Although I am not a legalist when it comes to the conquest ofpower, I am one when it comes to the exercise of power. Ifparliamentary processes result in our being called upon to exercise power within the framework of existing institutions, we should do so legally and fairly without taking advantage of our presence in government to fraudulently transform the exercise of power into the conquest of power.
Speech to the Bellevilloise Congress of the Socialist Party (January 1926), quoted in Jean Lacouture,Léon Blum (1979), p. 206
What theNationalists are once again trying to revive is the state of mind, or rather, the passions of 1912–13...Hitler to-day is miles away from power. He may be a little nearer it than, say,Franklin-Bouillon, but he is infinitely farther away from it thanGeneral Boulanger on the night of 27th January, 1889, or thanPaul Déroulède on the day ofFélix Faure's funeral.
Statement (1930), quoted in Denis William Brogan,The Development of Modern France (1870–1939) (1940), p. 685
Only now do I understand the harm done our nation's best interests by the rebuff administered toPoincaré's policy in 1924.
Quoted in Pertinax [André Géraud],The Gravediggers of France (1944), p. 374
In all this rallying of the forces which stand for peaceful and tolerant solutions of world problems, M. Blum has rendered a high personal service. Indeed, it was not in the power of any otherFrenchman at this particularly juncture in the life of France or ofEurope to do so much for the common good.
Winston Churchill, 'France Faces A New Crisis' (19 February 1937), quoted in Winston Churchill,Step by Step, 1936–1939 (1939; 1947), pp. 95-96
By 1937 France's Prime Minister Léon Blum had embraced the notion that concessions toGermany in bothEastern Europe and overseas were necessary if peace were to be preserved. ButChamberlain had little confidence in the French and did practically nothing to make joint Anglo-French action effective. TheSoviet Union was viewed with revulsion by mostConservatives, Chamberlain among them, on ideological grounds. EvenChurchill found it hard to contemplate having Moscow in his grand alliance, though that was clearly a logical inference to be drawn from his own analysis of the situation. Much hope was pinned onMussolini, who in 1934 had appeared to take a firm line against an abortiveNazi putsch inVienna; this was to exaggerate Italy's strength and to underestimate Mussolini's desire to overturn the status quo, which he revealed when he invadedAbyssinia and ignored all inducements to negotiate a settlement. The 1935 'Stresa Front' ofBritain, France andItaly proved to be just that: a front. When Italy defected, Britain and France could not agree what to do first: get Mussolini out of Abyssinia or keep Hitler out of the Rhineland. They did neither. This pattern of Anglo-French mal-coordination, not helped by the divergence of domestic politics in the two countries when France briefly had a Popular Front government, was to continue until the outbreak of war.
Niall Ferguson,The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), pp. 331-332
What interested me in Blum as aJew was precisely that: the hatred he aroused. We find it hard today even to imagine the degree of overt, unapologetic prejudice and dislike that someone like Blum could inspire in those years, primarily and simply on account of his Jewish origin. On the other hand Blum himself was often deaf to the scale and implications of publicanti-Semitism and its invocation against him. There was, of course, a certain ambivalence in Blum’s own identity: unashamedly and totallyFrench, he was no less overtly and proudly Jewish. In later years he combined great sympathy for the newbornJewish state in theMiddle East with near indifference to theZionist message itself. These ostensibly incompatible identifications and enthusiasms were perhaps not so far from my own at various times, which may explain my long-standing interest in the man.
Tony Judt, in Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder,Thinking the twentieth century (2012), Ch. 5 : Paris, California: French Intellectual
On a personal level, it turns out that Blum was, in an unusual sort of way, charismatic. He was so obviously honest, so manifestly meant what he said, so clearly wasn’t trying to be anything other than he was, that he was actually quite appealing and accepted on his own terms. His style—which to us would seem rather romantic and a bit elegantly over-polished for political use, especially on theleft—was actually regarded as evidence that the Left had a leader of class. And of course one deeply hated bycommunists, on the one hand, and the French right on the other. Blum was also the only person who understood what his party, the Socialist Party, had to do to remain a political force in France. Ifsocialists abandonedMarxism and tried to become a sort ofsocial democratic party on the northern European model, they would simply blend into the existing Radical party, with whose social base they had much in common. On the other hand, socialists could not compete with the communists as a revolutionary, anti-system party. And so Blum walked a narrow path between pretending to lead arevolutionary party committed to the overthrow ofcapitalism, while functioning in practice as the nearest thing France had to a social democratic party.
Tony Judt, in Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder,Thinking the twentieth century (2012), Ch. 5 : Paris, California: French Intellectual
[H]e was converted byJaurès toSocialism, became his most faithful disciple and succeeded him as leader. Along with his intellectual distinction, his idealism and his personal probity, Blum took over some of Jaurès' worst illusions. If anything, Blum was even more of apacifist, more bent ondisarmament; he placed an equal trust in GermanSocial Democracy—with less reason, for there was the experience ofthe war andpost-war Germany to learn from. He exemplified and encouraged by his leadership and his undoubted intellectual distinction all the illusions endemic in social democracy. There was no danger, he said, from theFascists: he was badly beaten up in the streets of Paris to prove the worthlessness of his illusions. Hitler was miles away from power, he said, in 1930: Hitler was in complete possession of power in 1933. Blum and the Socialists had opposed the raising of Army service from one to two years, an indispensable measure of defence: he and they lived to regret the gap in French defences in1940. And yet Blum was a noble man, as Jaurès had been before him.
Lucien Romier,A History of France (1953), pp. 468-469
