Blum, Léon

(1872-1950)

   statesman, writer

   Born in Paris and educated at the École Normale Supérieure and at the sorbonne, Léon Blum, after leaving the university, practiced law and also gained a reputation as a literary and drama critic. Brought into politics by the Dreyfus affair (see alfred dreyfus), he joined the Socialist Party in 1899. As a Socialist, he collaborated, after 1904, with jean jaurès on l'humanité. In 1920, after the Congress of Tours, at which the Communist and socialist Parties split, Blum was responsible for rebuilding the French socialist Party. From 1919 to 1928, and from 1929 to 1940, he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies. In the 1930s, he helped to organize the Popular Front, a coalition of leftists and centrists that gained a majority in the Chamber in 1936. It was the first time that the Socialists controlled the government in France. Blum became premier (the first socialist and also the first Jew to do so), and immediately encountered conservative opposition through his program of extensive social reform. The 40-hour workweek was introduced, along with paid vacations. Labor disputes were brought to arbitration, and the Bank of France and the munitions industry were nationalized. As there was a strong concentration on domestic issues, Blum's government was criticized for failing to give precedence to rearmament (especially after the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936). Blum was criticized by the Communists for his policy of nonintervention in the Spanish civil war. In March 1938, Blum's socialist Party broke with the Popular Front government of Edouard daladier over the Munich Pact signed with Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. After the French surrender in 1940, Blum was arrested by the vichy government and charged with treason. At his trial, however, his remarkable and eloquent defense so embarrassed the vichy regime that the proceedings were stopped and he was sent to a concentration camp. Freed by the Allies in 1945, Blum subsequently served as French ambassador extraordinary to several countries and also would lead an interim government from December 1946 to January 1947. In that capacity, he helped to put in place the foundations of the Fourth Republic. As a writer, Blum's works include Nouvelles Conversations de Goethe avec Eckermann (1901); Du mariage (1907), Stendhal et la beylisme (1914), and À l'échelle humaine (1945), in which he wrote of the resistance and also presented his views on the differences between socialism and communism.