Léon Blum

André Léon Blum (French: [ɑ̃dʁe leɔ̃ blum]; 9 April 1872 – 30 March 1950) was a French socialist politician and three-time Prime Minister of France. As a Jew, he was heavily influenced by the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century.

Blum was a disciple of socialist leader Jean Jaurès and became his successor after Jaurès' assassination in 1914. Despite Blum's relatively short tenures, his time in office was very influential. As prime minister in the left-wing Popular Front government in 1936–1937, he provided a series of major economic and social reforms. Blum declared neutrality in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) to avoid the civil conflict spilling over into France itself. Once out of office in 1938, he denounced the appeasement of Germany.

When Germany defeated France in 1940, Blum became a staunch opponent of Vichy France and was tried (but never judged) by its government on charges of treason. He was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp and after the war resumed a transitional leadership role in French politics, helping to bring about the French Fourth Republic, until his death in 1950.

Blum was born in 1872 in Paris to a moderately prosperous, middle class, assimilated Jewish family in the mercantile business. His father Abraham, a merchant, was born in Alsace and moved to Paris in 1848. Blum's mother, Adèle-Marie-Alice Picart was born in Paris, but her family likewise originated in Alsace. Blum's mother observed Orthodox rituals faithfully, but his father was less religious, being only seen in the synagogue on the high holy days. Blum came from a family that very much identified with the republic, and as a child he attended the public funeral services of defenders of French republican values such as Léon Gambetta in 1882 and Victor Hugo in 1885. He came to identify with the universalism of French republicanism, which portrayed France as an especially enlightened nation that was leading the rest of the world in the right direction, and where French civilization was open to all who were willing to embrace the French language and culture regardless of religion, ethnicity, and race. Blum himself was not especially religious, but was always very proud to be Jewish and frequently affirmed his Jewish identity when subjected to anti-Semitic insults. Blum was more influenced by the rationalistic and anticlerical ideas of the French Enlightenment than by Judaism. Blum always saw himself as both French and Jewish, and he took a special pride in the heritage of the French Revolution, which for him marked the beginning of a civic and secular society in which religion did not matter. He wrote that as a Jew he belonged "to a race which owed to the French Revolution human liberty and equality, something that could never be forgotten".

Blum first attended the Lycée Charlemagne, but was so successful academically that he was transferred over to the Lycée Henri-IV, the favored school of the elite. Blum entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1890 and excelled there, but he dropped out a year later, entering instead the Faculty of Law. He attended the University of Paris and became both a lawyer and literary critic. Starting in 1892, he became the critic for La Revue Blanche magazine, where he reviewed works by Anatole France, Pierre Louÿs, Jules Renard and André Gide. His reviews made him famous in Parisian intellectual circles, where he became known as a reviewer with interesting and provocative views about the state of modern French literature. He also contributed poetry to the magazines La Conque and Le Banquet. Blum was greatly influenced by Stendhal whose novels he loved, and he was to become one of the world's leading experts on Stendhal whom he often wrote about. As a young man, he affected the style of an aesthete "dandy" and was an associate of the writer Marcel Proust. Proust did not have much respect for Blum as a writer, whom he dismissed as "mediocre". Blum was usually dressed as a dandy in the salons of Paris, wearing an expensive suit, top hat, gloves and a monocle. His way of dressing led to the young Blum often being denounced as a homosexual, with the poet Charles Maurras calling Blum "the maiden" in one of his poems. Throughout his life, Blum was always subjected to accusations that he was gay, but it appears that the effeminate style that he fancied in his youth was more of an act of youthful rebellion.

Blum described himself as "a vulnerable and fragile being, 'like a girl in a novel', an overtly delicate plant". To rebut the charge that he was too "soft" and a homosexual, Blum sought to prove his "strength" by engaging in duels with rivals. In 1896, Blum married Lise Bloch at the Grand Synagogue of Paris. He was initially convinced of the guilt of Captain Alfred Dreyfus who had been convicted of treason for Germany in 1894, but in the late summer of 1897 Lucien Herr convinced Blum that Dreyfus was innocent and as an intellectual with influence he had the duty to take a stand in favor of Dreyfus. Starting in September 1897, Blum became deeply involved in the Dreyfus Affair, where he resolved to "restore the innocent man's good name". Blum was in contact with Georges Clemenceau, who served as the lawyer for the newspaper L'Aurore and Fernand Labori, who served as the lawyer for Émile Zola, writing legal briefs for both Clemenceau and Labori. Blum attended the trial in 1898 of Zola for his letter J'Accuse...! published in L'Aurore. Blum tried to recruit Maurice Barrès, whom he called "my guide" and "my teacher" to French literature to the Dreyfusard cause, and was greatly hurt when Barrès told him he was an anti-Dreyfusard. Blum described himself as "almost in mourning" when Barrès rejected his appeal, and instead wrote the article "The Protest of the Intellectuals" condemning the "Jewish signers" who championed the cause of Dreyfus. The Dreyfus Affair marked the beginning of Blum's interest in socialism, which promoted internationalism and secularism. Blum became convinced that antisemitism was largely the work of the Catholic Church and the upper classes, and socialism in France would end antisemitism forever. Despite all of the passions created by the Dreyfus Affair, in 1899 he wrote he had no fears of "a Saint Bartholomew's Day of the Jews", writing that pogroms were possible "in Poland, Galicia, or Romania or maybe in Algiers, but not in France".

Between 1905 and 1907 he wrote Du Mariage a highly controversial (for the period) and much talked about critical essay about the problems with traditional marriage as envisioned in the late 19th century, with its religious and economic background and strong stress on women remaining virgins until their marriage day. Blum stated that both men and women should enjoy a period of "polygamic" free sex life in order to experience a more mature and stable relationship during later married life: “For both men and women, the life of adventure must precede the life of marriage, the life of instinct must precede the life of reason”

Unsurprisingly he was targeted by the then-powerful Catholic Church in France, in the wake of the turmoil caused by the separation between church and state implemented by Émile Combes in 1905. Far right and royalist politicians and agitators, and most preeminently Charles Maurras, were incensed, and pelted mostly anti-semitic insults and public outrage at Blum, famously dubbing him "le pornographe du Conseil d'état" as Blum was by then a counsellor of this institution. Although Blum's views are nowadays accepted and mostly mainstream in many developed countries, the book remained an object of scandal long after WWI and the shift to the emancipation of women. On 14 October 1912, Blum fought a duel with swords with a rival theater critic Pierre Weber, which ended with Weber surrendering after Blum wounded him.

