Jacques Soufflet

Jacques Soufflet (born October 4, 1912 in Lesbœufs , Somme department , † January 9, 1990 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , Hauts-de-Seine department ) was a French officer and politician of the Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR), Union Démocratique du Travail (UDT), Union des Démocrates pour la Ve République (UDR) and Union pour la défense de la République (UDR), who was senator for the Seine-et-Marne department between 1959 and 1974and most recently the Yvelines department and was Defense Minister (Ministre des Armées) from 1974 to 1975 .

Life

Military training, World War II and Resistance

Soufflet, son of a farmer , entered the Saint-Cyr military school as a cadet after attending school in 1930 and graduated from it in 1932 as a lieutenant . He then joined the Air Force (Armée de l'air) as an officer and then graduated from the Air Force School. He then joined the 52nd Reconnaissance Squadron (52e Escadre de Reconnaissance) in Longvic in 1934 , before being used in French West Africa between 1936 and autumn 1938 . Then he was until the beginning of the Western campaign in World War II in May 1940 adjutant to the commander of a flying school on the airfield of the Saint-Cyr military school (Aérodrome de Saint-Cyr-l'École) .

After the looming capitulation of France and the armistice of Compiègne on June 22, 1940 by Philippe Pétain , Soufflet decided with some of his comrades to continue the fight against the German Wehrmacht , and then went to the United Kingdom . After he had met Charles de Gaulle twice in the following years, he took part on September 24, 1940 in the Battle of Dakar (Operation Menace) , the unsuccessful attempt by the Allies to bring the strategically important port of Dakar in French West Africa under their control. The armed forces of the Vichy regime , however Pétain appeared loyal to their country and defending Dakar against the former allies, he that in captivity came.

He was then brought to Paris and initially sentenced before he became inspector in the General Commissariat for Sport of the Vichy regime after his pardon. However, he was still in opposition to the regime, joined the Resistance and then went back to Great Britain via Spain at the end of 1942 , where he again joined de Gaulle and his Forces françaises libres . After deployments with the Alsace fighter group , he finally became a commodore of the Lorraine bomber group and led his units in numerous operational missions until the liberation of France. He then became a lieutenant colonel in the cabinet of General de and was awarded the Ordre de la Liberation on May 28, 1945 for his fearlessness and courage .

Post-war economic managers and

After Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of the Provisional Government, Soufflet retired from military service and began working for various private transport and aviation companies , before becoming Deputy General Manager of Air Algérie in May 1958 . He was also active as president of the Friends of the Forces aériennes françaises libres , the air force of the Forces françaises libres.

At this time he also began his political engagement in the Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR) and became its general delegate for the Île-de-France .

senator

Election period 1959 to 1968

The first Senate elections of the Fifth French Republic in 1959 took Soufflet on by Jacques Richard mentioned common list of UNR, National Center of Independents and Peasants (CNI) and the moderate Republicans the former Rassemblement the gauches républicaines (RGR) in the Seine-et Marne took third place and was elected Senator after the list received 28.8 percent with 1113 of 3861 votes and three out of eight senators in the department.

After his election, Soufflet joined the parliamentary group of the UNR and was initially a member of the Economic and Planning Committee (Commission des Affaires économiques et du Plan) between May 1959 and October 1960 , before becoming a member of the Committee on Finance, Budgetary Control and Economic Accounts of the Nation (Commission des Finances, du Contrôle budgetaire et des Comptes économiques de la Nation) . During this time he was also special rapporteur for defense expenditure between 1960 and 1962 and at the same time rapporteur for the budget for former soldiers and war victims from 1961 to 1962 and voted on February 2, 1960 for the introduction of special rights for government troops during the week of the barricades in Algeria.

In October 1962 Soufflet moved as a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces (Commission des Affaires étrangères, de la Défense et des Forces Armées) . He was also secretary of the Senate and held this position until 1965. He was also on June 17, 1963 rapporteur for the law for the ratification of the Élysée Treaty , which provided for the strengthening of Franco-German relations .

The position of the Gaullist Senate members in the 1960s was not comfortable. After Senate President Gaston Monnerville led a campaign against de Gaulle's strongly desired referendum on the direct election of the state president (Référendum français sur l'élection au suffrage universel du président de la République) , in which 62.5 percent of the electorate ultimately voted for direct elections from 1965 voted, ministers hardly ever appeared at the Senate meetings in the Palais du Luxembourg , but mostly sent the state secretaries from the respective departments. This could also be attributed to the fact that Monnerville used the term forfaiture ( abuse of office ) for the behavior of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou , who signed the referendum.

