Édouard Daladier

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Daladier in the 1930s

Édouard Daladier (French: [edwaʁ daladje]; 18 June 1884 – 10 October 1970) was a French Radical-Socialist (centre-left) politician and the Prime Minister of France at the outbreak of World War II.

Quotes[edit]

  • Two hundred families are masters of the French economy and, in fact, of French politics. They constitute a force which a democratic state should not tolerate, which Richelieu would not have tolerated in the kingdom of France. The influence of the two hundred families weighs heavily on the fiscal system, on transportation, on credit. The two hundred families place their delegates in the seats of power. They operate on public opinion, for they control the press.

Quotes about[edit]

  • Unlike the French government, Britain had no formal obligations to Czechoslovakia. A cardinal axiom of British foreign policy was not to get entangled in France’s alliance system in Eastern Europe, designed to threaten a resurgent Germany with war on two fronts. However, the French coalition government led by Édouard Daladier was itself bitterly split over Czechoslovakia, with one group willing to honor France’s obligations, another favoring peace at almost any price, and Daladier shifting uneasily between them. At root, a weakened and divided France would not go to war without Britain: for much of the Czech crisis, Paris therefore followed London—its “English governess,” in the words of one historian. And London, in essence, meant Neville Chamberlain, aged sixty-eight, who had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister in May 1937.
    • David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Changed the Twentieth Century (2007), p. 42

External links[edit]

Encyclopedic article on Édouard Daladier on Wikipedia