After he entered the Chamber of Deputies, Daladier became a leading member of the Radical-Socialist Party and was responsible for building it into a structured modern political party. For most of the
interwar period, he was the chief figure of the party's left wing, supporters of a governmental coalition with the socialist
Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO). A government minister in various posts during the
coalition governments between 1924 and 1928, Daladier was instrumental in the Radical-Socialists' break with the SFIO in 1926, the first
Cartel des gauches with the
centre-right Raymond Poincaré in November 1928. In 1930, he unsuccessfully attempted to gain socialist support for a
centre-left government in coalition the Radical-Socialist and similar parties. In 1933, despite similar negotiations breaking down, he formed a government of the
republican left. In January 1934, he was considered the most likely candidate of the centre-left to form a government of sufficient honesty to calm public opinion after the revelations of the
Stavisky Affair, a major corruption scandal. The government lasted less than a week, however, since it fell in the face of the
6 February 1934 riots. After Daladier fell, the coalition of the left initiated two years of right-wing governments. After a year of being withdrawn from frontline politics, Daladier returned to public prominence in October 1934 and took a populist line against the banking oligarchy that he believed had taken control of French democracy: the Two Hundred Families. He was made president of the Radical-Socialist Party and brought the party into the
Popular Front coalition. Daladier became Minister of National Defence in the
Léon Blum government and retained the crucial portfolio for two years. Besides for serving as Defence Minister, Daladier was appointed the chairman of the newly founded Supreme Defence Committee. At the first meeting of the committee on 26 June 1936, Daladier complained that other nations had someone to direct their defence policies, citing the example of the War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg in Germany; the Defence Commissar Marshal
Kliment Voroshilov in the Soviet Union;
Benito Mussolini in Italy and Sir
Thomas Inskip in Britain. Daladier stated from now on he would be playing that role in France. He then moved on to say that the first order of business was the nationalisation of the entire French arms industry as he accused French arms firms of failing to provide the military with the necessary weapons on time or in full, and stated that henceforward the French state would take direct control of all production. Daladier had a difficult relationship with Marshal
Maxime Weygand-a man whom he greatly disliked-but Daladier was very close to Weygand's successor,
Maurice Gamelin, whose views and judgements on military matters he greatly trusted and valued. Daladier was much influenced by intelligence reports from the
Deuxième Bureau that the factories of the German arms firms such as Krupp AG, Rheinmetall AG, and Borsig AG were being run at full capacity, suggesting that the
Reich was preparing for war in the near-future. Daladier complained that Germany as the world's second largest economy had an automatic head-start in the arms race while France as the world's fourth largest economy was by definition behind the
Reich in terms of arms production. In early July 1936, Daladier appeared by the Defence Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to warn that Germany was winning the arms race; the Wehrmacht would soon field 650,000 men; and that the Wehrmacht was buying tanks in massive numbers to win a "war of movement". Gamelin expressed much concern to Robert Jacomet, a senior civil servant at the Defence Ministry about the plans for nationalization of the arms industry, which he described as a "left-wing gimmick" instead of being a practical policy to win the arms race. Jacoment replied that Daladier was all for nationalization as he stated that "Time is short" and to create a "powerful parallel state industry" alongside the private sector arms industry would take too long. Jacoment stated: "Our interest is therefore to get our hands on the existing factories and modernise them fast". On 11 August 1936, the nationalization bill was approved by the National Assembly, and the French state took control of the arms industry. As Defence Minister, Daladier asked the commander of the military, General
Maurice Gamelin to submit a four-year plan for military modernization. When Gamelin submitted in a plan that was budgeted at 9 billion francs for the French Army, Daladier rejected it as too low and instead added in an extra 5 billion francs. During an "emotional" interview with Blum, Daladier persuaded him to accept the 14 billion franc plan as he issued a stark warning that the
Reich was winning the arms race at present. On 7 September 1936, the Blum cabinet approved Daladier's 14 billion franc plan for rearmament. The American historian Joseph Maiolo wrote the rearmament program launched in 1936 was "the biggest arms program ever attempted by a French government in peacetime". As Defence Minister, Daladier favoured a hawkish line towards Italy, and in January 1937 played a crucial role in having Admiral
François Darlan appointed commander of the Navy as Darlan saw Italy as France's primary opponent unlike his predecessor Admiral Georges Durand-Viel who was an admirer of Fascist Italy. The French Navy was not large enough to patrol both the Atlantic coastline and the
Mediterranean Sea. A key element in France's war plans against Germany was bringing in a massive number of soldiers from North Africa to France, and the prospect that Italy would cut the sea lanes linking Algeria to France was considered a major problem in Paris. Darlan argued that France needed control of the Mediterranean not because of the need for troops from Algeria, but because it was the only way for France to reach its allies in Eastern Europe and for reasons of trade. In the debate between Darlan vs.
