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Édouard Herriot
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| Political Biography: Edouard Herriot |
(b. Troyes, 5 July 1872; d. 26 Mar. 1957) French; Prime Minister 1924 – 5, 1932 – 3, President of the National Assembly 1936 – 40, 1941 – 55 Edouard Herriot was, like his rival for the leadership of the inter-war Radical Party Daladier, a product of the state educational system created by the Third Republic and a passionate defender of the principles of the French Revolution. The son of a junior army officer who died when he was a child, Herriot had a brilliant educational career and became a lycée teacher at Lyons in 1904. In 1907, he was elected mayor of Lyons, which became his power base for the whole of his life. He was elected to the Senate in 1907 and held a number of ministerial offices during the First World War. His national prominence dates from the early 1920s, when he took control of the near moribund Radical Party and recreated its image as the voice of progressive reformism. In the 1924 general elections he formed a successful coalition with the Socialist Party and was able to force the right-wing President of the Republic Millerand to resign. Appointed Prime Minister, he embarked on a programme of reconciliation with Germany, recognized the Soviet Union, and gave strong support to the League of Nations. He was, however, much less successful in dealing with France's chronic inflation problems and was forced to resign office when opposition from the privately owned Bank of France threatened to destroy the currency. What Herriot called "the wall of money" durably shaped his subsequent attitudes. He felt compelled to join the government of national unity formed by Poincaré in 1926, and bitterly resented the opportunity this gave to Daladier to take over the Radical Party. In the early 1930s, however, he was back in the saddle and formed another successful electoral coalition with the Socialists in 1932. The government he formed was no more able to deal with economic problems than its predecessors and also had to face a worsening international situation. By now the regime itself was under severe pressure from disaffected social groups and Herriot was president of the Chamber of Deputies when it was attacked by right-wing groups on 6 February 1934. He was uneasy about the left-wing alliance of Communists, Socialist, and Radicals and refused to join any of the Popular Front governments formed after the 1936 elections, preferring instead the Chamber presidency.
It was as Chamber president that he participated in the dramatic events of July 1940 which led to the suicide of the Third Republic and the installation of the Vichy regime of Pétain. Although he made no attempt to lead an opposition to Pétain's legal coup, he did what he could to defend the prerogatives of the French parliament and indicated his disapproval of Vichy's anti-Semitism by sending back his legion d'honneur decoration. As the symbol of the Third Republic's political traditions, he was deprived of his Lyons town hall and was placed under house arrest. In the last days of Vichy, he was unwise enough to negotiate with Laval for a possible summoning of the National Assembly; it was lucky for his subsequent reputation that he was deported to Germany. On his return to France, he earned de Gaulle's lasting contempt by refusing to join his provisional government and demonstrated his commitment to the political values of his youth by leading the campaign for the restoration of the Third Republic. His efforts in this respect were wholly unsuccessful; over 90 per cent of the electorate rejected a return to the past. But the emergence of a parliamentary regime very similar in practice, if not in principle, to the Third Republic enabled him to return to the centre of politics. He regained his presidency of the National Assembly, and used his office to shore up the shaky authority of the coalition governments of the Fourth Republic. He also intervened in national policy debates by opposing French participation in the European Defence Community and supporting the reformist programme of Mendès France. By the time of his death in 1957, he was regarded as the patriarch of the Republic.
A compulsive writer with a taste for grandiloquent oratory, Herriot was a vain and touchy man whose affable, pipe-smoking public persona concealed a more complex interior. His ministerial record was hardly distinguished. He remains, however, the most distinguished twentieth-century advocate of the political culture of French Republicanism.
| Biography: Édouard Herriot |
The French statesman and author Édouard Herriot (1872-1957) was prominent in interwar politics and personified the radical-liberal tradition in French political and cultural life. He was also a biographer and historian of note.
The son of an army officer, Édouard Herriot was born at Troyes on July 5, 1872. After graduating with highest honors from the École Normale Supérieure in 1894, he rapidly acquired a reputation for outstanding scholarship and teaching. His doctoral thesis, Madame Récamier et ses amis (1904), followed by his brilliant Précis de l'histoire des lettres franç aises (1905), secured that reputation.
Like many young turn-of-the-century French intellectuals, Herriot was politicized by the Dreyfus Affair. As an ardent Dreyfusard, he joined the Radical party, and for more than half a century he had few peers in his passionate dedication to justice and eloquent defense of liberalism and republican democracy.
