Georges Mandel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Mandel in 1930 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Member of theChamber of Deputies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 1 June 1928 – 10 July 1940 Serving with Daniel Bergey (until 1932) andPhilippe Henriot (from 1932) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Constituency | Gironde | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 18 December 1919 – 31 May 1924 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Constituency | Gironde | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Louis George Rothschild (1885-06-05)5 June 1885 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 7 July 1944(1944-07-07) (aged 59) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cause of death | Execution by shooting | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Georges Mandel (bornLouis George Rothschild; 5 June 1885 – 7 July 1944) was a French journalist and politician who was a member of theChamber of Deputies representingGironde from 1919 to 1924 and from 1928 until thedissolution of the French Third Republic in 1940. Described byWinston Churchill as "the firstresister", Mandel fled France and attempted to establish a government-in-exile after theFall of France, but was arrested by the government ofVichy France. He was executed by theMilice paramilitary in 1944 in retaliation for the assassination ofPhilippe Henriot.
BornLouis George Rothschild inChatou in the departmentYvelines, he was the son of a tailor and his wife. His family was Jewish, originally fromAlsace.[1] They moved into France in 1871 to preserve their French citizenship whenAlsace-Lorraine was annexed by theGerman Empire at the end of theFranco-Prussian War.
Mandel began working life as a journalist forL'Aurore, a literary and socialist newspaper founded in 1897 byÉmile Zola andGeorges Clemenceau. They notably defendedAlfred Dreyfus during theDreyfus Affair of the 1890s. The paper continued until 1916.
AsMinister of the Interior, Clemenceau later brought Mandel into politics as his aide. Described as "Clemenceau's right-hand man," Mandel helped Clemenceau control the press and thetrade union movement during the First World War.[2] Clemenceau said of him: "Ifart and Mandel stinks".[3]
In 1919 Mandel was elected to theChamber of Deputies fromGironde. In September that year, he was delegated to try to draw the government out of its noncommittal attitude regarding the system ofproportional representation adopted by both houses of the National Assembly earlier in the year.[4] He lost his seat when theCartel des Gauches swept the 1924 elections, but was reelected in 1928. By 1932, he had become the chairman of the Chamber's universal suffrage committee. Its actions led to passage of a bill enfranchising women, although the proposal was rejected by theSenate.[5]
In 1934, Mandel was appointedMinister of Posts (1934–1936) and oversaw the first official television transmission in French.
Mandel was aneconomic conservative and an outspoken opponent of Nazism and fascism. In the 1930s, he played a similar role to that ofWinston Churchill in the United Kingdom, highlighting the dangers posed by the rise ofAdolf Hitler in Germany. He opposedPierre Laval's plan to partition Ethiopia following its invasion byBenito Mussolini's Italy (theSecond Italo–Abyssinian War of 1935–1936). Mandel advocated a military alliance with the Soviet Union and opposed theMunich Agreement.
During the 1936Albert Sarraut government, Mandel served as both Minister of Posts and High Commissioner for Alsace andLorraine. After the fall of thePopular Front government, he served asMinister of Colonies from 1938 to 18 May 1940 in the cabinet ofÉdouard Daladier. Mandel was known for his fierce hatred of the Foreign MinisterGeorges Bonnet, whose foreign policy he strongly opposed. By contrast, Mandel despite being a conservative and a protégé of Georges Clemenceau, was a close friend of the Soviet ambassador in Paris,Jakob Suritz.[6] In February 1939, Suritz reported to Moscow that Mandel was "absolutely devoid of any sentimentality. This is in the purest sense a rationalist with a proclivity to cynicism and a strong inclination to conspiracy and intrigue".[7] Suritz further stated that Mandel was lobbying very hard to have Bonnet sacked as foreign minister as he wrote: "He [Mandel] picks up facts, rumors, materials and bides his times. During the September days [of 1938], when he foresaw impending war and played for the first time the role of a second Clemenceau, he had already soaped the hangman's rope for Bonnet. He is keeping quiet now, but his hatred of Bonnet has not weakened. If you want to know anything about Bonnet, you have to go to Mandel".[8]
In September 1939, after the outbreak ofWorld War II, Mandel argued that the French Army should fight an offensive war. Mandel was accused by some on the right of being a warmonger and of placing his Jewish ancestry above France's interests. On 18 May 1940 PremierPaul Reynaud appointed him briefly Minister of the Interior.[9]
Mandel opposed theArmistice of 22 June 1940 with the rapidly advancing Germans. He was an Anglophile and had inheritedGeorges Clemenceau's vicious tongue – he had particular contempt forAlbert Lebrun, thePresident of the Republic, and for Deputy Prime MinisterCamille Chautemps – but in the view of historianJulian Jackson he was a natural deputy, not a leader, and did not carry the political weight to oppose those - including France's two leading soldiers,Philippe Pétain andMaxime Weygand - who favoured an armistice. The British generalEdward Spears, Churchill's military liaison officer, compared him to a fish, but a likeable one.[10]
Winston S. Churchill, in his bookThe Second World War: Their Finest Hour. describes Mandel as a gallant public servant under the heading "The Great Mandel." Recounting his 2 o'clock luncheon with the man during Churchill's last trip to France for four years "almost to the day" on 13 June 1940 his account was very favorable, and is as follows:
We then returned to the Prefecture, where Mandel, Minister of the Interior, awaited us. This faithful former secretary of Clemenceau, and a bearer forward of his life's message, seemed in the best spirits. He was energy and defiance personified. His luncheon, an attractive chicken, was uneaten on the tray before him. He was a ray of sunshine. He had a telephone in each hand, through which he was constantly giving orders and decisions. His ideas were simple: fight on to the end in France, in order to cover the largest possible movement into Africa. This was the last time I saw this valiant Frenchman. The restored French Republic rightly shot to death the hirelings who murdered him. His memory is honored by his countrymen and their allies."[11]
On 16 June 1940 inBordeaux (the day Reynaud resigned and Pétain was asked to form a government), Mandel was arrested but released shortly afterwards, with apologies, upon urgent representations to Premier Pétain made jointly and in person byÉdouard Herriot (President of the Chamber of Deputies) andJules Jeanneney (President of theSenate).[12] Spears offered Mandel the chance to leave on his plane on the morning of 17 June, together withCharles de Gaulle. Mandel declined, saying: "You fear for me because I am a Jew. Well, it is just because I am a Jew that I will not go tomorrow; it would look as though I was afraid, as if I was running away."
