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Léon Blum (9 April 1872 - 30 March 1950), French politician, was the Prime Minister of France three times: from 1936 to 1937, for one month in 1938, and from December 1946 to January 1947.

Childhood and Education

Blum was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Paris, where he attended the Lycée Henri IV. There he met the writer André Gide and published his first poems at the age of 17 in a journal they created. Blum entered the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in 1890. After graduation, he wavered between studying law and literature. Rather than choose between them, he decided to study both at the Sorbonne and graduated in literature in 1891 and in law in 1894. He then worked as a government lawyer while developing a second career as a literary critic, in particular as an authority on Goethe. He soon became one of France's leading literary figures.

First political experiences

While in his youth an avid reader of the works of the nationalist writer Maurice Barrès, Blum had little interest in politics until the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, which had a traumatic effect on him as it did on many French Jews. 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 Socialist Party, then called the SFIO. Soon he was the party's main theoretician.

In July 1914, just as the First World War broke out, Jaurès was assassinated, and Blum became more active in the party leadership. 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. Believing that there was no such thing as a "good dictatorship", even the one of the proletariat, he opposed participation to the Comintern, blaming the Soviet Union for becoming a non-democratic state. Therefore, in 1920, he worked to prevent a split between supporters and opponents of the Russian Revolution, but the radicals seceded, taking L'Humanité with them, and formed the French Communist Party.

Blum led the SFIO through the 1920s and 1930s, and was also editor of the party's new paper, Le Populaire. As a Marxist, though not a Leninist, he was first opposed to participating in "bourgeois" governments, though he was willing to support Radical Party governments from the sidelines. In any case the election of a socialist government was impossible without the co-operation of the powerful Communists, who followed Stalin's orders in treating the SFIO as "social fascists."

The Popular Front

Blum was elected as Deputy for Narbonne in 1929, and was re-elected in 1932 and 1936. Political circumstances changed in 1934, when the rise of Adolf Hitler and fascist riots in Paris caused Stalin and the French Communists to change their policy. In 1935 all the parties of left and centre formed the Popular Front, which at the elections of June 1936 won a sweeping victory.

Blum became the first socialist and the first Jew to be Prime Minister of France. As such he was an object of particular hatred to the Catholic and anti-Semitic right, and was denounced in the National Assembly by Xavier Vallat, a right-wing Deputy and sympathizer of the Action Française (later Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in the Vichy wartime government), who said:

Your coming to power is undoubtedly a historic event. For the first time this old Gallo-Roman country will be governed by a Jew. I dare say out loud what the country is thinking, deep inside : it is preferable for this country to be led by a man whose origins belong to his soil... than by a cunning talmudist. *

In another notable incident, while Prime Minister, Blum was dragged from a car and almost beaten to death by a group of anti-Semites and royalists*.

The industrial workers responded to the election of the Popular Front government by occupying their factories, confident that "the revolution" was imminent. For Blum, as a Marxist, this was an agonising moment. He did not believe that socialism could be achieved by parliamentary means. But he could not encourage the workers to launch an attempt at a revolution: he believed that the army would intervene and the workers would be massacred as they had been at the Paris Commune in 1871. He persuaded the workers to accept pay rises and go back to work.

Similarly, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Blum was forced to adopt a policy of neutrality rather than assist his ideological fellows, the Spanish socialists, for fear of splitting his alliance with the centrist Radicals, or even precipitating a civil war in France. But this policy strained his alliance with the Communists, who followed Soviet policy and urged all out support for the Spanish Republic. The impossible dilemma caused by this issue led Blum to resign in June 1937. He was briefly Prime Minister again in March and April 1938, but was unable to establish a stable ministry.

Despite its short life, the Popular Front government passed much important legislation, including the 40-hour week, paid holidays for the workers, collective bargaining on wage claims and the nationalisation of the arms industry. Blum also passed legislation extending the rights of the Arab population of Algeria. In foreign policy, his government was divided between the traditional anti-militarism of the French left and the urgency of the rising threat of Nazi Germany. Despite the division, the government managed to engage the greatest war effort since the First World War.

World War II

When the Germans occupied France in June 1940, Blum made no effort to leave the country, despite the extreme danger he was in as a Jew and a socialist leader. He was among the minority of parliamentarians refusing to grant full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain. He was arrested by the Vichy authorities in September and held until 1942, when he was put on trial in Riom on charges of treason, for having "weakened France's defences". He used the courtroom to make a brilliant indictment of the French military and pro-German politicians like Pierre Laval. The trial was such an embarrassment to the Vichy regime that the Germans ordered it called off.

In April 1943 the Germans deported Blum to Germany, where he was imprisoned in Buchenwald until April 1945, in the section reserved for high-ranking prisoners. As the Allied armies approached, he was then transferred to Dachau, near Munich, and then to the Tyrol. In the last weeks of the war the Nazi regime gave orders that he was to be executed, but the local authorities decided not to obey them, and he was rescued by Allied troops in May 1945. While in prison he wrote his best known work, the essay À l'échelle Humaine ("For all mankind"). His brother René Blum, founder of the Ballet de l'Opera a Monte Carlo, was not so fortunate. He was murdered by the Germans at Auschwitz concentration camp.

After the war Blum returned to politics, and was again briefly Prime Minister in the transitional postwar coalition government. He also served as an ambassador on a government loan mission to the United States, and as head of the French mission to UNESCO. He continued to write for Le Populaire until his death at Jouy-en-Josas, near Paris, on 30 March 1950.

Blum's First Government, 4 June 1936 - 22 June 1937

Changes

  • 18 November 1936 - Marx Dormoy succeeds Roger Salengro as Minister of the Interior.

Blum's Second Ministry, 13 March - 10 April 1938

Blum's Third Government, 16 December 1946 - 22 January 1947

Changes
  • 23 December 1946 - Augustin Laurent succeeds Moutet as Minister of Overseas France.

External links

1872 births | 1950 deaths | Alumni of the École Normale Supérieure | French heads of state | Jewish French history | Jewish politicians | Members of the French Socialist Party | Prime Ministers of France | French Jews | Леон Блум | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | לאון בלום | Leonas Bliumas | Leon Blum | レオン・ブルム | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | Léon Blum | 莱昂·布鲁姆

 

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