Herriot began his active political career as municipal councilor of Lyons in 1904. Elected mayor the following year, Herriot held that post until his death except for a brief period under the Vichy regime during World War II. This energetic and innovative mayor imaginatively guided the city's development as a modern industrial city. In 1910 he was elected to the departmental general council and 2 years later as senator from the Rhône Department.
In November 1919 Herriot resigned as senator and was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, where he became leader of the Radical party. After directing the opposition to the right-wing Bloc National, which had won a parliamentary majority in 1919, he organized a left-wing coalition of Radicals and Socialists called the Cartel des Gauches, which won the elections of May 1924. Herriot was then asked to form the next government.
Herriot's first ministry lasted 10 months. Acting as his own foreign minister, he supervised the evacuation of the Ruhr in 1924 and recognized the Soviet Union the following year. He also unsuccessfully sponsored at the League of Nations proposals for arbitration, security, and disarmament. At home, his program of financial reforms was killed in the Senate, and he resigned in April 1925. As Raymond Poincaré's minister of public instruction from 1926 to 1928, he devoted his energies to the struggle for free secondary education.
Herriot served again as prime minister from June to December 1932 after his left-leaning coalition won the parliamentary elections of that year. Infuriated at his decision to pay the December installment of the French war debt to the United States, the Chamber overturned his government. Herriot served as vice-premier under Gaston Doumergue in 1934 and P. E. Flandin in 1934-1935 and was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies in 1936. He remained in that office until the fall of France in June 1940; he abstained the following month when the French Parliament voted full powers to Marshal Pétain. Though he took no active role in the Resistance, his hostility to the Vichy regime was widely known. In 1944 he lived under house arrest in Lyons until he was deported to Germany.
Liberated in April 1945 by Soviet armies, Herriot returned to Lyons, where he had already been elected mayor. Resuming his leadership of the depleted Radical party, he was elected to the first and second constituent assemblies. In 1947 he was returned to his old post as president of the new National Assembly of the Fourth Republic and retained it until his retirement in January 1954.
In his later years Herriot was the recipient of numerous honors. In 1946 he was elected to the prestigious French Academy, and following his retirement from active politics he was made honorary life president of his beloved French Chamber of Deputies. In June 1955 the Soviet government awarded him its annual Peace Prize in recognition of his long advocacy of international cooperation. Grossly over-weight and in declining health for several years, Herriot died at Lyons on March 26, 1957, a patriarch venerated by virtually all Frenchmen.
Further Reading
The first volume of Herriot's two-volume memoirs was translated as In Those Days (1948; trans. 1952). There is extensive biographical coverage of Herriot in Francis De Tarr, The French Radical Party: From Herriot to Mendès-France (1961). Herriot's career is also well covered in the more specialized Peter J. Larmour, The French Radical Party in the 1930's (1964). For general background see Denis W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France, 1870-1939 (1 vol., 1947; rev. ed., 2 vols., 1966).
Additional Sources
Jessner, Sabine, Edouard Herriot, patriarch of the Republic, New York, Haskell House Publishers, 1974.
| French Literature Companion: Édouard Herriot |
Herriot, Édouard (1872-1957). President of the Radical Party 1919-35, repeatedly minister and prime minister, and mayor of Lyon for 50 years. He was popular for his tolerant humanism and his eloquence, remained hostile to Vichy, and published books on various subjects, including memoirs (Jadis, 1948-52).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Édouard Herriot |
Herriot, Édouard (ādwär' ĕryō'), 1872-1957, French statesman and man of letters. After beginning an academic career he turned to politics. A moderate leftist, anticlerical, and antimilitarist, he rose to leadership of the Radical Socialist (Radical) party, a dominant party in France from 1899 to 1940. In 1904 he was elected mayor of Lyons, an office he held until 1941 and again after 1945. He subsequently became a deputy, president of the chamber of deputies, member of several ministries, and three times premier (notably 1924-25 and 1932). His first premiership saw the evacuation of the Ruhr, occupied under his predecessor, Raymond Poincaré; the continued fall of the franc led to Herriot's resignation in 1925. During his term in 1932, Herriot sought a conciliatory policy among France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany. At the Disarmament Conference of 1932 he upheld in principle the demand for French security but submitted a modified plan to keep the conference from foundering. He was one of the few French statesmen to advocate payment by France of the war debts to the United States; on this question his cabinet fell. An opponent of the Vichy government in World War II, Herriot was arrested in 1942 and taken to Germany in 1944. Freed in 1945, he resumed leadership of the Radicals, who had dwindled in size and had long ceased to be a leftist group. In 1956 he resigned the party presidency in protest against a party split. Long held in high personal esteem, Herriot served (1947-54) as president of the national assembly, which had replaced the chamber of deputies. He was also an ardent advocate of a European confederation, for which he set forth a plan in The United States of Europe (tr. 1930). Among his nonpolitical writings are Madame Récamier (tr. 1925) and a biography of Beethoven (tr. 1935).
