European University Institute Library

Pierre Laval, un mystère français, Renaud Meltz

fre

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

platesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Pierre Laval

bibliography

1057671750

Renaud Meltz

Perrin biographie

un mystère français

On October 22, 1931, President Pierre Laval was welcomed to Washington by Ambassador Paul Claudel. He is at forty-eight one of the essential figures of French politics and Time Magazine will proclaim him "man of the year". What a path has been traveled for the innkeeper's son of Châteldon, the needy lawyer, the formerly socialist deputy mayor of Aubervilliers, soon the interlocutor of Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler! More incomprehensible is the outcome of his terrestrial adventure, fourteen years later, when he is taken to a ditch in Fresnes prison to be shot. The fire of the firing squad hits Petain's evil genius, the hated emblem of the Collaboration, who publicly wished for the victory of the Third Reich. This man with the rough course, under his rough and skillful approaches, contains many secrets. Renaud Meltz, from many unpublished sources, unveils a path that was not fatal, where money, opportunities and the environment, the obsession with power at all costs, finally played a decisive role. That the Auvergnat, sincere pacifist, husband and loving father, pure product of the republican meritocracy, craftsman of social insurance, had consented to the death of the world of which he proceeded, here is the mystery which is here explored. New lights are thrown on this Frenchman in many ways, ordinary, rogue and sure of himself, who was neither intellectually nor especially spiritually armed to face the Nazi forces demanding to France vanquished his conception of the dignity of man and his Jews. reveals a path that was not fatal, where money, opportunities and the environment, the obsession with power at all costs, finally played a decisive role. That the Auvergnat, sincere pacifist, husband and loving father, pure product of the republican meritocracy, craftsman of social insurance, had consented to the death of the world of which he proceeded, here is the mystery which is here explored. New lights are thrown on this Frenchman in many ways, ordinary, rogue and sure of himself, who was neither intellectually nor especially spiritually armed to face the Nazi forces demanding to France vanquished his conception of the dignity of man and his Jews. reveals a path that was not fatal, where money, opportunities and the environment, the obsession with power at all costs, finally played a decisive role. That the Auvergnat, sincere pacifist, husband and loving father, pure product of the republican meritocracy, craftsman of social insurance, had consented to the death of the world of which he proceeded, here is the mystery which is here explored. New lights are thrown on this Frenchman in many ways, ordinary, rogue and sure of himself, who was neither intellectually nor especially spiritually armed to face the Nazi forces demanding to France vanquished his conception of the dignity of man and his Jews. husband and loving father, pure product of the republican meritocracy, craftsman of social insurance, has consented to the death of the world from which he proceeded, here is the mystery which is here explored. New lights are thrown on this Frenchman in many ways, ordinary, rogue and sure of himself, who was neither intellectually nor especially spiritually armed to face the Nazi forces demanding to France vanquished his conception of the dignity of man and his Jews. husband and loving father, pure product of the republican meritocracy, craftsman of social insurance, has consented to the death of the world from which he proceeded, here is the mystery which is here explored. New lights are thrown on this Frenchman in many ways, ordinary, rogue and sure of himself, who was neither intellectually nor especially spiritually armed to face the Nazi forces demanding to France vanquished his conception of the dignity of man and his Jews.--, Provided by Publisher