Édouard Daladier

Neville Chamberlain, Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, as they prepared to sign the Munich Agreement.

Édouard Daladier (centre) leaving Joachim von Ribbentrop after the Munich Conference 1938

Daladier's last government was in power at the time of the negotiations preceding the Munich Agreement during which France pressured Czechoslovakia to hand the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. In April–May 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain strongly but unsuccessfully pressed Daladier to renounce the French-Czechoslovak alliance, which led to Britain becoming involved in the crisis. From the British perspective, the problem was not the Sudetenland but the French-Czechoslovak alliance.[5] British military experts were almost unanimous that Germany would defeat France in a war unless Britain intervened. The British thought that allowing Germany to defeat France would unacceptably alter the balance of power, and so Britain would have no choice but to intervene if a French-German war broke out.[6]

The alliance would have turned any German attack on Czechoslovakia into a French–German war. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated at a Cabinet meeting in March 1938, "Whether we liked or not, we had to admit the plain fact that we could not afford to see France overrun."[7]

At the Anglo-French summit on 28–29 April 1938, Chamberlain pressured Daladier to renounce the alliance with Czechoslovakia, only to be firmly informed that France would stand by its obligations, which forced the British to be involved very reluctantly in the Sudetenland Crisis. The summit of 28–29 April 1938 represented a British "surrender" to the French, rather than a French "surrender" to the British since Daladier made it clear France would not renounce its alliance with Czechoslovakia.[8]

Unlike Chamberlain, Daladier had no illusions about Hitler's ultimate goals. In fact, he told the British in a late April 1938 meeting that Hitler's real aim was to eventually secure "a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble".

Daladier went on to say, "Today, it is the turn of Czechoslovakia. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of Poland and Romania. When Germany has obtained the oil and wheat it needs, she will turn on the West. Certainly we must multiply our efforts to avoid war. But that will not be obtained unless Great Britain and France stick together, intervening in Prague for new concessions [i.e. to the Sudeten Germans] but declaring at the same time that they will safeguard the independence of Czechoslovakia. If, on the contrary, the Western Powers capitulate again, they will only precipitate the war they wish to avoid."[9]

Nevertheless, perhaps discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government and traumatised by the bloodbath in World War I that he had personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately chose to pressure Czechoslovakia into concessions. The French economic situation was very worrying since the French franc had been devalued on 4 May 1938 for the third time since October 1936. Daladier wanted to stabilise the franc and so had fixed the exchange rate to 176 francs per pound sterling.[10]

The crisis of 20–22 May 1938 made the franc come under immense financial pressure since many investors did not wish to hold French assets or debts if France went to war. Jacques Rueff, the director of direction générale du mouvement des fonds and special adviser to Finance Minister, Paul Marchandeau, stated in a report that the government must cut defense spending or find more sources of short-term loans, as the French government was running out of money.[10] Marchandeau stated that ordinary charges upon the treasury in 1938 would "exceed" 42 billion francs, and Rueff warned that France would go bankrupt once the legal limits upon short-term loans from the Bank of France was reached.[11] Marchandeau, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, stated that the government had only 30 million francs in its account and 230 million francs available from the Bank of France.[12]

As French government expenditure for the month of May 1938 alone totalled 4,500 million francs, the British historian Martin Thomas wrote, "Daladier's government was utterly reliant upon the success of its devaluation". To provide revenue, the government needed to sell more short-term bonds, but investors were highly reluctant to buy French bonds if Germany was threatening Czechoslovakia and put France on the brink of war. Because the franc was tied to the pound, France needed loans from Britain, which were not forthcoming, and so France was left "with its hands tied". British and American investors were unwilling to buy French bonds as long as the Sudetenland Crisis continued, which caused "severe monetary problems" for the French government in August–September 1938.[12] Only when Daladier moved the "free-market liberal" Paul Reynaud from the Justice Ministry to the Finance Ministry in November 1938 did France regain the confidence of international investors, who resumed buying French bonds.[13]

Reports from the embassy in Warsaw and the legations in Belgrade and Bucharest emphasised that Yugoslavia and Romania would probably do nothing if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, and Poland might very well join in with Germany since the Teschen conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia had made them bitter enemies.[14]

