Georges Mandel

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Georges Mandel

Georges Mandel - born Louis Georges Rothschild - (born June 5, 1885 in Chatou , Yvelines department , † July 7, 1944 in the forest of Fontainebleau ) was a French journalist and politician of the Third Republic . During the Second World War he was part of the Resistance .

Life

Louis Georges Rothschild was the son of a wealthy Jewish tailor ; There were no family ties to the Rothschild banking dynasty . In order to preserve French citizenship , the family emigrated to France from Alsace, which was annexed by the German Empire . From 1902 Mandel worked as a journalist for the newspaper L'Aurore , published by Émile Zola and Georges Clemenceau, which had published Zola's article J'accuse in defense of Alfred Dreyfus and thus had a decisive influence in the Dreyfus affair . Clemenceau took over the office of interior minister from 1906 to 1909 and a little later that of the head of government . Mandel followed his sponsor into politics and became his private secretary . During the First World War , Clemenceau was again prime minister (1917-1920) and Mandel was one of his closest confidants as head of cabinet who helped him control the press and unions .

In 1919, Mandel moved into the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the Gironde department and belonged to the center-right coalition of the bloc national . He lost his mandate after the elections of 1924 and returned to parliament in 1928 for the constituency of Lesparre as a non-party . Mandel retained his mandate until 1940.

Almond as Minister (1934)

From 1934 to 1936, Mandel held his first government office as Minister of Post ( Ministre des Postes, télégraphes et téléphones - PTT ). He promoted the modernization of telecommunications and under his auspices the first French television broadcast was broadcast on April 26, 1935 . In the government of Albert Sarraut , Mandel was briefly High Commissioner for Alsace-Lorraine . During the 1930s, Mandel persistently warned of the dangers of German National Socialism and in December 1935 spoke out publicly against the Hoare-Laval Pact to end the Abyssinian War . In this way, Mandel played the same role in France as Winston Churchill played in Great Britain , who warned in vain of Hitler's Germany. As Colonial Minister ( Ministre des Colonies ) Mandel returned on April 10, 1938 in the government of Édouard Daladier . He demanded a tough course towards the expansionist German Reich and rejected the appeasement policy of the Western powers. Despite ideological reservations, Mandel advocated a military alliance with the communist Soviet Union as a counterweight to the Axis powers .

Second World War

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Mandel demanded an offensive action by the French armed forces, which is why the Political Right accused him of being a warmonger because of his Jewish origins. On the other hand, his Jewish origins were also used to accuse him of being a pacifist .

After the German attack in Western Europe , the beleaguered Prime Minister Paul Reynaud reshuffled his government and appointed Mandel as the new Interior Minister on May 18, 1940. Due to the looming military defeat of France, some ministers around Philippe Pétain pleaded for the immediate conclusion of an armistice, while Reynaud and Mandel wanted to continue the resistance against the German Reich. If necessary, the French government would have to switch to the colonial empire in order to continue the struggle from there with British support. With Reynaud's resignation and Pétain's takeover on June 16, 1940, Mandel lost his ministerial office. On the same day Edward Spears , Churchill's liaison officer, made him an offer to fly to London with Charles de Gaulle , which Mandel refused: “ You worry about me because I'm Jewish. Precisely because I am a Jew, I will not go with you tomorrow; it would look as if I were afraid, as if I would run away . ”After Pétain asked the German Reich to negotiate a ceasefire on June 17, Mandel tried to get the President , the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate and as many parliamentarians as possible out of it convince them to move to French North Africa to continue the war from there. Only 27 parliamentarians followed Mandel's call. They met on June 21 on board the Massilia and were disembarked from Bordeaux to North Africa.

Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval ended the Third Republic with the constitutional reform of July 10, 1940 and established the reactionary Vichy regime . The regime accused the exiled parliamentarians of treason and, on Laval's orders, Mandel was arrested on August 8, 1940 in French Morocco . He was then imprisoned together with other political prisoners in Chazeron Castle ( Puy-de-Dôme department ). With Daladier, Reynaud and Maurice Gamelin , Mandel was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Riom trial. Winston Churchill, who described Mandel as the first resistance fighter and who might have preferred him to de Gaulle as the representative of Free France , tried in vain for a rescue. After the occupation of the southern zone ( Anton company ) by the German Wehrmacht, Mandel and Reynaud were handed over to the Gestapo in November 1942 . The Germans interned him in the Oranienburg concentration camp , and later with Léon Blum in the Buchenwald concentration camp .

On July 4, 1944, Mandel was extradited to France and was taken into custody by the paramilitary Milice Française under the leadership of Joseph Darnand . Three days later he was abducted to the Fontainebleau forest and murdered in retaliation for an attack by the Resistance on the Vichy regime's propaganda minister, Philippe Henriot .

Georges Mandel was buried on the Cimetière de Passy . A memorial commemorates him near the site of his murder along the N7 road that connects Fontainebleau to Nemours .

literature

Web links

Commons : Georges Mandel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Last Summer Le dernier été
predecessor Office successor
André Mallarmé Minister of Post of France
November 8, 1934 - June 4, 1936 		Robert Jardillier
predecessor Office successor
Marius Moutet Colonial Minister of France
April 10, 1938 - May 18, 1940 		Louis Rollin
predecessor Office successor
Henri Roy Interior Minister of France
May 18, 1940 - June 16, 1940 		Charles Pomaret
personal data
SURNAME Almond, Georges
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rothschild, Louis Georges (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Minister of the Interior
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Chatou , Seine-et-Oise
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1944
Place of death Fontainebleau