Daladier, Édouard

Da·la·dier (də-läʹdē-ā', dä-lä-dyāʹ), Édouard. 1884-1970.

French statesman who signed the Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler in September 1938. He was arrested by the Germans after the fall of France (1940) and remained in captivity until 1945.

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born June 18, 1884, Carpentras, France

died Oct. 10, 1970, Paris

French politician.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919 as a member of the Radical Party, served in several different cabinets, and formed short-lived governments in 1933 and 1934. As premier (1938–40), he sought to avoid war by signing the Munich agreement. Arrested after France fell to Germany in World War II, he was imprisoned by the Germans until 1945. After the war he returned to the Chamber of Deputies (1946–58).

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▪ French statesman

born June 18, 1884, Carpentras, Fr.

died Oct. 10, 1970, Paris

 French politician who as premier signed the Munich Pact (Munich agreement) (Sept. 30, 1938), an agreement that enabled Nazi Germany to take possession of the Sudetenland (a region of Czechoslovakia) without fear of opposition from either Britain or France.

      Daladier was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919 as a member of the Radical Party from Vaucluse département. Daladier quickly made his mark in Paris. In June 1924 he joined the first Herriot government as the minister of colonies. In the turbulent years from 1925 to 1933 he served in several different Cabinets as minister of war, minister of public instruction, or minister of public works. On Jan. 31, 1933, he formed his own government, but it survived only until October 1933. In January 1934 he formed a second ministry that survived only four weeks. He continued to move in and out of ministerial assignments as he led his Radical Party into the popular front coalition with Léon Blum's Socialists and the Communist Party (1935).

      Amid a deteriorating international situation, Daladier, in his effort to avoid war, joined the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, in signing the Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler's Germany. When France fell to Germany (June 1940), Daladier was one of those who sought to escape to French North Africa to set up a government-in-exile, but in Morocco he was arrested on Vichy orders and brought back to France. At his trial in Riom in February 1942, he and the other defendants accused the Philippe Pétain group of partial responsibility for the failure to prepare for war. He thereafter was handed over to the Germans, whose prisoner he remained until 1945. After the war he returned to the Chamber of Deputies (1946–58), became president of the moribund Radical Party in 1953, and opposed de Gaulle's new constitution of 1958. He then left politics.

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