Daladier, Édouard.

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Daladier Ëduard, born on 18-06-1884, Carpendras, Vaucluse, the son of a village baker. He received his formal education at the lyceé, where he was first introduced. After his graduation, he became a school teacher and a universaity lecturer at Nimes, Grenoble and Marseilles and then at the Lycée Condorset in Paris, where he taught history. He began his political carrer by becoming the mayor of Carpentras, his hometown, in 1912. He subseqently sought election to the Paris Chamber of Deputies but lost to a Radical-Socialist Party candidate, he later joined that party. Daladier had received militairy training before the war under France’s conscription system. In August 1914, he was mobilised at the age of 30 with the French Army”s 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment when World War I started with the rank of sergeant. In mid 1915, the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment was destroyed in heavy fighting against the Imperial German Army on the Western Front. The surviving remnant of it was assigned to other units. Daladier being transferred into the 29th Infantry Regiment. In 1916 he fought with the 209th in the Battle of Verdun and was given a field commission as a Lieutenant in the midst of the battle in April 1916 having received commendations for gallantry in action. In May 1917, he received the Legion of Honor for gallantry in action and ended the war as a Captain leading a company.. He had also been awarded the Croix de Guerre .
Édouard became a French Radical politician and the Prime Minister of France at the start of World War II. Daladier became Minister of War for the Popular Front coalition in 1936 and after the fall of the Popular Front, he became Prime Minister again on 10-04-1938. His term in power saw the Munich Agreement in room 105 of the Führerbau on the Königsplatz in Munich, when France backed out of its obligations to defend Czechoslovakia against Nazi Germany. Room 105 didn’t change at all, see the fireplace, the room now is a practise room for talented piano players, around the world,
  
Édouard  was pushed into negotiating by Britain’s Neville Chamberlain
  without which war would have been inevitable at that time. Unlike Chamberlain, Daladier had no illusions about Hitler’s ultimate goals. In fact, he told the British in a late April 1938 meeting that Adolf Hitler’s real aim was to eventually secure “a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble.” discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government, as well as traumatized by France’s blood-bath in World War I that he personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately let Chamberlain have his way.  On his return to Paris, Daladier, who was expecting a hostile crowd, was acclaimed. He then commented to his aide, Alexis Léger: “Ah, les cons, the fools!”  When the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Viacheslaw Molotov
  and Joachim von Ribbentrop (see Annelies von Ribbentrop-Henkell was signed, Daladier responded to the public outcry by outlawing the French Communist Party, which had refused to condemn Josef  Stalin’s  action. In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, he was reluctant to go to war, but he did so on 04-09-1939, inaugurating the Phony War. In March 1940, Daladier resigned as Prime Minister in France because of his failure to aid Finland’s defense during the Winter War and he was replaced with Paul Reynaud.  Daladier remained, however, Minister of Defense, and his antipathy to Paul Reynaud prevented Reynaud from replacing Maurice Gamelin   as Supreme Commander of all French Armed Forces. Gamelin was finally replaced by Maxime Weygand on 19-05-1940. Maxime Weygand died very old age of 98, on 28-01-1965.

Death and burial ground of Daladier, Édouard.

 
Daladier was kept in prison from 1940 to 1943, after which he was handed out to the Germans and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in November 1942, until the end of the war. After the war ended, Daladier was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, where he was an opponent of Charles De Gaulle.  He was also mayor of Avignon from 1953 until 1958. The French country had 41.700.000 residents during WW2, 200.000 soldiers died and 350.000 of the population.
He died in Paris, at the old age of 86, on 10-10-1970 and is buried at the famous cemetery of Père-Lachaise, in Paris.
            

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