Background
He was born André-Léon Blum in Paris on April 9, 1872, into a middle-class Jewish family.
He was born André-Léon Blum in Paris on April 9, 1872, into a middle-class Jewish family.
He entered the law school of the Sorbonne, after a year at the École Supérieure, and received his law degree in 1894.
He entered government service as an attorney and served in that capacity with distinction until 1919. During this time, in addition to his legal duties, Blum also pursued a successful career as a literary and dramatic critic. Among his writings are Nouvelles Conversations de Goethe avec Eckermann (1901; "New Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann"), Du Mariage (1907; "Marriage"), and Stendhal et le Beylisme (1914; "Stendhal and ‘Beylism'"). The Dreyfus affair involved Blum in active politics, and he came under the influence of the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès. He joined the Socialist Party and contributed to its paper, L'Humanité, but still refrained from active participation in politics. However, the murder of Jaurès in 1914 and his dissatisfaction with Clemenceau's government finally convinced him to run for office. In 1919 Blum became chairman of the executive board of the Socialist Party, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Blum is considered the architect of the modern French Socialist Party. He was president of the Socialist group in Parliament, editor and founder of its daily newspaper, Le Populaire, and its acknowledged international representative. He encouraged the Socialist Party to remain in opposition during the 1920's and to refuse offers of ministerial posts even in friendly governments. In the wake of the antirepublican profascist riots of 1934, which occurred in the midst of the great depression, Blum achieved a coalition of middle-class liberals, Socialists, and Communists, known as the Popular Front. In the elections of 1936 the alliance won a resounding victory and Blum took office as premier, becoming the first Jew and the first Socialist to hold that position in France. His Popular Front ministry, which lasted from June 1936 to June 1937, was responsible for an impressive body of social legislation, which it enacted in response to a wave of sit-in strikes. Its pro-labor measures included the 40-hour workweek, vacations with pay, collective bargaining, and steps toward nationalization of the arms industry. Blum's ministry fell partly because of strong opposition from industrialists and financiers and partly because the Communists gave him only lukewarm support, reproaching him for not aiding the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. Blum feared such a course of action might lead to civil war in France. In the years before the outbreak of World War II, Blum's position on foreign affairs changed from an emphasis on peace through international organization and disarmament to a more militant stand against the aggressive designs of Nazi Germany. After the military defeat of France and the collapse of the Third Republic, Blum was arrested in September 1940 by the Vichy government and brought to trial on the grounds of having contributed to France's unpreparedness through the social legislation of his government. So brilliantly did he demonstrate at the Riom trial in February 1942 that the fall of France was due to the ineptitude of the military, in which Marshal Pétain (head of the Vichy government) himself shared, that the trial proved an embarrassment both to that government and to the Germans and was suspended. Blum, however, remained a prisoner under a verdict rendered by a government-appointed political tribunal. In April 1943, he was interned in German concentration camps, until rescued by American troops in May 1945. While a prisoner he wrote a moving political essay, À L'Échelle (1945; "For All Mankind"). After France's liberation, Blum began once more to write for Le Populaire. He was called upon to hold various governmental posts, including, in January of 1946, the post of ambassador extraordinary, with power to negotiate foreign loans. He served as premier in a caretaker government for several weeks in December 1946, as vice premier in 1948, and as head of the French delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Blum died on March 30, 1950, at Jouy-en-Josas.
As a Jew, he was heavily influenced by the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century. He was a disciple of French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès and after 1914 became his successor. The Blum government adopted a package of important social laws: it finally approved a 40-hour workweek, proposed paid leave for workers, equalized the Arabs in Algeria in rights with the French.