While in his youth an avid reader of the works of the nationalist writer Maurice Barrès, Blum had shown little interest in politics until the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, which had a traumatic effect on him as it did on many French Jews. Blum first became personally involved in the Affair when he aided the defense case of Émile Zola in 1898 as a jurist, before which he had not demonstrated interest in public affairs. Campaigning as a Dreyfusard brought him into contact with the socialist leader Jean Jaurès, whom he greatly admired. He began contributing to the socialist daily, L'Humanité, and joined the French Section of the Workers' International (French: Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière, SFIO). Soon he was the party's main theoretician. It is possible that Blum's interest in politics began somewhat earlier, as Fernand Gregh mentioned in his personal memoirs that Blum had expressed interest in politics as early as 1892.

In July 1914, just as the First World War broke out, Jaurès was assassinated, and Blum became more active in the Socialist party leadership. Before the war, Blum had supported the plans of Jaurès for a general strike to prevent a war, but in August 1914 he supported the war under the grounds that France was faced with German aggression. Blum in general favored a pacifistic position, but he also believed that France had the right and duty to defend itself against aggression, which he viewed as the case when Germany presented an ultimatum whose terms were designed to be rejected, followed up by an invasion of neutral Belgium as the best way to invade France. Blum did not feel that he was betraying Jaurès's vision as he believed Jaurès would have rallied to the support of the war after Germany invaded France on 2 August 1914. He supported the Union Sacrée ("Sacred Union") coalition government formed to resist the German aggression. Blum was exempt from military service because he was near-sighted and 42 years old, but he was described as being full of "ardent patriotism" as he sought to do everything within his power to assist with the war effort. In August 1914 Blum became assistant to the Socialist Minister of Public Works Marcel Sembat. In 1915, when a minority of the Socialists started to become opposed to the war, Blum displayed much tact in seeking party unity as he maintained that the German threat necessitated support for the war. He disapproved of the French Socialists who attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 to seek an end to the war. The majority of the Socialists who attended the Zimmerwald conference were Russian, and Blum was struck by the extent of alienation that the Russian socialists expressed towards their country as Russian nationalism had utterly no appeal to them in the same way that French nationalism appealed to him. Blum was a lifelong Anglophile who greatly appreciated Britain's role in helping to defend France and admired the British Westminster system. Blum felt that the system of government under the Troisième République where the premier was more of a chairman of a cumbersome committee than an executive leader was inefficient, and he advocated France adopting a republican version of the Westminster system with a strong executive prime minister.

In April 1917, he welcomed the entry of the United States into world war I, which he portrayed as a struggle between the militaristic monarchy of Germany vs. the democratic French republic. On 8 April 1917, Blum wrote in an editorial in L'Humanité that: "Our victory will be the emancipation and reconciliation of men through Liberty and Justice". In the same editorial, he praised the call of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson for "peace without victory", writing that the problem was not the German people, but rather Germany's leaders such as Emperor Wilhelm II. By 1917, the Socialists had divided into an antiwar group led by Paul Faure and Jean Longuet vs. a "national defense" group led by Albert Thomas and Pierre Renaudel. Thomas and Renaudel represented a moderate, reformist, and definitely French strain of socialism while Faure and Longuet represented a more militant, pacifistic and internationalist strain of socialism that became increasing opposed to the war as it dragged on. Blum became the leader of a "centrist" group in the Socialist Party that supported the war like the "national defense" group, but in many ways were ideologically closer to the antiwar group. Blum was strongly opposed to Vladimir Lenin who called for the defeat of Russia as the best way to bring about a Communist revolution, and in November 1917 he condemned the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd. The evolution of the more left-wing French Socialists from supporting the war in 1914 to opposing it by 1918 was also reflected in Russia. In 1914, most Russian socialists had either declared their support for war or least their neutrality as many socialists could not bring themselves to supporting Emperor Nicholas II; by 1917 the radical views of Lenin who called for Russia's defeat were in the mainstream of Russian socialism. The anti-war group in the French Socialist Party followed a similar trajectory to what happened in Russia. Blum wrote he was disgusted by the "intransigent fanaticism" of the Bolsheviks along with their cruelty and their "mystical belief in the sole immediate virtue of revolution in itself, no matter what the conditions, the circumstances, the means employed". However, he charged that Thomas and Renaudel had become too moderate and had diluted their socialism. In November 1917, Blum supported the Balfour Declaration promising a "Jewish national home" in Palestine if the Allies won the war. However, Blum saw Zionism as a solution to the problems of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, not of France. Blum always saw himself as a Frenchman and wrote about he had no intention of ever going to Palestine as he was "a French Jew, of a long line of French ancestors, speaking only the language of his country, nurtured predominantly on its culture".

On 21 March 1918, Germany launched Operation Michael, an offensive intended to win the war. As the German Army advanced within 50 miles of Paris in the spring of 1918, Blum called for a "Jacobin" defense of Paris with every citizen to be handed a gun. In a bitterly divided Socialist Party, Blum's "centrist" faction had an oversized importance despite being outnumbered by the two other factions, which along with Blum's reputation as a protégé of Jaurès made him into one of the leaders of the Socialist Party by the end of the war. In 1914, almost all Socialists had supported the union sacrée as Blum had done, but as the war continued, many Socialists felt the burden of the war had not been shared equally with the working class making all the sacrifices while the bourgeoise made no such sacrifices. Renaudel and Thomas had discredited themselves by serving as ministers in the union sacrée government who had fought against strikes to maximize war production with many Socialists such as Longuet and Faure charging Renaudel and Thomas had failed to achieve concessions to the workers in exchange for no strikes. By 1918, the more left-wing antiwar group in the Socialist Party was in the ascendency and many of the younger members of the party expressed much admiration for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who had done what the Socialists only merely talked about. By July 1918, the antiwar group had come close to taking control of the Socialist Party executive. In an attempt to hold the Socialist Party together, Blum tried to paper over the chasm between the pro-war socialists vs. the anti-war socialists by writing on 19 August 1918 in L'Humanité that the Socialists were "republicans and socialists, socialists and French patriots, French patriots and champions of working-class internationalism". Blum wrote that the choice "between Wilson and Lenin, between democracy and Bolshevik fanaticism" was a false one as "I chose neither Wilson nor Lenin. I chose Jaurès".

