Pierre Mendès-France

Pierre Mendès-France (1907-1982), French premier from 1954 to 1955. Mendès-France was born in Paris. Educated at the University of Paris, he practiced law and was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies as a Radical-Socialist at the age of 25. In 1938 he was undersecretary of the treasury. During World War II he served in Syria in 1939; after France's defeat he was imprisoned for a time but escaped to London, where he joined the Free French air force and became financial adviser to General Charles de Gaulle.

Following the establishment in 1946 of the Fourth Republic, Mendès-France served in the National Assembly for the Radical Party, in which he opposed French financial policy. He advocated French disengagement in Indochina, and in 1954 as premier he negotiated the armistice that led to French withdrawal from the region. He also won approval by the French National Assembly for a British plan to allow gradual German rearmament. Mendès-France was forced to resign in February 1955 because of dissatisfaction with his proposal to grant concessions to nationalists in French North Africa. He unsuccessfully tried to regain the premiership in the 1969 French national elections. He wrote A Modern French Republic (1962; translated 1963).