Pierre Mendès France

Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France 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 liberalconservatives CNIP His main priority was ending the Indochina War which had already cost 92000 lives with 114000 wounded and 28000 captured on the French side Public opinion polls showed that in February 1954 only 7 of the French people wanted to continue the fight to regain Indochina out of the hands of the Communists led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement At the 1954 Geneva Conference Mendès France negotiated a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel and allowed him to pull out all French forces He is considered one of the most prominent statesmen of the French Fourth Republic 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 middleclass centreleft not to be confused with the mainstream SFIO often called the Socialist Party He married Lili Cicurel the niece of Salvator Cicurel In 1932 Mendès France was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Eure department he was the Assemblys youngest member His ability was recognized at once and in 1938 the government of Léon Blum appointed him Under Secretary of State for Finance After the surrender of France to Nazi Germany in World War II he fled to French North Africa with other army and air force units but was arrested by the Vichy government authorities and 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 famous 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 laissezfaire policies When de Gaulle sided with Pleven Mendès France resigned Nonetheless de Gaulle valued Mendès Frances 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 Source Article Pierre Mendès France from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30