François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French politician and statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest holder of that position in the history of France. As a former Socialist Party First Secretary, he was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic.
Due to family influences, Mitterrand started his political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy regime during its earlier years. Subsequently, he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office several times under the Fourth Republic. Mitterrand opposed Charles de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, he outmanoeuvred rivals to become the left's standard bearer in the 1965 and 1974 presidential elections, before being elected president in the 1981 presidential election. He was re-elected in 1988 and remained in office until 1995.
Mitterrand invited the Communist Party into his first government, which was a controversial decision at the time. However, the Communists were boxed in as junior partners and, rather than taking advantage, saw their support eroded, eventually leaving the cabinet in 1984.
Early in his first term, Mitterrand followed a radical left-wing economic agenda, including nationalisation of key firms and the introduction of the 39-hour work week. He likewise pushed a progressive agenda with reforms such as the abolition of the death penalty, and the end of a government monopoly in radio and television broadcasting. He was also a strong promoter of French culture and implemented a range of "Grands Projets". However, faced with economic tensions, he soon abandoned his nationalization programme, in favour of austerity and market liberalization policies. In 1985, he was faced with a major controversy after ordering the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace vessel docked in Auckland. Later in 1991, he became the first French President to appoint a female prime minister, Édith Cresson. During his presidency, Mitterrand was twice forced by the loss of a parliamentary majority into "cohabitation governments" with conservative cabinets led, respectively, by Jacques Chirac, and Édouard Balladur.
Mitterrand’s foreign and defence policies built on those of his Gaullist predecessors, except in regard to their reluctance to support European integration, which he reversed. His partnership with German chancellor Helmut Kohl advanced European integration via the Maastricht Treaty, and he accepted German reunification.
Less than eight months after leaving office, he died from the prostate cancer he had successfully concealed for most of his presidency. Beyond making the French Left electable, Mitterrand presided over the rise of the Socialist Party to dominance of the left, and the decline of the once-dominant Communist Party.
Family
François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand was born on 26 October 1916 in Jarnac, Charente, the son of Joseph Mitterrand and Yvonne Lorrain. His family was devoutly Catholic and conservative. His father worked as a stationmaster for the Compagnie Paris Orléans railway. He had three brothers, Robert, Jacques, and Philippe, and four sisters, Antoinette, Marie-Josèphe, Colette, and Geneviève.Mitterrand's wife, Danielle Mitterrand, came from a socialist background and worked for various left-wing causes. They married on 24 October 1944 and had three sons: Pascal, Jean-Christophe, born in 1946, and Gilbert, born on 4 February 1949. He also had two children as results of extra-marital affairs: an acknowledged daughter, Mazarine, with his mistress Anne Pingeot, and an unacknowledged son, Hravn Forsne, with Swedish journalist.
François Mitterrand's nephew Frédéric Mitterrand was a journalist, Minister of Culture and Communications under Nicolas Sarkozy, and his wife's brother-in-law Roger Hanin was a well-known French actor.
Early life
François Mitterrand studied from 1925 to 1934 at the Collège Saint-Paul in Angoulême, where he became a member of the Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne, the student organisation of Action catholique. Arriving in Paris in the autumn of 1934, he then went to the École Libre des Sciences Politiques until 1937, where he obtained his diploma in July of that year. François Mitterrand took membership for about a year in the Volontaires nationaux, an organisation related to François de la Rocque's far-right league, the Croix de Feu; the league had just participated in the 6 February 1934 riots which led to the fall of the second Cartel des Gauches.Contrary to some reports, Mitterrand never became a formal member of the French Social Party, which was the successor to the Croix de Feu and may be considered the first French right-wing mass party. However, he did write news articles in the L'Écho de Paris newspaper, which was close to the Social Party. He participated in the demonstrations against the "invasion métèque" in February 1935 and then in those against law teacher Gaston Jèze, who had been nominated as juridical counsellor of Ethiopia's Negus, in January 1936.
When Mitterrand's involvement in these conservative nationalist movements was revealed in the 1990s, he attributed his actions to the milieu of his youth. He furthermore had some personal and family relations with members of the Cagoule, a far-right terrorist group in the 1930s.
Mitterrand then served his conscription from 1937 to 1939 in the 23rd régiment d'infanterie coloniale. In 1938, he became the best friend of, a Jewish socialist, whom he saved from anti-Semitic aggressions by the national-royalist movement Action française. His friendship with Dayan caused Mitterrand to begin to question some of his nationalist ideas. Finishing his law studies, he was sent in September 1939 to the Maginot line near Montmédy, with the rank of Sergeant-chief. He became engaged to Marie-Louise Terrasse in May 1940, when she was 16, but she broke it off in January 1942. Following an observation of Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II, François Mitterrand became an agnostic.