Only the victory of the Allies with Germany surrendering on 11 November 1918 prevented the Socialist Party from breaking up with Blum attempting to reconcile the two factions after the war. Blum worked hard at rebuilding Socialist Party unity, but the wounds left by the split between the antiwar and prowar Socialists was too deep and visceral, and set the stage for most of the antiwar Socialists breaking off to found the French Communist Party in 1920. In the two years that followed 1918, Blum's reputation as the leader of a "centrist" group who might be able to hold the Socialists together raised his profile immensely. In an editorial in L'Humanité on 19 July 1919, Blum attacked the Treaty of Versailles, which he called "a denial, a betrayal" of the Allied principles held during the war. Blum opposed French intervention in the Russian Civil War, but was cautious about calls from the more radical Socialists to affiliate with the Comintern that had been founded in Moscow in 1919.

Blum led the SFIO through the 1920s and 1930s. Blum was always very neatly dressed in his suit with his pince-nez glasses, an unlikely appearance for the leader of a party meant to represent the working class. However, Blum had loyally supported the war effort in World War I, but had not held a ministerial rank as Thomas and Renaudel had. Blum won respect for standing up to Communist heckling and threats of violence at Socialist rallies, and was famed for being able to "work magic with words".

The Communists had taken control of the leading socialist newspaper L'Humanité, so on 6 April 1921, Blum adopted Le Populaire as the party's newspaper, with himself as the editor.

In a 1922 speech, Blum expressed his disagreement with Communism, saying the Bolshevik regime in Russia was not a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but rather a "dictatorship over the proletariat". In the same speech, he called for a socialism that "will improve the condition of women, children, emotional life, and family life". Central to his critique of Bolshevism was his criticism that "cruelty" was the essence of the Communist regime in Soviet Russia, which he contrasted with the "humanism" that he saw as the essence of socialism.

In the May 1924 election, Blum had the Socialists join the centre-left cartel des gauches alliance, which won, with the Socialists going from 55 seats to 104 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. On 31 May 1924, Édouard Herriot, the leader of the Radical Socialist Party, asked for Blum to join the government he was forming. Blum refused, merely promising that the Socialists would support Herriot's government in the Chamber. Blum feared that entering the cabinet would cause the Socialists to lose votes to the Communists since inevitably the Socialists would have to compromise on some of their principles in office. Despite Blum not entering the cabinet, French newspapers portrayed France as governed by "a republic of professors" headed by a triumvirate of intellectuals, namely Herriot, Blum, and Paul Painlevé, the leader of the Socialist Republicans. Blum supported the Herriot government in forcing the resignation of President Alexandre Millerand, and the government's anti-clerical bills designed to weaken the influence of the Catholic Church over French life.

In foreign policy, Blum supported the Herriot government's conciliatory policy towards Germany, and he voted for the Locarno Pact in 1925. Blum also declared himself a supporter of the League of Nations, and favored establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

Blum was elected as Deputy for Narbonne in 1929, and was re-elected in 1932 and 1936. In 1933, he expelled Marcel Déat, Pierre Renaudel, and other neosocialists from the SFIO. Political circumstances changed in 1934, when the rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler and fascist riots in Paris caused Stalin and the French Communists to change their policy. In 1935 all the parties of left and centre formed the Popular Front. France had not successfully recovered from the worldwide economic depression, wages had fallen and the working class demanded reforms. The Popular Front won a sweeping victory in June 1936. The Popular Front won a solid majority with 386 seats out of 608. For the first time, the Socialists won more seats than the Radicals; they formed an effective coalition. As Socialist leader Blum became Prime Minister of France and the first socialist to hold that office, he formed a cabinet that included 20 Socialists, 13 Radicals and two Socialist Republicans. The Communists won 15 percent of the vote, and 12 percent of the seats. They supported the government, although they refused to take any cabinet positions. For the first time, the cabinet included three women in minor roles, even though women were not able to vote. Blum had long been accused by his critics within the Socialist Party of avoiding the responsibility of power as he was accursed of wanting to be the leader of a perpetual opposition party rather than compromising his principles, leading Blum to give a speech that he had decided to embrace the responsibility of office to achieve the social change he had long promised.

The election of the left-wing government brought a wave of strikes, involving two million workers, and the seizure of many factories. The strikes were spontaneous and unorganised, but nevertheless the business community panicked and met secretly with Blum, who negotiated a series of reforms, and then gave labour unions the credit for the Matignon Accords. The new laws:

legislated the mandating of 12 days of paid annual leave

legislated a 40-hour working week (outside of overtime)

raised wages (15% for the lowest-paid workers, and 7% for the relatively well-paid)

stipulated that employers would recognise shop stewards

By mid-August 1936, the parliament had voted for:

the creation of a national Office du blé (Grain Board or Wheat Office, through which the government helped to market agricultural produce at fair prices for farmers) to stabilise prices and curb speculation

the nationalisation of the arms industries

loans to small and medium-sized industries

the raising of the compulsory school-attendance age to 14 years

The most important issue in French foreign policy was the Remilitarization of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, which had declared it to be a permanent demilitarized zone. With the Rhineland remilitarized, for the first time since 1918, German military forces could menace France directly, and equally importantly the Germans started to build the Siegfried Line along the Franco-German border. The assumption behind the French alliance system in Eastern Europe was that the French Army would use the demilitarized status of the Rhineland to launch an offensive into western Germany if the Reich should invade any of France's allies in Eastern Europe, namely Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. With the building of the Siegfried Line, it was possible for Germany to invade any of France's Eastern European allies with the majority of the Wehrmacht being sent east, and the remainder of the Wehrmacht staying on the defensive in the Rhineland to halt any French offensive into Germany, a situation that boded ill for the survival of the French alliance system in Eastern Europe. A further complication for the French was the greater population of Germany as France could only field a third of the young men that the Reich could field, along with the greater size of the German economy. To even the odds against the Reich, it was the unanimous opinion of all French foreign policy and military experts that France needed allies. The nation that France wanted the most as an ally was Great Britain, which had the world's largest navy and provided that Britain made the "continental commitment" of sending another large expeditionary force to France like the BEF of the First World War would allow the French to face any challenge from Germany on more even terms. The need for the "continental commitment" allowed Britain to have a sort of veto power over French foreign policy in the interwar period as the French wanted the "continental commitment" very badly, and thus could not afford to alienate the British too much. The other major ally the French wanted was the Soviet Union. However, the lack of a common German-Soviet frontier, the unwillingness of Romania and especially Poland to grant the Red Army transit rights, and the strong British dislike of the alliance that the French signed with the Soviet Union in 1935 all presented problems from the French viewpoint. Blum's foreign policy was one of attempting to improve relations with Germany to avoid a war while seeking to strengthen France's alliances and to conclude an alliance with Britain.