Of France's potential allies in Eastern Europe, only the Soviet Union, which had no border with Czechoslovakia, professed a willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's aid if Germany invaded, but both Poland and Romania were unwilling to extend transit rights for the Red Army, which presented major problems.[15]

On 25 September 1938, at the Bad Godesberg Summit, Hitler rejected Chamberlain's offer to have the Sudetenland join Germany in few months, declared that the timeline was unacceptable and that the Sudetenland had to "go home to the Reich" by 1 October, and stated that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia must also be satisfied by 1 October or Czechoslovakia would be invaded. Upon hearing what Hitler had demanded at the summit, Daladier told his cabinet that France "intended to go to war".[16]

The next day, Daladier told his close friend, US Ambassador William Christian Bullitt Jr., that he would much prefer war to the "humiliation" of the Bad Godesberg terms.[16]

Daladier ordered the French military to mobilise and to put France on a war footing, with a blackout being imposed at night so that German bombers would be not guided to French cities by the lights.[16] On 26 September, Daladier ordered General Maurice Gamelin to London to begin staff talks with the Imperial General Staff. On 27 September, Gamelin, when asked by his chef de cabinet if Daladier was serious about war, replied, "He'll do it, he'll do it".[17]

Daladier at the Bourget aerodrome after his return from Munich, 30 September 1938

However, on 29 September 1938, Chamberlain announced to the British House of Commons that he just received a phone call from Benito Mussolini, who said that Hitler had reconsidered his views and was now willing to discuss a compromise solution to the crisis in Munich. Ultimately, Daladier felt that France could not win against Germany without Britain on its side, and Chamberlain's announcement that he would be flying to Munich led him to attend the Munich Conference as well, which was held the next day on 30 September.[17]

The Munich Agreement was a compromise since Hitler abandoned his more extreme demands such as settling the Polish and Hungarian claims by 1 October, but the conference concluded that Czechoslovakia was to turn over the Sudetenland to Germany within ten days in October and would be supervised by an Anglo-Franco-Italo-German commission. Daladier was happy to have avoided war but felt that the agreement he had signed on 30 September in Munich was a shameful treaty that had betrayed Czechoslovakia, France's most loyal ally in Eastern Europe.[17] Although Daladier feared public hostility to the Munich Agreement on his return to Paris, he was acclaimed by the crowd, which cheered the fact that there would not be another war. Most famously, when he saw the enthusiastic crowds waving at his plane as it landed at Le Bourget Airfield before landing, he turned to his aide Alexis Léger (A.K.A Saint John Perse) and commented: "Ah! les cons! s'ils savaient..." ("Ah! The fools! If only they knew...").

Daladier had been made aware in 1932 by German rivals to Hitler that Krupp manufactured heavy artillery, and the Deuxième Bureau had a grasp of the scale of German military preparations but lacked hard intelligence of hostile intentions.[18]

In October 1938, Daladier opened secret talks with the Americans on how to bypass the Neutrality Acts and to allow the French to buy American aircraft to make up for the underproductive French aircraft industry.[19] Daladier commented in October 1938, "If I had three or four thousand aircraft, Munich would never have happened". He was most anxious to buy American war planes as the only way to strengthen the French Air Force.[20] Major problems in the talks were how the French would pay for the American planes and how to bypass the Neutrality Acts.[21]

In addition, France had defaulted on its World War I debts in 1932 and so fell foul of the 1934 Johnson Act, which banned American loans to nations that had defaulted on their World War I debts.[22] In February 1939, the French offered to cede their possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, together with a lump sum payment of 10 billion francs, in exchange for the unlimited right to buy American aircraft on credit.[23]

After tortuous negotiations, an arrangement was worked out in the spring of 1939 to allow the French to place huge orders with the American aircraft industry, but as most of the aircraft ordered had not arrived in France by 1940, the Americans arranged for French orders to be diverted to the British.[24]