Maurice Gamelin who saw Italy more as a potential ally rather a potential enemy, Daladier came to favour Darlan. The Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War along with
Benito Mussolini's openly pro-German foreign policy convinced Daladier by late 1937 that Italy was only a potential enemy and it should be assumed that France became involved in a war with Germany that Italy would inevitably enter the war on the side of the
Reich. At a meeting of
Comité Permeant de la Défense National in November 1937, Daladier stated: "The hypothesis of conflict with the Mediterranean as the center of preponderant action, raises different problems for our foreign and military policy...Given the two-bloc composition [in the Atlantic and Asia] of the Franco-British empire, an attack in the Mediterranean, the stem between these two blocs would allow Germany and Italy to obtain the most decisive results". In addition, Daladier noted that the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez canal was equally important to the British as almost all of the shipping that linked the United Kingdom to its colonies in Asia went through the Mediterranean, and the possibility of a potential Italian naval threat was the best way of securing an alliance with Britain. Daladier pushed for war planning that called for making the defeat of Italy the first priority while France remained on the defensive against the
Reich along the Maginot Line. After the fall of the Blum government, Daladier became head of government again on 10 April 1938, orienting his government towards the centre and ending the Popular Front.
Munich Agreement , Daladier,
Adolf Hitler,
Benito Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister
Galeazzo Ciano, as they prepared to sign the
Munich Agreement after the
Munich Conference 1938 Daladier's last government was in power at the time of the negotiations preceding the
Munich Agreement during which France pressured
Czechoslovakia to hand the
Sudetenland to
Nazi Germany. In April–May 1938, British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain strongly but unsuccessfully pressed Daladier to renounce the French-Czechoslovak alliance, which led to Britain becoming involved in the crisis. From the British perspective, the problem was not the Sudetenland but the French-Czechoslovak alliance. British military experts were almost unanimous that Germany would defeat France in a war unless Britain intervened. The British thought that allowing Germany to defeat France would unacceptably alter the balance of power, and so Britain would have no choice but to intervene if a French-German war broke out. The Franco-Czechoslovak alliance would have turned any German attack on Czechoslovakia into a French–German war. As British Foreign Secretary
Lord Halifax stated at a Cabinet meeting in March 1938, "Whether we liked or not, we had to admit the plain fact that we could not afford to see France overrun." At the Anglo-French summit in London on 28–29 April 1938, Chamberlain pressured Daladier to renounce the alliance with Czechoslovakia, only to be firmly informed that France would stand by its obligations, which forced the British to be involved very reluctantly in the Sudetenland Crisis. The summit of 28–29 April 1938 represented a British "surrender" to the French, rather than a French "surrender" to the British since Daladier made it clear France would not renounce its alliance with Czechoslovakia. Daladier's unwillingness to renounce France's alliance with Czechoslovakia forced the British very much against their will into involvement with the Sudetenland crisis since because the French refused to renounce the alliance led to the British taking the next best course of action, namely pressuring Czechoslovakia into concessions to the Sudeten Germans. Unlike Chamberlain, Daladier had no illusions about Hitler's ultimate goals. In fact, he told the British in a late April 1938 meeting that Hitler's real aim was to eventually secure "a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of
Napoleon were feeble". Daladier went on to say, "Today, it is the turn of Czechoslovakia. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of
Poland and
Romania. When Germany has obtained the oil and wheat it needs, she will turn on the West. Certainly we must multiply our efforts to avoid war. But that will not be obtained unless Great Britain and France stick together, intervening in