One of Blum's first actions as premier was to nationalize French arms industry, which gave the Defense Minister Édouard Daladier immense power. Blum saw nationalization of the arms industry as a way to prevent "merchants of death" from causing a war, but Daladier saw nationalization as a way to catch up in the arms race. Daladier boasted that he now had powers equal to those of the German War Minister Werner von Blomberg and the Soviet Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov. The Popular Front government troubled reactionary Catholic French Army officers such as Maxime Weygand-who made little effort to hide his disapproval-but on 10 June 1936 General Maurice Gamelin met with Blum to tell him that the French Army was apolitical and that he would ensure that the Army would stay out of politics.

Following a botched coup d'état on 17 July 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain. Blum initially allowed weapons to be shipped to the Frente Popular government, but the arms shipments to the Spanish Republic caused much opposition from Britain. Blum saw the Frente popular government in Madrid as a natural ally of the Front populaire government in Paris and did not want a pro-Axis Spain as a neighbor. He immediately allowed arms to be shipped to Spain. Charles Corbin, the French ambassador in London, strongly advised Blum to cease the arms shipments to the Spanish Republicans. Corbin warned that the government of Stanley Baldwin was strongly against French arms for the Spanish republic, and that France could not afford a rift with Britain over Spain given the threat posed by Germany. Alexis St. Léger, the secretary-general of the Quai d'Orsay, met Blum to tell him that France needed Britain more than Britain needed France, and the French could not afford to antagonize the British for the sake of the Spanish Republic. The need for British support played a major role in causing Blum to cease the arms shipments to Spain and instead have France join the ineffectual Non-Intervention Committee. In July 1936, the League of Nations ended the sanctions imposed on Italy for invading Ethiopia, and therefore, France ended its sanctions on Italy. The French tried hard to revive the Stresa Front after the sanctions on Italy were ended and as the American historian Barry Sullivan noted "...the French displayed an almost humiliating determination to retain Italy as an ally". Benito Mussolini rejected all of the French overtures and instead aligned Italy with Germany. Sullivan noted: "...Germany, which consistently treated Italy worse than did the other two countries, was rewarded with Mussolini's friendship; France, which generally offered Italy the highest level of co-operation and true partnership, was rewarded with rebuffs and abuse.". The prospect of an Italian-German alliance threatened to divert French resources from a potential conflict with Germany, and drove the French into seeking closer ties with Britain as a counterbalance.

Shortly after his election, Blum together with his entire cabinet visited the German embassy to meet the new German ambassador, Count Johannes von Welczeck, to tell him that France wanted good relations with Germany and that his government intended to return to the "Locarno era" of the 1920s (i.e. friendship with Germany). German propaganda constantly stressed that one of the many alleged "injustices" of the Treaty of Versailles was the loss of Germany's African colonies and demanded that all of the former African colonies "go home to the Reich". Blum believed that the colonial question was the principal problem in Franco-German relations and that there was a "moderate" faction within the German government led by the Reichsbank president Dr. Hjalmar Schacht who were both willing and able to restrain Adolf Hitler. During the 1936 election, Blum had run on an anti-militarist platform that called for "bread, peace and freedom" while he had promised to end the arms race by converting from an "armed peace" into a "disarmed peace". When Schacht approached Blum with an offer to end the arms race in exchange for the return of former German African colonies, Blum took him up on his offer. In August 1936, Schacht visited Paris where he met Blum to discuss a possible deal under which France would return the former German African colonies administered by France as mandates for the League of Nations and the end of the trade wars in Europe in exchange for Germany cutting back dramatically its level of military spending. Blum told Schacht that he was willing to return French Togoland (modern Togo) and French Cameroon (modern Cameroon) to Germany as the price of peace, and pursued this line of negotiation with Schacht well into 1937. However, Blum also told Schacht that France would not be bullied as he stated: "We believe our position is stronger than a few months ago. France does not tremble in the face of war, but does not want war". Blum still held hopes that the arms race in Europe could be ended, and feeling that the Treaty of Versailles was excessively harsh, he welcomed Schacht's offer, which seemed to be a sincere proposal to end the arms race. The British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden who visited Paris told Blum he was "thoroughly astounded" by his talks with Schacht, which he warned that the British government would be opposed under the grounds if France returned the former German colonies in Africa to the Reich it would pressure for Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to return the former German colonies they administered as mandates for the League of Nations.