At a rally in Marseille in October 1938, Daladier announced a new policy: J'ai choisi mon chemin: la France en avant! ("I have chosen my path; forward with France!"). He stated that his government's domestic and foreign policies were to be based on "firmness".[25] What that meant, in practice, was the end of the social reforms of the Popular Front government to increase French productivity, especially by ending the 40-hour work week.[25] In a series of decree laws issued on 1 November 1938 by Finance Minister Paul Reynaud, which bypassed the National Assembly, the 40-hour work week was ended, taxes were sharply increased; social spending was slashed, defence spending was increased, the power of unions were restricted and (most controversially) Saturday was once again declared to be a workday.[25] In a radio broadcast on 12 November 1938, Reynaud stated, "We are going blindfold towards an abyss". He also argued that however much pain his reforms might cause, they were absolutely necessary.[26] As part of the effort to put the French economy on a war footing, Reynaud increased the military budget from 29 billion francs to 93 billion francs.[26] In response, the French Communist Party called for a general strike to protest the decrees that ended almost all of the reforms of the Popular Front.[25]

The one-day general strike of 30 November 1938, which pitted the government against unions supported by the Communist Party, proved to be the first test of Daladier's new policy of "firmness".[26] Daladier declared a national emergency in response to the general strike, ordered the military to Paris and other major cities, suspended civil liberties, ordered the police to disperse striking workers with tear gas and to storm factories occupied by the workers and announced that any worker who took part in the strike would be fired immediately with no severance pay.[26] After one day, the strike collapsed.[26]

At the time, Daladier justified his policy of "firmness" under the grounds that if France was to face the German challenge, French production would have to be increased and said that was the price of freedom.[25] At the same time, the energetic Colonial Minister Georges Mandel was set about organising the French Colonial Empire for war. He established armament factories in French Indochina to supply the French garrisons there to deter Japan from invading, increased the number of colonial "coloured" divisions from 6 to 12, built defensive works in Tunisia to deter an Italian invasion from Libya and organised the colonial economies for a "total war".[27]

In France itself, Mandel launched a propaganda campaign emphasising how the French colonial Empire was a source of strength under the slogan "110 million strong, France can stand up to Germany" in reference to the fact that the population of Germany was 80 million and that of France was 40 million, with the extra 70 million credited to France being the population of its colonies.[27]

The 40-hour work week was abolished under Daladier's government, but a more generous system of family allowances was established and set as a percentage of wages: for the first child 5%, for the second child 10% and for each additional child 15%. Also created was a home mother allowance, which had been advocated by natalist and Catholic women's groups since 1929. All mothers who were not professionally employed and whose husbands collected family allowances were eligible for the new benefit. In March 1939, the government added 10% for workers whose wives stayed home to take care of the children. Family allowances were enshrined in the Family Code of July 1939 and, with the exception of the stay-at-home allowance, are still in force. In addition, a decree was issued in May 1938 to allow the establishment of vocational guidance centres. In July 1937, a new law, which was followed by a similar law in May 1946, empowered the Department of Workplace Inspection to order temporary medical interventions.[28]

On 30 November 1938, a major crisis in Franco-Italian relations began with stage-managed "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.[29] On cue, the Italian deputies rose up to shout "Tunis, Corsica, Nice, Savoy!"[29] Mussolini had expected that his "Sudeten methods" would lead to France ceding Tunisia, Corsica, Nice and Savoy to Italy, but Daladier rejected the Italian demands completely.[29] In his annual Christmas radio broadcast to the French people, Daladier gave what the British historian D.C. Watt called "an extremely tough speech" rejecting all of the Italian demands and warned that France would go to war to defend its territory.[29]

The British historian Richard Overy wrote: "The greatest achievement of Daladier in 1939 was to win from the British a firm commitment", the so-called "continental commitment" that every French leader had sought since 1919.[30] Daladier had a low opinion of Britain and told Bullitt in November 1938 that he "fully expected to be betrayed by the British.... he considered Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the King a moron; and the Queen an excessively ambitious woman.... he felt that England had become so feeble and senile that the British would give away every possession of their friends rather than stand up to Germany and Italy".[30] In late 1938 to early 1939, the British embassy was bombarded with rumours from reliable sources within the French government that France would seek an "understanding" with Germany that would resolve all problems in their relations.[30] The fact that French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet was indeed seeking such an understanding lent credence to such rumours.[30]