At the Senate meeting on May 11, 1965, he was one of the supporters of the reform of matrimonial property law . On the other hand, he did not hesitate to vote against the majority in the Senate, even if this earned him the opposition of de Gaulle. For example, at the meeting of November 15, 1965, he voted against the draft budget for the government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou for the year 1966, on the grounds that he no longer saw the independence, influence and security of France guaranteed. In autumn 1966 he was the rapporteur for the air force budget and at the same time became chairman of the Gaullist group in the Senate. He did not take part in the vote on the legalization of contraceptive drugs on December 5, 1967.

1968-1974 parliamentary term

Group leader of the UDR

In the Senate election of September 22, 1968 Soufflet ran for the Yvelines department and after his re-election he joined the Union pour la défense de la République (UDR). He was re-elected with 446 out of 1418 votes (31.5 percent) on a list drawn from the list of the former minister and member of the Union démocratique et socialiste de la Résistance (UDSR), Édouard Bonnefous , who is now for the Gauche Démocratique (GD ) and united the left anti-Gullists and former members of the Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste (RRRS) such as Jean-Paul David .

After the election, Soufflet became a member of the Committee on Constitutional Law, Legislation, Suffrage, Order and General Administration (Commission des Lois Constitutionnelles, de Législation, du Suffrage universel, du Règlement et d'Administration générale) . During the public sessions he was the spokesman for his parliamentary group and on October 25, 1968, among other things , introduced the higher education law, which was regarded as liberal , for the Gaullists, or on October 25, 1968 justified the rejection of the budget for 1969 for the Senate.

At the height of the confrontation between the Senate majority and President Georges Pompidou, a few days before the referendum on Senate reform and regionalization (Référendum sur la réforme du Sénat et la régionalisation) on April 27, 1969, he denied the attacks of April 8, 1969 Senators Pierre Marcilhacy , Louis Namy and Dominique Pado returned with the words: “If France is a republic, who does it belong to?” ('Si la France est en République, à qui le doit-elle?').

The exam of the VI. Economic and Social Development Plan enables him to remember that the improvement of the business situation is the first prerequisite for the production of more goods and therefore more prosperity. In the Senate meeting on June 24, 1971, he emphasized that a large number of work stoppages and strikes would not allow this production target to be met.

However, Soufflet's influence as chairman of the Union pour la défense de la République (UDR) in the Senate decreased after the failure of the referendum on April 27, 1969 and the defeat of Alain Poher in the presidential election in June 1969 , as part of the centrists and a substantial part of the non-party now also supported the government of the new Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas .

Vice President of the Senate

In October 1971 Soufflet resigned as chairman of the parliamentary group of the UDR to accept the office of vice-president of the Senate. He was thus one of the deputies of Alain Poher, who had held this office since 1968 as the successor to Gaston Monnerville.

In his role as Vice President, he chaired 52 public sessions of the Senate between October 1971 and spring 1974. In addition, in 1972 he was rapporteur for four legislative procedures affecting civil aviation . In the debate on the law on the creation and organization of the regions , which was rejected by the Parti Communiste, he spoke out in favor of the law on June 29, 1972. The law gave the regions the status of a legal entity under public law (Établissement public) .

Defense Minister 1974 to 1975

Unlike other leading politicians of the traditional Gaullists such as Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Michel Debré or Olivier Guichard , he supported the young UDR politician and then Interior Minister Jacques Chirac .

After Chirac after the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was appointed President on 27 May 1974 by the latter to the Prime Minister, Soufflet was posted on May 28, 1974 Defense Minister (Ministre des Armées) in the first cabinet Chirac . The media highlighted his qualities as a graduate of the Saint-Cyr Military School and as a defense policy specialist. Jean Bac then took over his seat in the Senate .

Soufflet was soon confronted with an unexpectedly large movement of conscripts who formed a “soldiers' committee” to demand new rights. His replacement as minister after only a few months in office on January 31, 1975 by Yvon Bourges was viewed negatively by many. Afterwards he largely withdrew from political life and only took on a few smaller tasks within the UDR.

The former senator, who never held a mandate in local politics , became a member of the advisory councils of the Legion of Honor and the Ordre de la Liberation after leaving the cabinet . He himself was in command of the Legion of Honor, bearer of the Croix de guerre 1939-1945 , the Médaille de la Résistance and the Distinguished Flying Cross of the United Kingdom .

Web links

• République entry on the Senate website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alec Stone, The Birth of Judicial Policy in France: The Constitutional Council in Comparative Perspective , Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-507034-8 , Chapter III
2. ^ French Senate , Le conflit du Referendum de 1962
3. ↑ Decree 62-1127 of October 2, 1962