Schacht gave Blum the impression that he held more power in Berlin than was actually the case, and that the key to preventing another world war lay in the restoration of the German colonial empire in Africa. At the time, Schacht was losing a power struggle over the control of German economic policy to the other Nazi leaders and he was keen for a foreign policy success such as the restoration of Germany's former African colonies that might restore his prestige with Hitler. Blum had good relations with both Welczeck and Schacht whom he viewed as "rational, civilized Europeans" whom it was possible for him to negotiate with. Notably, Hitler refused to see Blum under any conditions and Welczeck was Blum's main conduit with the Reich government. In September 1936, Hitler at the Nuremberg Party Rally launched the Four Year Plan to have the German economy ready for a "total war" by September 1940, which greatly alarmed Blum. In response to the Four Year Plan, Blum launched what the American historian Joseph Maiolo called "the biggest arms program ever attempted by a French government in peacetime". Intelligence from the Deuxième Bureau and André François-Poncet, the French ambassador in Berlin, showed that the factories of the major German armaments firms such as Krupp AG, Rheinmetall AG and Borsig AG were running at full capacity as the German state seemed to have a limitless appetite for arms. All the intelligence from François-Poncet and the Deuxième Bureau indicated that Germany was preparing for a major war in the near future. The fact that Germany had an economy three times larger than France's ensured that the Reich had a massive lead in the arms race. However, the French took consolation in the fact that Germany had to import a number of crucial raw materials such as high-grade iron and oil that the Reich lacked, thereby making Germany very vulnerable to a naval blockade. However, there was the caveat that many of the raw materials that Germany lacked could be found in eastern Europe and if Germany were to obtain such raw materials in eastern Europe via alliances or conquests, the German economy would be immune to a blockade. As such from the French viewpoint it was crucial to keep Eastern Europe out of the German sphere of influence. The War Minister, Édouard Daladier asked the commander of the military, General Maurice Gamelin to submit a four-year plan for military modernization. When Gamelin handed in a plan that was budgeted at 9 billion francs for the French Army, Daladier rejected it as too low and added an extra 5 billion francs. During an "emotional" interview with Blum, Daladier persuaded him to accept the 14 billion franc plan as he warned that Germany was winning the arms race at present. On 7 September 1936, the Blum cabinet approved Daladier's 14 billion franc plan for rearmament.

The Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 and deeply divided France. Blum adopted a policy of neutrality rather than assisting his ideological soulmates, the Spanish Left-leaning Republicans. He acted from fear of splitting his domestic alliance with the centrist Radicals, or even precipitating an ideological civil war inside France. His refusal to send arms to Spain strained his alliance with the Communists, who followed Soviet policy and demanded all-out support for the Spanish Republic. The impossible dilemma caused by this issue led Blum to resign in June 1937. All the constituents of the French left supported the Republican government in Madrid, while the right supported the Nationalist insurgents. Blum's cabinet was deeply divided and he decided on a policy of non-intervention, and collaborated with Britain and 25 other countries to formalize an agreement against sending any munitions or volunteer soldiers to Spain. The Air Minister defied the cabinet and secretly sold warplanes to Madrid. Jackson concludes that the French government "was virtually paralyzed by the menace of civil war at home, the German danger abroad, and the weakness of her own defenses." The Republicans by 1938 were losing badly (they surrendered in 1939), sending upwards of 500,000 political refugees across the border into France, where they were held in camps.

On 13 February 1936, shortly before becoming prime minister, Blum was dragged from a car and almost beaten to death by the Camelots du Roi, a group of antisemites and royalists. The group's parent organisation, the right-wing Action Française league, was dissolved by the government following this incident, not long before the elections that brought Blum to power. Blum became the first socialist and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of France. As such he was an object of particular hatred from antisemitic elements.

In its short life, the Popular Front government passed important legislation, including the 40-hour week, 12 paid annual holidays for the workers, collective bargaining on wage claims, and the full nationalisation of the armament and military aviation industries. This latter sweeping action had the unanticipated effect of disrupting the production of armaments at the wrong time, only three years away from the beginning of war in September 1939. Blum also attempted to pass legislation extending the rights of the Arab population of Algeria, but this was blocked by "colons", colonist representatives in the Chamber and Senate.

Blum was briefly prime minister again in March and April 1938, long enough to ship heavy artillery and other much needed military equipment to the Spanish Republicans. Blum made a call to the parties of the centre-right to create a "sacred union" government like that which had governed France in World War One to face the present crisis, an offer that was rejected. Besides allowing arms to be shipped to Spain, on 15 March 1938 Blum proposed at a cabinet meeting that France intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans. Blum told the cabinet: "Why not send General Franco an ultimatum? If, within twenty-four hours, you do not renounce the assistance of foreign troops France will resume its liberty of action and the right to intervene". As Italy and Germany had intervened on the side of the Spanish Nationalists, the majority of the cabinet led by Daladier rejected Blum's course under the grounds that it would mean war with Italy and Germany.

Blum drew up a new armament plan in early 1938 that was as he put it "analogous to the Russian Five Year Plans or Göring's Four Year Plan". To finance the armament plan, Blum planned a steep increase in taxes on income and corporate profits, to borrow on a massive scale on the bond markets, to embark on an inflationary course by printing more francs in the form of credit notes to pay for munitions, and for exchange controls to stop the expected flight of capital. The American Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. sent word to Blum that the Roosevelt administration would not oppose "temporary" exchange controls in France, though British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was non-committal when sounded out. Blum's armament plan was defeated in the Senate on 5 April 1938, leading to him to resign. He was unable to establish a stable ministry; on 10 April 1938, his socialist government fell and he was removed from office. In foreign policy, his government was torn between the traditional anti-militarism of the French Left and the urgency of the rising threat of Nazi Germany.

Many historians judge the Popular Front a failure in terms of economics, foreign policy, and long-term stability. "Disappointment and failure," says Jackson, "was the legacy of the Popular Front." There is general agreement that at first it created enormous excitement and expectation on the left, but in the end it failed to live up to its promise.

The new government led by Édouard Daladier cooperated with Britain. Despite being on the opposite sides of the ideological divide, starting on 14 April 1938 the Conservative MP Winston Churchill started a correspondence with Blum, sending him a series of letters written in his idiosyncratic French, encouraging him to support rearmament and oppose appeasement. During the Sudetenland crisis of 1938, Daladier accepted the offer of the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain to serve as an "honest broker" in an attempt to find a compromise. Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler at a summit at Berchtesgaden where he agreed that the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia would be transferred to Germany. At a subsequent Anglo-German summit at Bad Godesberg, Hitler rejected Chamberlain's plan over a secondary issue as he demanded that the Sudetenland be transferred to Germany before 1 October 1938 while the Anglo-French plan called for a transfer to occur after 1 October. For a time in September 1938, it appeared that Europe was on brink of a war again. The fact that that issue at stake was only a secondary issue, namely the timetable for transferring the Sudetenland, after the primary issue had been settled struck many as bizarre.