Daladier let Bonnet pursue his own foreign policy in the hope that it might finally spur the British into making the "continental commitment" since a France aligned with Germany would make the Reich Europe's strongest power and leave Britain with no ally of comparable strength in Europe.[30]

In January 1939, Daladier let the Deuxième Bureau manufacture the "Dutch War Scare". French intelligence fed misinformation to MI6 that Germany was about to invade the Netherlands with the aim of using Dutch air fields to launch a bombing campaign to raze British cities to the ground.[30] As France was the only nation in Western Europe with an army strong enough to save the Netherlands, the "Dutch War Scare" led the British to make anxious inquiries in Paris to ask the French to intervene if the Netherlands were indeed invaded.[30] In response, Daladier stated that if the British wanted the French to do something for their security, it was only fair for the British do something for French security. On 6 February 1939, Chamberlain, in a speech to the House of Commons, finally made the "continental commitment" as he told the House: "The solidarity that unites France and Britain is such that any threat to the vital interests of France must bring about the co-operation of Great Britain".[31] On 13 February 1939, staff talks between the British Imperial General Staff and the French General Staff were opened.[31]

Daladier supported Chamberlain's policy of creating a "peace front" that was meant to deter Germany from aggression but was unhappy with the British "guarantee" of Poland, which Chamberlain had announced to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939.[31] France had been allied to Poland since 1921, but Daladier had been bitter by the German-Polish Nonaggression Pact of 1934 and the Polish annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Like other French leaders, he regarded the Sanation regime ruling Poland as a fickle and unreliable friend of France.[31] The rise in French industrial output and the greater financial stability in 1939 as a result of Reynaud's reforms led Daladier to view the possibility of war with the Reich more favourably than had been the case in 1938.[32] By September 1939, France's aircraft production was equal to Germany's, and 170 American planes were arriving per month.[33]

The Neutrality Acts were still in effect, but the supportive stance of US President Franklin Roosevelt led Daladier to assume that the Americans would maintain a pro-French neutrality and that their tremendous industrial resources would aid France if the Danzig Crisis ended in war.[34]

Daladier was far keener than Chamberlain was to bring the Soviet Union into the "peace front" and believed that only an alliance with the Soviets could deter Hitler from invading Eastern Europe.[35]

Daladier did not want a war with Germany in 1939 but sought to have such an overwhelming array of forces arranged against Germany that Hitler would be deterred from invading Poland.[32] Daladier believed that Polish Guarantee by Britain would encourage Poland to object to having the Soviet Union join the "peace front", which indeed proved to be the case.[36] The Poles refused to grant transit rights to the Red Army, which the Soviets made a precondition for their joining the "peace front". Daladier felt that Chamberlain should not have made guarantee until the Poles had agreed to grant transit rights to the Red Army. He charged that the guarantee made British and French diplomats have more leverage over Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Jozef Beck, who was widely disliked by other diplomats for his stubbornness and haughty manners.[37]

Daladier felt that on economic and military grounds, it was better to have the Soviet Union serve as the "eastern pivot" of the "peace front" than for Poland to do so, as the British preferred.[35] Daladier disliked the Poles and the guarantee but believed in maintaining the alliance with Poland; he believed that France should stand by its commitments.[38]

A public opinion poll in June 1939 showed that 76% of the French believed that France should immediately declare war if Germany tried to seize the Free City of Danzig.[39] For Daladier, the possibility that the Soviet Union might join the "peace front" was a "lifeline" and the best way of stopping another world war. He was deeply frustrated by the Polish refusal to permit transit rights for the Red Army.[40]

On 19 August 1939, Beck, in a telegram to Daladier, stated: "We have not got a military agreement with the USSR. We do not want to have one".[41]

Though the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August ruined Daladier's hopes of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet "peace front", he still believed that France and Britain could stop Germany together.[34] On 27 August 1939, Daladier told Bullitt, "there was no further question of policy to be settled. His sister had put in two bags all the personal keepsakes and belonging he really cared about, and was prepared to leave for a secure spot at any moment. France intended to stand by the Poles, and if Hitler should refuse to negotiate with the Poles over Danzig, and should make war on Poland, France would fight at once".[42]