Prague for new concessions [i.e. to the Sudeten Germans] but declaring at the same time that they will safeguard the independence of Czechoslovakia. If, on the contrary, the Western Powers capitulate again, they will only precipitate the war they wish to avoid." At the same time, Daladier was well aware that France could not hope to win a war against Germany without the "continental commitment" that the British Empire would commit a large expeditionary force to the defence of France as had occurred in World War I. Furthermore, 60% of French imports came via the sea, making France dependent upon help from Britain, the world's largest naval power. The way that Italy came to be aligned with Germany from 1936 onward led to the majority of the French Navy being concentrated in the Mediterranean Sea to face a potential threat from Italy, leaving the French Atlantic coastline wide open to the German Navy, which led France to seek Britain as an ally to protect the Atlantic sea-lanes. The greater population of Germany left the French dependent upon bringing soldiers recruited in Algeria to France, and which in turn made the French Navy's primary task was in securing control of the western Mediterranean. Daladier had pushed very strongly during the London summit for Anglo-French naval staff talks for a possible war against Italy as he argued that both Britain and France needed command of the Mediterranean. Daladier had pressed Chamberlain for the Royal Navy to abandon the
Singapore strategy of sending the main British battle fleet to Singapore to defend Britain's Asian colonies against a Japanese threat and instead wanted the Royal Navy concentrated in European waters. The French economic situation was very worrying since the
French franc had been devalued on 4 May 1938 for the third time since October 1936. Daladier wanted to stabilise the franc and so had fixed the
exchange rate to 176 francs per
pound sterling. The crisis of 20–22 May 1938 made the franc come under immense financial pressure since many investors did not wish to hold French assets or debts if France went to war.
Jacques Rueff, the director of
direction générale du mouvement des fonds and special adviser to Finance Minister,
Paul Marchandeau, stated in a report that the government must cut defence spending or find more sources of short-term loans, as the French government was running out of money. Marchandeau stated that ordinary charges upon the treasury in 1938 would "exceed" 42 billion francs, and Rueff warned that France would go bankrupt once the legal limits upon short-term loans from the Bank of France was reached. Marchandeau, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, stated that the government had only 30 million francs in its account and 230 million francs available from the Bank of France. As French government expenditure for the month of May 1938 alone totalled 4,500 million francs, the British historian Martin Thomas wrote, "Daladier's government was utterly reliant upon the success of its devaluation". To provide revenue, the government needed to sell more short-term bonds, but investors were highly reluctant to buy French bonds if Germany was threatening Czechoslovakia and put France on the brink of war. Because the franc was tied to the pound, France needed loans from Britain, which were not forthcoming, and so France was left "with its hands tied". British and American investors were unwilling to buy French bonds as long as the Sudetenland Crisis continued, which caused "severe monetary problems" for the French government in August–September 1938. Only when Daladier moved the "free-market liberal" Paul Reynaud from the Justice Ministry to the Finance Ministry in November 1938 did France regain the confidence of international investors, who resumed buying French bonds. Reports from the embassy in
Warsaw and the legations in
Belgrade and
Bucharest emphasised that
Yugoslavia and Romania would probably do nothing if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, and Poland might very well join in with Germany since the
Teschen conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia had made them bitter enemies. Of France's potential allies in Eastern Europe, only the
Soviet Union, which had no border with Czechoslovakia, professed a willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's aid if Germany invaded, but both Poland and Romania were unwilling to extend transit rights for the
Red Army, which presented major problems. Daladier was advised by General
Maurice Gamelin that the
Yezhovshchina which had seen a significant number of the Red Army's generals shot on charges of treason for Germany and Japan in 1937–1938 had destroyed the Red Army as an effective fighting force. Daladier was told by the French General Staff that the Red Army was "
une belle facade" whose contribution to a war against Germany would be "almost zero". On 25 September 1938, at the
Bad Godesberg Summit, Hitler rejected Chamberlain's offer to have the Sudetenland join Germany in few months, declared that the timeline was unacceptable and that the Sudetenland had to "go home to the
Reich" by 1 October, and stated that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia must also be satisfied by 1 October or Czechoslovakia would be invaded. Upon hearing what Hitler had demanded at the summit, Daladier told his cabinet that France "intended to go to war". The next day, Daladier told his close friend, US Ambassador
William Christian Bullitt Jr., that he would much prefer war to the "humiliation" of the Bad Godesberg terms. after his return from Munich, 30 September 1938 However, on 29 September 1938, Chamberlain announced to the
British House of Commons that he just received a phone call from
