Georges Bidault

Background

Georges Bidault was born October 5, 1899, in Moulins, France.

Education

He attended the Sorbonne, graduating in 1925.

Career

From then until World War II he was a professor of history. He was also active in liberal Catholic politics, acting as foreign editor of L'Aube from 1932 to 1939. At the outbreak of World War II, Bidault was mobilized, but was captured by the Germans, May 8, 1940, and held prisoner until 1941. On his release he began work in the French underground, publishing the Bulletin de la France Combattante. In 1943 he succeeded Jean Moulin as president of the national council of resistance. On September 19, 1944, after Paris had been liberated and the provisional government of General Charles de Gaulle had been established in the capital, Bidault was appointed minister of foreign affairs. He was head of the French delegation to the conference in San Francisco that founded the United Nations in April 1945. During 1945 and 1946 he was the French representative on the council of foreign ministers, the body established at the Potsdam Conference to prepare the postwar peace treaties. Bidault was chosen to preside over the provisional government of France on June 24, 1946; he was interim premier until December 17, 1946, and remained in charge of foreign affairs as well. Bidault served in several of the 21 coalition cabinets of the Fourth Republic. He was foreign minister from January 1947 to July 1948. In 1949 he was elected chairman of the Mouvement Republicain Populaire (MRP), one of the three parties that provided most of the ministers for the Fourth Republic. The MRP was a centrist, Christian Democratic party. Bidault was premier of the seventh cabinet, from October 28, 1949, until June 24, 1950. He also served as vice-premier and minister of national defense in 1951 and 1952 and again as foreign minister in 1952 and 1954; as foreign minister he was known for his vigorous support for the French cause in Indochina. In 1962, after De Gaulle, who had become president under a new Fifth Republic, had allowed Algeria to become independent, Bidault became leader of an exiled group named after the earlier national council of resistance and allied to the Secret Army Organization; these groups threatened to seize the French government and oust De Gaulle. Expelled from West Germany, Bidault was granted asylum in Brazil only after he agreed to halt his campaign against De Gaulle. In June 1968, although he still faced changes of treason, Bidault returned to France under an informal amnesty following a nationwide strike against the De Gaulle government. He died in Cambo-les-Bains on January 27, 1983.

Achievements

• He was an active participant of French Resistance during World War II, twice prime minister, and three times minister of foreign affairs, who late in his career vigorously opposed General Charles de Gaulle’s Algerian policy and was forced into exile.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Resistance; the Political Autobiography of Georges Bidault

Views

Quotations: "The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong. "

Connections

On 4 January 1946, Bidault married Suzanne Borel, the first French woman to be employed as a diplomat.

Wife:

Suzanne Borel