When Blum learned on 28 September that an emergency summit would be held in Munich the next day to resolve the crisis, he wrote that felt "an immense response of joy and hope". On 29 September, Blum wrote in an editorial in Le Populaire newspaper: " The Munich meeting is an armful of tinder thrown on a sacred flame at the very moment the flame was flickering and threatening to go out". The Munich Agreement that ended the crisis was a compromise as it was affirmed that the Sudetenland would be transferred to Germany but only after 1 October, albeit on a schedule that favored the German demand to have the Sudetenland "go home to the Reich" as soon as possible. When the Munich Agreement was signed on 30 September 1938, Blum wrote that he felt "soulagement honteux" ("shameful relief") as he wrote that he was happy that France would not be going to war with Germany, but he felt ashamed of an agreement that favored Germany at the expense of Czechoslovakia. On 1 October 1938, Blum wrote in Le Populaire: "There is not a woman and a man to refuse MM. Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier their rightful tribute of gratitude. War is avoided. The scourge recedes. Life can become natural again. One can resume one's work and sleep again. One can enjoy the beauty of an autumn sun. How would it be possible for me not to understand this sense of deliverance when I feel it myself?"

The Munich Agreement badly split the Socialists into a pacifistic antiwar group that supported the agreement vs. an antifascist group that was opposed, and Blum struggled to find a compromise that would avoid splitting the Socialists. The debate was also made more difficult as Blum faced accusations that because he was a Jew that he wanted a war with Germany for the sake of German Jews instead of French national interests, which explained Blum's reluctance to be appear to be too anti-German and pro-war. During the vote on the Munich Agreement in the Chambre des députés on 4 October 1938, Blum voted for the Munich Agreement. During the debate on the Munich Agreement, Blum declared: "This deeply felt and impassioned will for peace cannot lead a people to accept everything; on the contrary, it strengthens the resolve to struggle, to sacrifice itself, if necessary for independence and freedom, it does not abolish the distinction what is just and unjust". Blum's contorted position of voting for the Munich Agreement, but being opposed to further appeasement was largely an attempt to hold together the Socialists. In the months that followed, Blum became more critical of the "men of Munich". The principal object of his criticism was not Daladier-whom he knew to be a reluctant appeaser-but rather the foreign minister, Georges Bonnet. Bonnet was known to be the advocate of some sort of Franco-German understanding under which France would recognize Eastern Europe as being in the German sphere of influence and abandon all of France's allies in Eastern Europe. Blum focused his criticism on Bonnet as the main advocate of appeasement in the cabinet.

In an attempt to improve productivity in the French armament industry, especially its aviation industry, Finance Minister Paul Reynaud, supported by Daladier, brought in a series of sweeping laws that undid much of the Popular Front's economic policies, most notably ending the 48 hour work week. Blum joined forces with the Communists in opposing the Daladier government's economic policies, and supported the general strike called by the Communists on 30 November 1938. Daladier called out the French Army to operate essential services and had the French police use tear gas to evict striking workers at the Renault works. The use of the military to operate essential services while sending out the police to arrest the strike leaders broke the general strike. In a speech, Blum accused Daladier of using repressive methods to crush the French working class and revert France back to the pre-1936 economic system. Complicating matters was the beginning of an acute crisis in Italo-French relations. On 30 November 1938-the same day as the general strike-a carefully staged "spontaneous" demonstration organized by the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano took place in the Italian Chamber of Deputies where on cue all of the deputies rose up to shout "Tunis, Corsica, Nice, Savoy!" Benito Mussolini had intended to use what he called "Sudeten methods" on France as the Italian media started a violent anti-French campaign demanding that France cede Corsica, Nice, Savoy and Tunisia to Italy. Daladier responded with a series of resolute speeches on French radio where he rejected all of the Italian demands, which won him much popularity in France. From the viewpoint of Blum, being opposed to Daladier at a time when he won himself many accolades as the defender of France's territorial integrity against Italy was politically difficult. At the next session of the Chambre des députés on 9 December 1938, the Popular Front formally came to an end as Daladier chose to base his majority of the parties of the right and center. Despite the end of the Popular Front, Blum did not press for a vote of no-confidence or new elections. Blum believed that Daladier would win an election if one was called, and the Socialists did not vote for a Communist motion of no-confidence in the Daladier government.

At a Socialist Party congress in Montrouge in December 1938, Blum called upon his party to abandon pacifism and support French rearmament. Blum argued that the idea championed by his mentor Jaurès of general strikes in all European nations to stop a war was no longer possible as the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party in Germany had been long since banned, and there was no possibility of a general strike in the Reich to stop a war. In a speech delivered on 27 December 1938, Blum accused the governments of Germany, Italy and Japan of being committed to policies of ultra-aggressive imperialism and argued that the way to stop another world war was rearmament and an alliance of all the states threatened by the Axis powers. Blum stated that he did not want a war, but he favored rearmament to avoid the "atrocious choice between submission and war". On 28 December, the congress ended with 4,332 Socialist delegates voting for Blum's call for rearmament vs. 2,837 votes for Paul Faure's pacifist motion opposing rearmament and another 1,014 delegates who chose to abstain. Through Blum had triumphed at the Montrouge congress, the results of the vote showed a significant element of the Socialist Party opposed to or at least lukewarm about rearmament. On 10 February 1939, Blum met with the Soviet ambassador in Paris, Jakob Suritz, where he told him of his belief that Daladier and Bonnet were leading France "to a new Sedan". Suritz described Blum as morose and disconsolate as he noted that Blum seemed convinced that France was heading towards a catastrophe without being willing to do anything to stop it.

During the Danzig crisis of 1939, Blum supported the measures taken by Britain and France to "contain" Germany and deter the Reich from invading Poland. The Danzig crisis forced Blum into the ambivalent position of supporting the foreign policy of the Daladier government while opposing its economic and social policies. Blum spoke in favor of greater military spending as he noted in an editorial in Le Populaire on 1 April 1939: "This is the state which the dictators have led Europe. For us Socialists, for us pacifists, the appeal to force is today the appeal for peace". When U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public letter to Hitler on 14 April 1939, asking him to promise to not threaten his neighbors, Blum expressed hope that this might be a solution for the crisis. However, in a brutal speech to the Reichstag on 28 April 1939, Hitler publicly mocked Roosevelt's appeal. Blum's support for Roosevelt's letter was the only time in the crisis that he expressed support for a measure of reconciliation with Germany.