Benito Mussolini, who said that Hitler had reconsidered his views and was now willing to discuss a compromise solution to the crisis in Munich. Ultimately, Daladier felt that France could not win against Germany without Britain on its side, and Chamberlain's announcement that he would be flying to Munich led him to attend the Munich Conference as well, which was held the next day on 30 September. In October 1938, Daladier opened secret talks with the Americans on how to bypass the
Neutrality Acts and to allow the French to buy American aircraft to make up for the underproductive French aircraft industry. Daladier commented in October 1938, "If I had three or four thousand aircraft, Munich would never have happened". He was most anxious to buy American war planes as the only way to strengthen the
French Air Force. Major problems in the talks were how the French would pay for the American planes and how to bypass the Neutrality Acts. In addition, France had defaulted on its
World War I debts in 1932 and so fell foul of the 1934
Johnson Act, which banned American loans to nations that had defaulted on their World War I debts. In February 1939, the French offered to cede their possessions in the
Caribbean and the
Pacific, together with a lump sum payment of 10 billion francs, in exchange for the unlimited right to buy American aircraft on credit. After tortuous negotiations, an arrangement was worked out in the spring of 1939 to allow the French to place huge orders with the American aircraft industry, but as most of the aircraft ordered had not arrived in France by 1940, the Americans arranged for French orders to be diverted to the British. At a rally in
Marseille in October 1938, Daladier announced a new policy: ''J'ai choisi mon chemin: la France en avant!'' ("I have chosen my path; forward with France!"). He stated that his government's domestic and foreign policies were to be based on "firmness". What that meant, in practice, was the end of the social reforms of the Popular Front government to increase French productivity, especially by ending the 40-hour work week. As part of the effort to put the French economy on a war footing, Reynaud increased the military budget from 29 billion francs to 93 billion francs. In France itself, Mandel launched a propaganda campaign emphasising how the French colonial Empire was a source of strength under the slogan "110 million strong, France can stand up to Germany" in reference to the fact that the population of Germany was 80 million and that of France was 40 million, with the extra 70 million credited to France being the population of its colonies. On 30 November 1938, a major crisis in Franco-Italian relations began with stage-managed "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. On cue, the Italian deputies rose up to shout "Tunis, Corsica, Nice, Savoy!" Mussolini had expected that his "Sudeten methods" would lead to France ceding Tunisia, Corsica, Nice and Savoy to Italy, but Daladier rejected the Italian demands completely. In his annual Christmas radio broadcast to the French people, Daladier gave what the British historian D.C. Watt called "an extremely tough speech" rejecting all of the Italian demands and warned that France would go to war to defend its territory. The British historian
Richard Overy wrote: "The greatest achievement of Daladier in 1939 was to win from the British a firm commitment", the so-called "continental commitment" that every French leader had sought since 1919. Daladier had a low opinion of Britain and told Bullitt in November 1938 that he "fully expected to be betrayed by the British.... he considered Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the
King a moron; and the
Queen an excessively ambitious woman.... he felt that England had become so feeble and senile that the British would give away every possession of their friends rather than stand up to Germany and Italy". On 13 February 1939, staff talks between the British Imperial General Staff and the French General Staff were opened. A
public opinion poll in June 1939 showed that 76% of the French believed that France should immediately declare war if Germany tried to seize the
Free City of Danzig. For Daladier, the possibility that the Soviet Union might join the "peace front" was a "lifeline" and the best way of stopping another world war. He was deeply frustrated by the Polish refusal to permit transit rights for the Red Army. On 19 August 1939, Beck, in a telegram to Daladier, stated: "We have not got a military agreement with the USSR. We do not want to have one". Though the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August ruined Daladier's hopes of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet "peace front", he still believed that France and Britain could stop Germany together. On 27 August 1939, Daladier told Bullitt, "there was no further question of policy to be settled. His sister had put in two bags all the personal keepsakes and belonging he really cared about, and was prepared to leave for a secure spot at any moment. France intended to stand by the Poles, and if Hitler should refuse to negotiate with the Poles over Danzig, and should make war on Poland, France would fight at once". ==World War II==