Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ izak izidɔʁ mɑ̃dɛs fʁɑ̃s]; 11 January 1907 – 18 October 1982) was a French politician who served as prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955. As a member of the Radical Party, he headed a government supported by a coalition of Gaullists (RPF), moderate socialists (UDSR), Christian democrats (MRP) and liberal-conservatives (CNIP). Pierre-Mendès France is primarily remembered as the French Prime Minister who was in office at the outbreak of the Algerian independence war in 1954. During his tenure, France initiated close military cooperation with Israel, selling arms and aircraft to the young state. Mendès-France laid the groundwork for France’s military nuclear program and the early transfer of nuclear technology to Israel.
Mendès France was born on 11 January 1907 in Paris, the son of a textile merchant from Limoges. He was descended from Portuguese Jews who settled in France in the 16th century. He studied at the École des sciences politiques and the Faculty of Law of Paris, graduating with a doctorate in law and becoming the youngest member of the Paris bar association in 1926, at age 19. In 1924, Mendès France joined the Radical Party, the traditional party of the French middle-class centre-left (not to be confused with the mainstream SFIO, often called the Socialist Party). He married Lili Cicurel, the niece of Salvator Cicurel.
Third Republic and World War II
In 1932, Mendès France was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Eure department; he was the Assembly's youngest member. In 1936 he came within 700 votes of losing to Modeste Legouez, the president of the radical agrarian group the Comités de défense paysanne in what he said was his hardest electoral fight. His ability was soon recognized, and in 1938 the government of Léon Blum appointed him Under Secretary of State for Finance.
In October 1940, France was put on trial by the Vichy regime at the courthouse in Clermont-Ferrand for desertion after he boarded the liner SS Massilia for Casablanca in Morocco to continue the fight against the Nazis. He was imprisoned for desertion. He escaped and succeeded in reaching Britain, where he joined the Free French forces led by Charles de Gaulle. Mendès France later described his trial, conviction and subsequent escape in the celebrated documentary "The Sorrow and the Pity".
During the latter years of the war, Mendès France served in the Free French Air Forces and flew in a dozen bombing raids. After the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, he was appointed Minister for National Economy in the French provisional government by de Gaulle. He later headed the French delegation to the 1944 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods.
Mendès France soon fell out with the Finance Minister, René Pleven. Mendès France supported state regulation of wages and prices to control inflation, while Pleven favoured generally laissez-faire policies. When de Gaulle sided with Pleven, Mendès France resigned. Nonetheless, de Gaulle valued Mendès France's abilities, and appointed him as a director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and as French representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
In 1947, after democratic French politics resumed under the Fourth Republic, Mendès France was re-elected to the National Assembly. He first tried to form a government in June 1953, but was unable to gain the numbers in the Assembly. From 1950 he had been a consistent opponent of French colonialism, and by 1954 France was becoming hopelessly embroiled in major colonial conflicts: the First Indochina War and the Algerian War of Independence. In Indochina (including Vietnam), France not only wanted to reoccupy its colony but also acted under the name of supporting indigenous anti-communist allies. However, Vietnamese Communists gradually weakened France on the battlefield and inflicted a serious defeat on French forces at the Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The government of Joseph Laniel resigned on June 12, and Mendès France formed a government with support from the centre-right.
Mendès France immediately negotiated an agreement with Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese Communist leader. There was, he said, no choice but total withdrawal from Indochina including Vietnam, and the Assembly supported him by 471 votes to 14. Nevertheless, nationalist opinion was shocked, and Roman Catholic opinion opposed abandoning the Vietnamese believers to Communism. A tirade of abuse, much of it anti-Semitic, was directed at Mendès France. Jean-Marie Le Pen, then a Poujadist member of the Assembly, described his "patriotic, almost physical repulsion" for Mendès France. On 20 July 1954, France signed the Geneva Accords to establish ceasefires in Indochina, under which Vietnam was temporarily divided at the 17th parallel into the State of Vietnam (anti-communist) in the South and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (communist) in the North. Hostilities in Indochina ceased completely on August 11 and a general election to reunify Vietnam was scheduled to take place in July 1956. French troops were concentrated in the South, and the timeline for their withdrawal was to be agreed upon by France with South Vietnam or a future unified Vietnam. The State of Vietnam did not sign the agreement on Vietnam and declared its opposition, while also asserting its freedom of action.
After France under Laniel recognized independence of the State of Vietnam on 4 June 1954, on July 22, Mendès France pledged to the National Assembly that France would transfer power to the State of Vietnam and other two associated states in Indochina. On July 30, French Minister for associated states Guy La Chambre stated unequivocally that policy of the Mendes France government was to grant total independence to the State of Vietnam "without retaining anything in the back of bureau drawer." They intended to do so without delay but not through conventions supporting treaties of independence and association which were initialed under Laniel government on June 4. Formula would be entirely discarded in favor of following stages: First, transfer of all possible technical services to the State of Vietnam without delay. Orders had already been issued to the French Commissioner General in Indochina (Paul Ély) to do so before July 31. Secondly, those functions which required quadrilateral decision to be examined at Four-Power meeting of 3 associated states and France to take place in Paris on or about August 10. They included question of common currency, attachment to Franc Zone, etc. Finally any remaining functions to be turned over to the State of Vietnam government as soon after Four-Power meeting as possible. At that time it was envisaged that permanent basis of relationship between two countries would be as stated in two basic treaties (totally independent and thereafter associated within French Union on free and equal basis). There would be no further haggling about petty details.
At the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence in 1954, Pierre Mendès France firmly reaffirmed that Algeria was an integral part of France and rejected any notion of negotiation with nationalist movements. He declared to the French parliament : "There can be no compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of the nation, its unity, and the integrity of the Republic. The departments of Algeria are an integral part of the French Republic [...] The idea of secession is unthinkable".
Later, Mendès France next came to an agreement with Habib Bourguiba, the nationalist leader in Tunisia, for the independence of that colony by 1956, and began discussions with the nationalist leaders in Morocco for a French withdrawal. He also favoured concessions to the nationalists in Algeria; but the presence of a million Pied-noirs there left the colonial power no easy way to extricate itself from that situation. The future mercenary Bob Denard was convicted in 1954 and sentenced to fourteen months in prison for an assassination attempt against Mendès France.