During the crisis, Blum was greatly alarmed at the attitude of the British Labour Party, which were stoutly opposed to peacetime conscription, The Labour Party were planning to make the prospect of peacetime conscription into an election issue (a general election was expected in Britain in 1939 or 1940), which the Chamberlain government gave as the major reason for opposing peacetime conscription. Blum wrote to several Labour leaders as one Socialist to another, urging that Labour support peacetime conscription as necessary to resist Germany. Blum argued that France needed the "continental commitment" from Britain (i.e. send a large expeditionary force to France), which in turn required peacetime conscription as the current system of an all-volunteer army would never suffice for the "continental commitment". Blum stated in a public letter to the Labour Party in Le Populaire on 27 April 1939 that he did not like the Chamberlain government, but on the issue of peacetime conscription: "I do not hesitate to state to my Labour comrades my deepest conviction that at very moment at which I write, conscription in England is one of the capital acts upon which the peace of the world depends". Blum visited London to lobby the Labour leaders to support peacetime conscription, and met Chamberlain during the same visit. In a speech in the House of Commons on 11 May 1939, Chamberlain stated: "I had the opportunity yesterday of exchanging a few words with M. Blum, the French Socialist leader and former Prime Minister, and he said to me that in his view, and in the view of all the Socialist friends he had talked to, that there was only one danger of war in Europe, and that was a real one: It was that the impression should get about that Great Britain and France were not in earnest, and that they could not be relied upon to carry out their promises. If that there were so, no greater, no more deadly mistake could be made-and if it would be a frightful thing if Europe were to be plunged into war on the account of a misunderstanding. In many minds, the danger spot today is Danzig...if an attempt were made to change the situation by force in such a way as to threaten Polish independence, they would inevitably start a general conflagration in which this country would be involved." Upon his return to Paris, Blum gave a speech in the Chambre des députés that called upon France to stand by its alliance with Poland and in an implicit criticism of Bonnet called upon France "to fulfill without equivocation and without fail its pledges of mutual assurance and guarantee".

Blum supported the plans for a "peace front" to unite Britain, France and the Soviet Union with the aim of deterring Germany from invading Poland. Knowing that the major issue that was blocking the "peace front" talks was the demand by Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov for the Red Army to have transit rights into Poland in the event of a German invasion, which Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Józef Beck was utterly opposed to granting, Blum expressed much anger in his editorials as he wrote in an editorial on 25 June 1939 there was "not a day, not an hour to lose" as he urged Beck to concede on the transit rights issue. On 22 August 1939, Blum expressed hope in an editorial in Le Populaire that the "clouds of pessimism" would soon disappear as he asserted that the "peace front" would soon be in existence, which would in turn would deter the Reich from invading Poland. The next day, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived in Moscow to sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. On 24 August 1939, Blum wrote in an editorial that the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact was "a truly extraordinary event, almost incredible, one is dumbfounded by the blow". In his editorial, Blum strongly condemned Joseph Stalin for the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact as he wrote: "One would hardly be able to demonstrate greater audacity, scorn for world opinion and defiance of public morality". Blum wrote that his reaction to the famous photograph of Ribbentrop and Molotov signing the pact in the Kremlin while being watched by a smiling Stalin that: "I would try in vain to conceal my stupefaction". Blum used the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact to try to have French Communists to break with the Comintern as he urged the Communists to "become free men again" by ceasing to follow the orders of Moscow. Though Blum did not seriously expect the French Communists to break with Moscow, he did have hopes of winning the Communist voters over to the Socialists, whom he presented as the patriotic party committed to both socialism and France's interests.

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 2 September 1939, Blum voted in the Chambre des députés for war credits to the government and urged the government to stand by its alliance with Poland. Daladier declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. In an editorial in Le Populaire on 3 September 1939, Blum wrote: "Never was the violence more flagrant on one hand, and never was the will for peace more certain and more tenacious on the other". Poland was quickly defeated, and eight months of Phoney War followed, with little or no military movement in Western Europe. Blum argued that the existing cabinet was too awkward and urged France to copy the British example of an elite "war cabinet" that consisted of the key ministers. In the fall of 1939, Blum met with the Finance Minister Paul Reynaud and his protégé, Colonel Charles de Gaulle, to criticize Daladier's conduct of the war. Despite his support for the war, Blum criticized Daladier for banning the French Communist Party after the party declared its opposition to the war. During the Winter War, Blum praised Finland for its "sublime resistance" to the Soviet Union. Blum called the Soviet aggression against Finland a "crime" and accused Stalin of being an imperialist disguised as a Communist and stated that Stalin was the heir of Peter the Great, not Vladimir Lenin. In February 1940, the American Undersecretary of State, Sumner Welles, visited Paris as part of a peace mission on behalf of President Roosevelt. Blum met with Welles to tell him that he was wasting his time as no peace on reasonable terms was possible with Hitler. The defeat of Finland led to the fall of Daladier who had promised French aid to the Finns. Blum declared his support for the new Reynaud government, which promised to prosecute the war more vigorously.

On 10 May 1940, the Wehrmacht launched the Manstein variant of Fall Gelb ("Case Yellow") and invaded France via Belgium to by-pass the Maginot line. Blum noted bitterly that Nazi Germany no more respected Belgian neutrality in 1940 than the German Empire had done in 1914, and Belgium's neutral status allowed the Wehrmacht a head start in the invasion. The same day saw the fall of the Chamberlain government with Winston Churchill forming a new coalition government in London. Blum, in an editorial in Le Populaire, hailed the new Churchill government as a positive step. Blum had been invited before Fall Gelb to attend a Labour Party congress, and was especially keen to go as several of the Labour leaders were now cabinet ministers. Before leaving France, Reynaud met with Blum to tell him that the Wehrmacht was pressing very hard on the front on the Meuse river as Reynauld told him: "It is on the Meuse that we must at this moment with all our strength together defend our common safety". On 13–14 May 1940, Blum was in Bournemouth to attend the Labour Party congress. At the Bournemouth congress, Blum was cheered as a great socialist. As Blum spoke no English, he gave a short speech in French where he declared: "The war we are waging against Germany is not a capitalist war. I do not know what would become of capitalism if Hitler were to win the war, but I do know what would become of socialism if Germany were victorious. Wherever the motorized Attila has passed, every movement and institution created by the workers has been destroyed". On 15 May, Labour leader Clement Attlee did his best to tell Blum in his broken French that the Wehrmacht had won the Second Battle of Sedan and smashed its way through the French lines along the Meuse river, which came as a considerable shock once Blum finally understood what Attlee was trying to say.

