Background
Reynaud was born on 15 October, 1878 in Barcelonnette, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VFNJH2/?tag=2022091-20
(5 5/8"x8 1/4"214 page hardcover on Europe during the Cold...)
5 5/8"x8 1/4"214 page hardcover on Europe during the Cold War published by Simon and Schuster in 1951
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(In The Thick of the Fight The Testimony of Paul Reynaud 1...)
In The Thick of the Fight The Testimony of Paul Reynaud 1930-1945 was translated by James D. Lambert. Reynaud, Minister of Finance when war broke out and later President of the Council, he explains how France gravitated to war and why her army was crushed in 1940. He foretold in the 20's this disastrous result.
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Reynaud was born on 15 October, 1878 in Barcelonnette, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
Reynaud studied law at the Sorbonne.
In 1928 he was elected deputy from the sixth Paris district, and in 1930 was appointed minister of finance under Andre Pierre Gabriel Amedee Tardieu. The next year he became minister for the colonies under Pierre Laval, and in 1932 minister of justice under Tardieu, a position which he again filled in 1938 under Edouard Daladier, with whom he had serious disagreements as a result of his approval of the schemes of General Charles de Gaulle.
He was minister of finance at the outbreak of World War II, and in March 1940 became premier of france. He was indicted by the Vichy government in October of that year and tried at Riom in 1942.
He was sent to a German prison in 1943 and remained there until the end of the war. Following the war, he was appointed minister of finance for a brief period in 1948. As leader of the Independents in the Assembly, Reynaud was asked in February 1952 to organize a cabinet. But he could not reconcile the conflicting views of the various non-Communist parties.
In May 1953, Reynaud was again asked to organize a cabinet, but the Assembly refused to approve his demand for broad new powers with which to meet France's financial difficulties.
In June 1953 he became vice premier in the cabinet headed by Joseph Laniel. The Laniel government fell in June 1954, when the Assembly refused to vote confidence in its Indochina policy. Reynaud was chairman of the Economic Committee of the Council of Europe.
In 1962 he lost his seat in an election in which the traditional French political parties opposed President Charles de Gaulle. Paul Reynaud's political views were regarded as moderately conservative.
He died in Neuilly on Sept. 21, 1966.
After the outbreak of World War II Reynaud became the penultimate Prime Minister of the Third Republic in March 1940. He was also vice-president of the Democratic Republican Alliance center-right party. Reynaud was Prime Minister during the German defeat of France in May and June 1940.
Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946, he became a prominent figure again in French political life, serving in several cabinet positions. He favoured a United States of Europe, and participated in drafting the constitution for the Fifth Republic, but resigned from government in 1962 after disagreement with President de Gaulle over changes to the electoral system.
He was president of the Comite Consultatif Constitutionnel in 1958 and in November 1958 was reelected Depute du Nord.
(5 5/8"x8 1/4"214 page hardcover on Europe during the Cold...)
(In The Thick of the Fight The Testimony of Paul Reynaud 1...)
After the war, Reynaud was elected in 1946 as a member of the Chamber of Deputies.
Reynaud was a physically small man, with “the countenance of a samurai who had been educated at Cambridge”. His head was set deep between his shoulders, and he had “a sharp, nasal, metallic voice” and “mechanical” bearing.
By his first marriage in 1912 to Jeanne Anne Henri-Robert, he was the father of a daughter, Collette, born in 1914. At some time in the early 1920s, Reynaud was introduced to Hélène Rebuffel by Andre Tardieu, a friend of her father's. Rebuffel's father, however, was displeased at her relationship with a married man, actively seeking other suitors for her, and she was eventually persuaded to marry the Italian Comte Henri de Portes.
After she had borne him two children, the marriage failed, and when Reynaud and his wife separated in 1938, Hélène de Portes became his mistress. De Portes died in a road accident in 1940, after which Reynaud was arrested and imprisoned until the liberation. Reynaud and his first wife were finally divorced in 1949.
Reynaud then married Christiane Mabire (who was previously one of his office assistants) at Versailles in the same year, at the age of 71, by which time she had already borne him a son, Serge Paul-Reynaud; they had two more children, Evelyne, in 1949, and Alexandre in 1954.
