31 July 1914 shattered those hopes. Laval's brother, Jean, died in the first months of the war.
Laval was listed in the Carnet B, a compilation of potentially subversive elements that might hinder mobilisation. In the name of national unity, Minister of the Interior Jean-Louis Malvy, despite pressure from chiefs of staff, refused to have anyone apprehended. Laval remained true to his pacifist convictions during the war. In December 1915, Jean Longuet, the grandson of Karl Marx, proposed to Socialist parliamentarians that they communicate with socialists of other states in the hope of pressing governments into a negotiated peace. Laval signed on, but the motion was defeated.
With France's resources geared for war, goods were scarce or overpriced. On 30 January 1917, in the National Assembly Laval called upon Supply Minister Édouard Herriot to deal with the inadequate coal supply in Paris. When Herriot said, "If I could, I would unload the barges myself", Laval retorted, "Do not add ridicule to ineptitude". Those words delighted the Assembly and attracted the attention of Georges Clemenceau but left the relationship between Laval and Herriot permanently strained.
Stockholm, "polar star"
Laval scorned the conduct of the war and the poor supply of troops in the field. When mutinies broke out after General Robert Nivelle's offensive of April 1917 at Chemin des Dames, he spoke in defence of the mutineers. When Marcel Cachin and Marius Moutet returned from St. Petersburg in June 1917 with the invitation to a socialist convention in Stockholm, Laval saw a chance for peace. In an address to the Assembly, he urged the chamber to allow a delegation to go: "Yes, Stockholm, in response to the call of the Russian Revolution.... Yes, Stockholm, for peace.... Yes, Stockholm the polar star." The request was denied.The hope of peace in spring 1917 was overwhelmed by discovery of traitors, some real and some imagined, as with Malvy, who became a suspect because he had refused to arrest Frenchmen on the Carnet B. Laval's "Stockholm, étoile polaire" speech had not been forgotten. Many of Laval's acquaintances, the publishers of the anarchist Le Bonnet rouge and other pacifists were arrested or interrogated. Though Laval frequented pacifist circles, the authorities did not pursue him. His status as a deputy, his caution and his friendships protected him. In November 1917, Clemenceau became prime minister and offered Laval a post in his government. Laval refused, as the Socialist Party refused to enter any government, but he questioned the wisdom of such a policy in a meeting of Socialist deputies.
Initial postwar career
From Socialist to Independent
In the 1919 elections the Socialists' record of pacifism, their opposition to Clemenceau and anxiety arising from the excesses of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia contributed to their defeat by the conservative National Bloc. Laval lost his seat in the Chamber of Deputies.The General Confederation of Labour, with 2,400,000 members, launched a general strike in 1920, which petered out with thousands of workers being laid off. In response, the government sought to dissolve the CGT. Laval, with Joseph Paul-Boncour as chief counsel, defended the union's leaders and saved the union by appealing to Interior Minister Théodore Steeg and Commerce and Industry Minister Auguste Isaac.
Laval's relations with the Socialist Party drew to an end. The last years with the Socialist caucus, combined with the party's disciplinary policies, eroded Laval's attachment to the cause. With the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, the party was changing. At the Congress of Tours in December 1920, the Socialists split into two ideological components: the French Communist Party, which was inspired by Moscow, and the more moderate French Section of the Workers' International. Laval let his membership lapse and did not take sides as both factions battled over the legacy of Jean Jaurès.