Blum returned to Paris at once, and met Reynaud who told him that he was bringing in Marshal Philippe Pétain into his cabinet to reassure French public opinion. Blum did not see the appointment of Pétain-whom he called "the most noblest, the most human of our military chiefs"-as a problem. Pétain, the victor of the Battle of Verdun in 1916 was a beloved and deeply respected figure in France where he was seen as the greatest living French war hero and Reynaud saw Pétain in his cabinet as way to reassure the public. Blum later wrote that he had been in "illusion" about Pétain who immediately became the loudest voice of defeatism in the cabinet. Likewise, he did not oppose the appointment of Marshal Maxime Weygand as the new commander-in-chief to replace Maurice Gamelin, which he came to regret. Blum stated that he felt that Reynaud was correct to sack Gamelin-a soldier known for his loyalty to the republic-as he felt that Gemalin had lost control of the situation and that he hoped Weygand would restore France's fortunes. He was later to say that had he been aware that Weygand's loyalty to the republic was questionable, he would have been opposed to his appointment. Blum stated that in May 1940 that he lived "between the cruelest anguish and the most ardent hopes". Blum harbored hopes that just as in 1914 when Germany was initially victorious, but defeated in the Battle of the Marne that the French and the British would rally to stop the Wehrmacht before it was too late. Instead of heading for Paris as expected, the Wehrmacht headed towards the sea as part of a giant encirclement as Gamelin had sent the best divisions of the French Army along with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into Belgium to resist what he believed to be the main German blow. On 21 May 1940, the Wehrmacht reached the sea, cutting off the BEF, the elite of the French armies and what was left of the Belgian army. Blum used Le Populaire to argue that the Allies should break out of the encirclement to link up with the rest of the French armies, but the attempts to do so were unsuccessful. The BEF evacuated from Dunkirk, taking many French soldiers along. After the Dunkirk evacuation which ended with the fall of Dunkirk on 4 June, the Wehrmacht turned south towards Paris. When the government left Paris for Bordeaux on 10 June, Blum was not informed and found himself unable to speak to a person in authority. Blum met with the American ambassador, William Christian Bullitt Jr., and approved of his decision to remain in Paris. In retrospect, Blum stated that it was a mistake for the very popular Bullitt-who had much influence with the French cabinet-to remain in Paris as Bullitt could have used his influence to booster Reynaud against Pétain. Blum left Paris and made his way past vast columns of refugees to Bordeaux. On 14 June, the Wehrmacht took Paris.

In Bordeaux, Reynaud favored having the government relocate to Algiers (Algeria was considered an integral part of France) to continue the war while Pétain demanded an armistice. The Interior Minister, Georges Mandel, asked Blum to use his influence to persuade several wavering Socialist ministers to back the Algeria option. On 16 June, Reynaud was ousted as the majority of the cabinet rejected the Algeria option and Pétain formed the new government with a mandate to ask for an armistice. Blum allowed two Socialists to join Pétain's cabinet. Pétain's first act as premier was to ask for an armistice; Blum did not attach much importance to Pétain's request as he believed that Hitler would ask for armistice terms so harsh that Pétain would reject them and the government would relocate to Algiers. The notion that Pétain might actually accept Hitler's armistice terms did not occur to Blum at the time. Blum was so convinced that the government was going to Algiers that on 19 June 1940 he booked a passage on the ship SS Massilia that was to take the members of Assemblée nationale to Algiers. Blum missed the Massilia owing to confusion about where the Massilia was leaving as he had been told that the port of departure was Perpignan, which was changed at the last moment to Bordeaux. Just after the Massilia set sail for Algiers, Blum learned that the government was not going to Algiers after all and that Pétain had decided to sign an armistice. Blum was told by the police to leave Bordeaux for his own safety as right-wing extremists were parading though the streets and denouncing those they deemed responsible for declaration of war on Germany, causing him to go to Toulouse, where he stayed with Vincent Auriol. The Pétain government signed an armistice that gave Germany full control over much of France, with a rump Vichy government in control of the remainder as well as of the French colonial empire and the French Navy. Blum was in Toulouse when he read the news of the armistice in the Dépêche de Toulouse on 22 June, which he remembered as one of the blackest days of his life as he recalled: "I read, literally, without believing my eyes". Blum thought that the armistice was especially "abominable" because it required the French police to round up and return to the Reich all anti-Nazi German and Austrian exiles living in France, which he noted violated the traditional French custom of asylum. One of Blum's friends, Rudolf Hilferding, a prominent Jewish Social Democratic leader who had fled to France in 1933 was under the terms of the armistice arrested by the French police and returned to German custody, where he was beaten to death.

Blum spent the next ten days with Auriol and his family, where he refused their counsel to leave France. The Vice Premier in Pétain's cabinet, Pierre Laval called for the Assemblée nationale to meet in the new temporary capital of Vichy (Bordeaux had been assigned to the German occupation zone) to vote to give Pétain dictatorial powers. The task of lobbying the politicians was considered to be too vulgar by Pétain who assigned that mission to Laval. Blum arrived in Vichy on the afternoon of 4 July 1940. At the Petit Casino, which served as the meeting place for the "informational sessions" held by Laval, Blum later that day engaged in a vigorous debate with Laval who argued that the "mad, criminal war" proved that the constitutional changes he was championing were necessary. In response, Blum stated that it was "France that wanted the war" in September 1939 as he noted the majority of the cabinet had decided to honor the alliance with Poland. During the same "informational session", Laval told Blum that Le Populaire was banned as a threat to public order. Blum noted that he had known Laval since 1915, but on that day in 1940 he had seen him as never before as Laval was "bloated with incredible pride...handing out orders without appeal...visibly trying himself out in the role of a despot". On 8 July 1940, Blum called for a meeting of all the Socialist deputies and senators to discuss how to resist Laval's constitutional changes. Blum noted that to change the constitution required both houses of the Assemblée nationale to meet together, which led him to decide that the Socialist deputies and senators should vote against a joint session of the Assemblée nationale. Much to Blum's surprise, a number of Socialist deputies and senators rejected his plan and agreed for a joint session of the Assemblée nationale as they argued that the Socialists should instead ask for a referendum on any constitutional changes.