Pierre Laval

Pierre Laval (1883-1945), French politician, a member of the Vichy government of German-occupied France during World War II (1939-1945) and a leader in efforts to collaborate with Germany. He was born in Châteldon, Puy-de-Dôme Department, and educated at the Law School of the University of Paris. In 1914 he was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies for Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris. He served in World War I (1914-1918) and in 1924 was reelected to the chamber. In the following year he was appointed minister of public works in the cabinet of Premier Paul Painlevé and subsequently held various cabinet posts.

From 1931 to 1932 Laval was premier and minister of foreign affairs. He visited Washington, D.C., in 1931, and he negotiated a moratorium on the French World War I debt to the United States. After serving as minister of labor in 1932, Laval held the ministry of foreign affairs from 1934 to 1935, and in that capacity he arranged a mutual military assistance pact with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In June 1935 he once more became premier and minister of foreign affairs, and sponsored, with Sir Samuel Hoare, British secretary for foreign affairs, the so-called Hoare-Laval Treaty. This treaty called on Ethiopia to cede outright a large portion of its territory to Fascist Italy. The treaty aroused a storm of public indignation and was speedily repudiated in both Paris and London; Hoare was forced to resign, and the Laval government fell in January 1936.

Following the defeat of France by Germany in June 1940, Laval, who had been a strong proponent of peace at any price, became deputy prime minister of the right-wing provisional government of France, with its capital at Vichy, and chief aide to the premier, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, who concluded an armistice with Germany. In December 1940 Laval was dismissed because Pétain feared that Laval would oust him. Two years later Laval was placed in charge of the Vichy government at Germany's insistence. Once in office he adopted a policy of complete collaboration with the Axis powers. He instituted measures to abolish the last vestiges of the parliamentary system and organized the Vichy government along the totalitarian lines of National Socialist Germany. He aided Germany by sending French laborers to work in German industries and by rounding up French, Spanish, and Eastern European Jews and sending them to Germany. After the liberation of France, a trial found him guilty of plotting against the state and of collaborating with the enemy. Laval was executed in Fresnes Prison, in Paris.