Mandel sought to persuade Lebrun, Herriot, Jeanneney, and as many members of the Cabinet as possible to travel toFrench North Africa, to continue the fight against the Germans. Only 25 other deputies and one senator embarked with Mandel on theMassilia on 21 June, includingPierre Mendès France and the formerPopular Front education minister,Jean Zay.
Mandel, notwithstanding his criticism for the Third Republic, was one of the parliamentarians that on 10 July 1940 rejected the Vichy regime. Only 57 deputies and 23 senators, dubbed"the eighty", refused to suspend the constitutional laws of France and to give full powers to the government of Pétain, against 569 parliamentarians that supported those proposals.[13]
Mandel was arrested on 8 August 1940 inFrench Morocco by GeneralCharles Noguès on the orders ofPierre Laval, Prime Minister of the Vichy government. He was conveyed to theChâteau de Chazeron viaFort du Portalet,[14] wherePaul Reynaud,Édouard Daladier and GeneralMaurice Gamelin were also being held prisoner. Churchill tried unsuccessfully to arrange Mandel's rescue. He described Mandel as "the firstresister" and is believed to have preferred him overCharles de Gaulle to lead theFree French Forces. Following pressure from the Germans and theRiom Trial, all four were sentenced tolife imprisonment on 7 November 1941.
In November 1942, after the German Army moved intounoccupied France andtook it over to counter the threat from the Allies, who had justlanded in North Africa, the French government at Vichy transferred Mandel and Reynaud to theGestapo upon their request. The Gestapo deported Mandel toKZ Oranienburg, and then toKZ Buchenwald, where he was held with the French politicianLéon Blum.[15]
In 1944 the German Ambassador in Paris,Otto Abetz suggested to Laval that Mandel, Blum, and Reynaud should be murdered by the Vichy government in retaliation for the assassination ofPhilippe Henriot, Minister of Propaganda, by the Algiers Committee, the CommunistMaquis of the Resistance. Mandel was returned to Paris on 4 July 1944, supposedly as a hostage. While being transferred from one prison to another, he was captured by theMilice, the paramilitary Vichy force. Three days later, the Milice took Mandel to theForest of Fontainebleau, where they murdered him.[16] He was buried atPassy Cemetery.
Laval was appalled and protested that he could not condone the execution: "I have no blood on my hands...and no responsibility for these events."[17] He added that the members of the Vichy Cabinet were unanimous "in favour of refusing to hand over any hostages in future or to condone reprisals of this nature."[18] Both Laval andRobert Brasillach, a French Fascist who had called for Mandel's trial or execution, were ultimately executed in 1945.
A monument to Mandel was erected near the site of his execution, next to the road connecting Fontainebleau toNemours.
Avenue Georges Mandel, a wide avenue in the 16th Arrondissement in Paris, commencing at the Place du Trocadero, is named in his honor.
Nicolas Sarkozy wrote a biography,Georges Mandel, moine de la politique, 1994. It was adapted as a French television film,The Last Summer, which starredJacques Villeret in the title role.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Thomas Couture’sPortrait of a Seated Woman, (c.1850-1855) which was discovered in theGurlitt trove was identified as having belonged to Georges Mandel from a small hole in the canvas.[19] It was restored to Mandel's heirs in 2019.[20]
German officials returned a painting from the trove of Cornelius Gurlitt—whose father,Hildebrand Gurlitt, was an art dealer who worked for the Nazis—to the heirs of Georges Mandel, a Jewish journalist, politician, and leader in the French Resistance who was executed by Vichy government agents in 1944.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones 1934–1936 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Colonies 1938–1940 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of the Interior 1940 | Succeeded by |
