Paul Faure was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

, one of the leaders of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) between the two wars. He was minister of state under Camille Chautemps

Camille Chautemps

Camille Chautemps was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic, three times President of the Council .-Career:Described as "intellectually bereft", Chautemps nevertheless entered politics and became Mayor of Tours in 1912, and a Radical deputy in 1919...

's third Ministry from June 1937 to January 1938 during the Popular Front

Popular Front (France)

The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...

.

He first became a member of Jules Guesde

Jules Guesde

Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...

's Parti ouvrier français (POF) in 1901 and was editor-in-chief of the Populaire du Centre. Starting from 1915, he rallied to the centrist and pacifist minority of Jean Longuet

Jean Longuet

Jean-Laurent-Frederick Longuet was a French socialist and Karl Marx's grandson.Son of Charles and Jenny Longuet. French lawyer and Socialist who in the First World War held a pacifist position but invariably voted for war credits. Founder and editor of the newspaper Le Populaire...

 in the SFIO, and was opposed during the 1920 Tours Congress

Tours Congress

The Tours Congress was the 18th National Congress of the French Section of the Workers' International, or SFIO, which took place in Tours on 25—30 December 1920...

 to the adhesion to the Third International. Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...

 underscored how Faure had been to Imola

Imola

thumb|250px|The Cathedral of Imola.Imola is a town and comune in the province of Bologna, located on the Santerno river, in the Emilia-Romagna region of north-central Italy...

 in 1919, after the Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 Congress, and seemed in perfect agreement with the representants of Italian "unitarism". However, if Faure continued even after the Tours Congress using the Marxist discourse, he became rather moderate. Along with Léon Blum

Léon Blum

André Léon Blum was a French politician, usually identified with the moderate left, and three times the Prime Minister of France.-First political experiences:...

, he directed the SFIO and was several times deputy.

After Édouard Daladier

Édouard Daladier

Édouard Daladier was a French Radical politician and the Prime Minister of France at the start of the Second World War.-Career:Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse. Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck and large shoulders and determined...

's negotiations of the Munich agreement

Munich Agreement

The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...

 in 1938, Paul Faure supported, as did the vast majority of France, the appeasement policy. After the 1940 Battle of France

Battle of France

In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...

, he rallied to Vichy

Vichy France

Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...

, which led to his being excluded from the SFIO in 1944. He then founded the Democratic Socialist Party

Democratic Socialist Party (France)

The Democratic Socialist Party was a French socialist political party during the French Fourth Republic, founded in 1945 by members expelled from the French Section of the Workers' International following the Liberation of France for wartime collaboration with the German occupiers.The PSD's most...

 (PSD) which participated to the Rassemblement des gauches républicaines. The PSD only gathered ineligible deputies (accused of collaborationism

Collaborationism

Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...

) and it dedicated part of its time to the rehabilitation of Philippe Pétain

Philippe Pétain

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...

's reactionary regime. Thus, it had almost no influence at all.

Sources

• Paul Faure, De Munich à la Cinquième République, Éditions de l'Élan.