François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand was President of France for fourteen years, the longest tenure in the republic's history, and the first socialist to hold the office. Born in Jarnac in 1916 into a Catholic conservative family, he was a right-wing student activist in the 1930s. He was captured in 1940, escaped from a German prison camp on his third attempt, and worked for the Vichy government's prisoner-of-war office, receiving the Francisque decoration, before moving into the Resistance and running a network for former prisoners. He never repudiated the Vichy period or his long friendship with René Bousquet, who had organised the deportation of Jews. He held eleven ministerial posts under the Fourth Republic, including as interior minister during the Algerian war, when he authorised repression and executions. He opposed de Gaulle from 1958 as a threat to the republic, wrote The Permanent Coup d'État, and lost presidential elections in 1965 and 1974. He rebuilt the Socialist Party at Épinay in 1971 and allied with the communists. He won in 1981 and began with nationalisations, a thirty-nine-hour week, a fifth week of holiday, retirement at sixty and abolition of the death penalty — then reversed course in 1983 to stay in the European Monetary System, imposing austerity. He governed through two periods of cohabitation with right-wing prime ministers, which established that the constitution could survive it. He drove European integration with Helmut Kohl, producing the single market and the Maastricht Treaty, and built the Louvre pyramid, the Bastille opera and the national library. He concealed prostate cancer for eleven years, and died in 1996.
- Lived: 1916 CE – 1996 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
