Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier signed the Munich Agreement and expected to be lynched at the airport. Born in 1884 in Provence, the son of a baker, he took a history degree, taught, fought as an infantry sergeant and then a lieutenant at Verdun and the Chemin des Dames, and won the Croix de Guerre — which is unusual among the politicians of the Third Republic and shaped how he read 1938. He led the Radical Party, held office repeatedly through the 1930s in governments that rarely lasted a year, and was prime minister during the riots of February 1934, which he resigned over. He returned in April 1938, five weeks after the Anschluss. He had no illusions about Munich. He went believing that France should honour its treaty with Czechoslovakia, was told by his own air force chief that the Luftwaffe would destroy French aviation in a fortnight, and found Chamberlain unwilling and the French general staff pessimistic. He signed, and flew back expecting the crowd at Le Bourget to be hostile. They were cheering. He is reported to have turned to an aide and said the fools — les cons — though the source is second-hand. He then pushed rearmament hard, and French aircraft production rose sharply over the following eighteen months. He was replaced in March 1940, was arrested by Vichy, tried at Riom in 1942 in a trial the Germans stopped because the defendants were winning it, and spent the war in Buchenwald and Itter. He returned to parliament and died in 1970.
- Lived: 1884 CE – 1970 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: prime_minister
