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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (23001)	3/19/2003 10:39:34 AM
From: SBHX	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

France has a long history of governance by peaceful leaders who will do anything to maintain short term peace at the cost of long term catastrophe. Pierre Laval is perhaps a good model for Chirac to remember, if things do not end well for the west in the current war against terrorism. unog.ch Laval, Pierre (1883-1945), French premier, 1931-32, 1935-36, 1942-44, and foreign minister, 1934-36, who was executed after the Second World War for high treason. Laval studied law and became a vocal advocate for the interests of the French proletariat, joining the Socialist Party in 1903. Laval entered politics in 1914 upon election to the Chamber of Deputies as a socialist deputy for an industrial Parisian district. During World War I, he belonged to the socialists' extreme pacifist wing and narrowly escaped imprisonment in 1918 for sedition. Laval's socialist convictions gradually waned and in the 1920s and 1930s he moved steadily toward the far right. He was defeated in the 1918 election and he left the party in the following year. In 1923, Laval re-entered the Parliament and was elected mayor of Aubervilliers, a post he held officially until 1944. He represented Aubervilliers as a deputy from 1924 to 1927. In that year, he became a senator and served there until 1944. Laval held 18 ministerial posts in various cabinet posts after 1925. From 1931 to 1932 and from 1935 to 1936, Laval was a prime minister and, from 1934 to 1936, foreign minister. Unhappy with France's dependence on Britain, he sought a rapprochement with Nazi Germany and co-operation with Mussolini. He negotiated with Stalin, though he tried to tone down the Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact of 1935, which he concluded. The "high point" of his career as foreign minister came in December 1935 when he reached an agreement with British foreign minister, Samuel Hoare, over a partition plan for Ethiopia, then defending itself against Fascist Italy. This supreme act of appeasement contributed to Laval's downfall one month later. It must be said that Laval's entire conduct during the Abyssinian crisis debilitated the League, for he sought to shield Italy from responsibility for a breach of the Covenant, thus weakening collective security. Laval returned to power in 1940 to serve in a collaborationist Vichy government, following France's defeat by Germany. As vice premier, he helped induce the parliament to vote plenary powers to Marshal Pétain. At the end of 1940 a palace coup removed Laval from the government until 1942, when he was reinstated under German pressure. As the premier and foreign minister in the Vichy government, Laval co-operated with the Nazis in transporting Jews to their death and supplying Germany with French labour. In a streak of opportunism, he adopted a more neutral stance after D-Day, for which he was shipped to Germany and then Austria in 1944. In 1945, Laval was extradited by Spain to face trial in France. He was quickly tried for high treason and complicity with the enemy and sentenced to death by firing squad.