Pierre Laval

Born in Auvergnac, France, on June 28, 1883, Pierre Laval graduated college with a law degree and went into business. He was elected to the French parliament as a Socialist in 1903, and when war broke out in 1914 he enlisted in the French army. The war had apparently changed his political beliefs, however, as after the war he was re-elected to the French Chamber of Deputies but this time as a hardline right-wing conservative. He was at one point the French foreign minister and was prime minister twice, from 1931 to 1932 and from 1935 to 1936. As prime minister in 1935, he and the British foreign secretary worked out an agreement to try to end the crisis begun by Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. However, when details of the pact, which gave Italy almost everything it wanted and gave Ethiopia virtually nothing, were leaked to the press, the resulting public outrage resulted in both men resigning their posts. Laval left government service and began to amass a fortune as a media mogul, controlling newspapers, magazines, publishing companies and radio stations (although in interviews he often referred to himself as "just a poor peasant from Auvergnac", in reality he was a multi-millionaire and had been for quite a while). When the German army attacked and occupied France in 1940, Laval used all the influence at his disposal to support aging and somewhat senile World War I hero Philippe Pétain as head of the French collaborationist government, which was based in the town of Vichy and was tasked by the Germans with ruling that part of France not occupied by the German army, although the Germans had final say over the Vichy government's actions and policies. Not only was Laval instrumental in installing Pétain as head of the Vichy government, but he used his money and influence to persuade the National Assembly to give the old general absolute power. Two days after Pétain was granted those powers, Laval--who had long been suspect in France as a Nazi sympathizer--was named head of the government and first in line as Pétain's legal successor, and soon afterward he met with Adolf Hitler, proposing that the two governments should work together even more closely than they were. He later met with Nazi Air Force commander Hermann Göring and proposed a military alliance between the two countries. Laval's actions soon became too much for even many Vichy collaborationists to stomach, and in December of 1940 Pétain was persuaded to order Laval's firing and arrest. However, the Nazis speedily sent German troops to rescue him and Laval was rushed to Paris under German protection. Even that, however, didn't stop a young French student from pumping four bullets into Laval during an assassination attempt. Although gravely wounded, he eventually recovered, and Pétain, under heavy pressure from the Germans, re-installed Laval as head of the Vichy government. Back in power and firmly under the protection of the German occupation authorities, Laval began a program of "cleansing" France of Jews, and ordered French police to round up all the Jews without French citizenship they could find and turn them over to the German authorities. He also came up with a program--widely hated in France--in 1942 that sent skilled French laborers such as carpenters, machinists, etc., to Germany in exchange for German repatriation of French POWs captured in the 1940 invasion. He also granted the Nazi Gestapo--the dreaded secret police--the authority to hunt down French resistance fighters in occupied France and, in addition, ordered his own Vichy police to help them. To that end he created the Milice, a police agency charged with hunting down and capturing Jews without French citizenship and "leftist" activists and deporting them to Nazi Germany. The Milice eventually grew to more than 30,000 men and gained a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness that alienated even many Vichy supporters. The Vichy government's fortunes, along with Laval's, changed drastically after the June 1944 invasion of Europe by Allied armies. In May 1945 Laval saw the writing on the wall and fled to Spain. He was caught by Spanish authorities, who interned him in Barcelona and on July 30th turned him over to the new French government of Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Tried for treason, aiding the enemy, violating state security and a host of other crimes, Laval was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad in a prison yard in Paris on October 15, 1945.