Second World War
François Mitterrand's actions during World War II were the cause of much controversy in France during the 1980s and 1990s. Mitterand was called up for military service in 1938 and joined the 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment :fr:23e régiment d'infanterie coloniale| at Fort d'Ivry. During the Phoney War, he was deployed with the 23rd RIC to Alsace in September 1939 and then to the Ardennes, near Stenay, in December. Mitterrand was wounded by shrapnel during the Battle of France on 14 June 1940, at the Cote 304 near Verdun. He was hospitalised in Toul and then Bruyères, where he was captured by the Germans on 21 June.Prisoner of war: 1940–1941
Mitterrand was initially held at Stalag IX A, southwest of Kassel, before being transferred to Stalag IX C, Kommando 1515, in Schaala :de:Schaala|, Thuringia. In March 1941, Mitterrand made his escape with fellow POW Father Xavier Leclerc while they were on work detail. Mitterrand and Leclerc trekked over 22 days, but were arrested at Egesheim, just from the Swiss border, and returned to Stalag IX A. Mitterrand was appointed one of ten chancellors of the ZUT, a temporary university in Ziegenhain, where he gave lectures on the ancien régime and Voltaire. He claims that his activity in the camp and the influence of the people he met there began to change his political ideas, moving him towards the left. On 28 November Mitterrand escaped with forged papers and made it to Metz, however he was denounced by the landlady of a hotel he rested at and was taken to a sorting camp for escapees in Boulay-Moselle.Before he could be transferred to another camp, likely to have been in Poland, Mitterrand escaped through the barbed wire on 10 December and hid in a nearby hospital. He was sheltered by a nurse at the hospital, Marie Baron, who had helped several escapees in the village and who entrusted him to friends since she was being surveilled by the Gestapo. On 15 December, Baron collected him and took him to Metz where she contacted Hélène Studler, who operated an escape network. That evening, Mitterrand rendezvoused with three other escapees and a member of Sister Hélène's network at Saint-Martin Church :fr:Église Saint-Martin de Metz|, who took them to meet a smuggler at Metz train station. The escapees and the smuggler boarded a train towards the border between Moselle, which had been de facto annexed to Germany, and the occupied zone, bailing during a slowdown for roadworks, and crossed the border. Mitterrand reached Nancy where another member of Sister Hélène's network, a Brother of the Christian Schools, provided him with false identity papers and directions to the zone libre via Besançon and Mouchard, which he crossed into near Chamblay on 16 December.
Work in France under the Vichy administration: 1941–1943
With help from a friend of his mother, Mitterrand got a job as a mid-level functionary of the Vichy government, looking after the interests of POWs. This was very unusual for an escaped prisoner, and he later claimed to have served as a spy for the Free French Forces. Mitterrand worked from January to April 1942 for the Légion française des combattants et des volontaires de la révolution nationale as a civil servant on a temporary contract. François Mitterrand worked under Jean-Paul Favre de Thierrens who was a spy for the British secret service. He then moved to the Commissariat au reclassement des prisonniers de guerre. During this period, Mitterrand was aware of Thierrens's activities and may have helped in his disinformation campaign. At the same time, he published an article detailing his time as a POW in the magazine France, revue de l'État nouveau.Mitterrand has been called a "Vichysto-résistant".
From spring 1942, he met other escaped POWs, Max Varenne, and Dr., under whose influence he became involved with the resistance. In April, François Mitterrand and Fric caused a major disturbance in a public meeting held by the collaborator Georges Claude. From mid-1942, he sent false papers to POWs in Germany and on 12 June and 15 August 1942, he joined meetings at the Château de Montmaur which formed the base of his future network for the resistance. From September, he made contact with Free French Forces, but clashed with, General Charles de Gaulle's nephew. On 15 October 1942, François Mitterrand and Marcel Barrois met Marshal Philippe Pétain along with other members of the Comité d'entraide aux prisonniers rapatriés de l'Allier. By the end of 1942, François Mitterrand met Pierre Guillain de Bénouville, an old friend from his days with La Cagoule. Bénouville was a member of the resistance groups Combat and Noyautage des administrations publiques.
In late 1942, the non-occupied zone was invaded by the Germans. Mitterrand left the Commissariat in January 1943, when his boss, another vichysto-résistant, was replaced by the collaborator André Masson, but he remained in charge of the centres d'entraides. In the spring of 1943, along with Gabriel Jeantet, a member of Marshal Pétain's cabinet, and Simon Arbellot, François Mitterrand received the Order of the Francisque.
Debate rages in France as to the significance of this. When Mitterrand's Vichy past was exposed in the 1950s, he at first denied having received the Francisque. Socialist Resistance leader Jean Pierre-Bloch says that Mitterrand was ordered to accept the medal as cover for his work in the resistance. Pierre Moscovici and Jacques Attali remain skeptical of Mitterrand's beliefs at this time, accusing him of having at best a "foot in each camp" until he was sure who the winner would be. They noted his friendship with René Bousquet and the wreaths he was said to have placed on Pétain's tomb in later years as examples of his ambivalent attitude.
In 1994, while President of France, Mitterrand maintained that the roundup of Jews who were then deported to death camps during the war was solely the work of "Vichy France", an entity distinct from France: "The Republic had nothing to do with this. I do not believe France is responsible." This position was rejected by President Jacques Chirac in 1995 who stated that it was time that France faced up to its past. He acknowledged the role of the state – "4,500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders obeyed the demands of the Nazis" – in the Holocaust. Chirac added that the "criminal madness of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French State".
President Emmanuel Macron was even more specific as to the State's responsibility for the 1942 Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of 13,000 Jews for deportation to concentration camps. It was indeed "France that organized the roundup, the deportation, and thus, for almost all, death." It was done by "French police collaborating with the Nazis", he said on 16 July 2017. "It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. Yes, it’s convenient, but it is false. We cannot build pride upon a lie."