| Quotes By: Edouard Herriot |
Quotes:
"Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage."
| Wikipedia: Édouard Herriot |
| Édouard Hérriot | |
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| In office 15 June 1924 – 17 April 1925 |
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| Preceded by | Frédéric François-Marsal |
| Succeeded by | Paul Painlevé |
| In office 20 July 1926 – 23 July 1926 |
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| Preceded by | Aristide Briand |
| Succeeded by | Raymond Poincaré |
| In office 3 June 1932 – 18 December 1932 |
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| Preceded by | André Tardieu |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Paul-Boncour |
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| Born | 5 July 1872 |
| Died | March 26, 1957 (aged 84) |
| Political party | Radical |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Édouard Herriot |
Édouard Hérriot (5 July 1872 – 26 March 1957) was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies.
Hérriot was born at Troyes, France. He served as Mayor of Lyon from 1905 until his death, except for a period during World War Two. He died in Lyon, where he is buried at the Cimetière de loyasse.
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Herriot's First Ministry, 14 June 1924 - 17 April 1925
- Édouard Herriot - President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Charles Nollet - Minister of War
- Camille Chautemps - Minister of the Interior
- Étienne Clémentel - Minister of Finance
- Justin Godart - Minister of Labour, Hygiene, Welfare Work, and Social Security Provisions
- René Renoult - Minister of Justice
- Jacques-Louis Dumesnil - Minister of Marine
- François Albert - Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts
- Édouard Amédée Bovier-Lapierre - Minister of Pensions
- Henri Queuille - Minister of Agriculture
- Édouard Daladier - Minister of Colonies
- Victor Peytral - Minister of Public Works
- Eugène Raynaldy - Minister of Commerce and Industry
- Victor Dalbiez - Minister of Liberated Regions
Changes
- 3 April 1925 - Anatole de Monzie succeeds Clémentel as Minister of Finance.
Herriot's Second Ministry, 19 July - 23 July 1926
- Édouard Herriot - President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Paul Painlevé - Minister of War
- Camille Chautemps - Minister of the Interior
- Anatole de Monzie - Minister of Finance
- Louis Pasquet - Minister of Labour, Hygiene, Welfare Work, and Social Security Provisions
- Maurice Colrat - Minister of Justice
- René Renoult - Minister of Marine
- Édouard Daladier - Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts
- Georges Bonnet - Minister of Pensions
- Henri Queuille - Minister of Agriculture
- Adrien Dariac - Minister of Colonies
- Orly André-Hesse - Minister of Public Works
- Louis Loucheur - Minister of Commerce and Industry
Herriot's Third Ministry, 3 June - 18 December 1932
- Édouard Herriot - President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Joseph Paul-Boncour - Minister of War
- Camille Chautemps - Minister of the Interior
- Louis Germain-Martin - Minister of Finance
- Maurice Palmade - Minister of Budget
- Albert Dalimier - Minister of Labour and Social Security Provisions
- René Renoult - Minister of Justice
- Georges Leygues - Minister of Marine
- Léon Meyer - Minister of Merchant Marine
- Paul Painlevé - Minister of Air
- Anatole de Monzie - Minister of National Education
- Aimé Berthod - Minister of Pensions
- Abel Gardey - Minister of Agriculture
- Albert Sarraut - Minister of Colonies
- Édouard Daladier - Minister of Public Works
- Justin Godart - Minister of Public Health
- Henri Queuille - Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones
- Julien Durand - Minister of Commerce and Industry
Denial of the Holodomor
The height of denial of the Holodomor was reached during a visit to Ukraine carried out between August 26 and September 9, 1933, by French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, who denied accounts of the famine and said that Soviet Ukraine was "like a garden in full bloom" [1].
Herriot declared to the press that there was no famine in Ukraine, that he did not see any trace of it, and that this showed adversaries of the Soviet Union were spreading the rumour. "When one believes that the Ukraine is devastated by famine, allow me to shrug my shoulders," he declared. The September 13, 1933 issue of Pravda was able to write that Herriot "categorically contradicted the lies of the bourgeoisie press in connection with a famine in the USSR."[2]
References
- ^ Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-674-07608-7, pages 159-160
- ^ "France, Germany and Austria Facing the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine"
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