Background
Blum was born in 1872 in Paris to a prosperous, assimilated Jewish family. His father Abraham, a merchant, was born in Alsace.
Blum was born in 1872 in Paris to a prosperous, assimilated Jewish family. His father Abraham, a merchant, was born in Alsace.
He entered the law school of the Sorbonne, after a year at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and received his law degree in 1894
From 1896 to 1919, he served in the government as a legal advisor in the council of state, and rose to become master of requests. The Dreyfus affair and his friendship with the socialist leader, Jean Jaurès, drew him to politics and the Socialist party. He became a deputy (member) in parliament for the Socialist party in 1919 and after the Communists split off from the party, he applied himself to reorganizing the Socialist movement so successfully that he soon became one of its leaders. Although his party made gains in the 1932 election, Blum refused to cooperate with the Radical Socialists.
Blum was aware of the problems facing national defense in the light of German rearmament. When Great Britain refused to help the republicans in the Spanish Civil War, the French government adopted a similar policy of nonintervention, which was criticized by the left. Blum tended toward concilation by nature. He was no great orator and convinced his audiences with purely logical arguments. Thus in June 1937, defeated in parliament after a right-wing campaign tinged with anti-Semitism, Blum resigned. He served as vice-premier in the subsequent Popular Front government and was premier for nine months again in March 1938. He refused office, however, in the Daladier government and approved the Munich agreement.
At the beginning of the German occupation of France in 1946, the Vichy government had Blum arrested and accused him of having supported the war. In 1942 he was brought to trial at Riom and conducted a brilliant defence which led the Germans to suspend his trial.
Blum remained in prison and was then sent to a concentration camp in Germany, from which he was freed by the American army in 1945. Upon his return to France, he resumed his political activities and negotiated a financial agreement between France and the United States. In December 1946, he formed a Socialist government that lasted only one month, and was again deputy prime minister in 1948.
He was not a religious man, but he met with his brothers each year at the synagogue for a commemoration service on the anniversary of the death of their parents.
After brilliant studies at the law faculty in Paris, he earned a reputation as a poet and author, publishing "En lisant: Reflexions critiques, Au théâtre" (4 vols.; 1905-1911), "Marriage" (1907), and a work on "Stendhal" (1914). In his essay on marriage, Blum daringly recommended that young girls should enjoy as much freedom as young men and advocated trial marriages. (When he became prime minister, his friends urged him to refuse permission to reprint this book because it was too controversial, but Blum answered that his ideas had not changed and that he saw no reason to oppose a new printing).
Quotations:
At the trial, he noted that at the beginning of his political career he had been accused of being a pacifist, but that because he had tried to maintain the military capacity of France, he was now being accused of being an advocate of war:
“If, in September 1936,1 entered into direct and personal negotiations with a representative of Hitler, this was because one of the major points of the conversation was that Germany agreed to negotiate on arms limitations. Dr. Schacht came to see me, in the name of the Reich and I told him, ‘I am a Marxist, and I am Jew, and that is why I am even more than anxious that our conversation be followed up.’ With regard to armaments, I only had the interest of my country in mind. I fulfilled my duty as a Frenchman... By a cruel irony it is our loyalty which has become treason. Yet this loyalty is not spent; it still endures. And France will reap the benefit of it in the future, in which we place our hope and for which this trial, directed against the Republic, shall help to prepare.”
He is regarded as one of the great figures of French and international Socialism. He intervened several times in favor of the establishment of the State of Israel and to prevent the cessation of illegal immigration to Palestine. In Israel, a kibbutz, Kfar Blum, has been named after him.
Quotes from others about the person
The men of Vichy failed to break Léon Blum’s spirit. After months of imprisonment he never wavered in his faith in the victory of civilization over barbarism or in his hope in the final victory of socialism. The last message I received from him just before he was taken to Germany breathed the same unconquerable spirit. There was no word of his personal sufferings and danger. His whole thoughts were devoted to plans for the future of the world when victory should have been won and civilization saved. His enemies may enslave his body, they can not subdue his soul.
Clement Attlee on Léon Blum, 1943.