146 Facts About Georges Bonnet

Georges Bonnet's father worked at the Cour de cassation and used his wealth to give his son the best education that money could buy in France.

Georges Bonnet was educated the elite Lycee Henri IV, Ecole superieure des hautes etudes and Ecole des sciences politiques.

Georges Bonnet studied law and political science at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques and University of Paris.

Georges Bonnet began his career as an auditeur at the Conseil d'Etat.

Georges Bonnet's wife's nickname was a French pun on the word for brassiere and was both a reference to Madame Georges Bonnet and to the size of her breasts.

Georges Bonnet served as the editor on Alfred de Tarde's book L'ame du soldat.

Georges Bonnet seemed to have been jealous of the toughness of the ordinary French soldiers, who lived under conditions that he could never accept.

Georges Bonnet often recounted the story of a poilu, named Lauteau, a happily married man with two children, who was killed while displaying a reckless disregard for his own life while he was repairing a telephone wire that had been severed by German artillery.

Georges Bonnet used the story of Lauteau as an example of the Union sacree in action, as he argued in his 1919 book Lettres a un bourgeois de 1914 that it was love of la patrie that had inspired the poilus to resist.

In 1919, Georges Bonnet served as a secretary to the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and wrote a book, Lettres a un bourgeois de 1914, that called for widespread social reforms.

The British historian Anthony Adamthwaite noted that Lettres a un bourgeois de 1914 was the last serious interest that Georges Bonnet was to display in social reform.

Georges Bonnet served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1924 to 1928 and again from 1929 to 1940.

Georges Bonnet was appointed undersecretary of state in 1925, the first in a series of high ministerial positions throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.

Georges Bonnet joined the group, as he was serving as the director of the Paris-based Institution of Intellectual Co-Operation, and the League wanted someone outside of the educational system to serve as the chairman of the group.

In 1932, Georges Bonnet headed the French delegation at the Lausanne Conference, where he first met Franz von Papen, who was serving as the German chancellor.

In 1933, Bonnet was a prominent member of the French delegation to the London Conference and was a leading critic of President Franklin D Roosevelt's actions during the conference.

In 1936, Georges Bonnet emerged as the leader of 18 Radical deputies who objected to their party's participation in the Popular Front.

Georges Bonnet was regarded as the leader of the right wing of the Radical Socialist party, which, despite its name, was neither radical nor socialist.

Georges Bonnet is extremely intelligent and competent on economic and financial matters, but he's not a man of character.

On 28 June 1937, Georges Bonnet returned to France when Premier Camille Chautemps appointed him Finance Minister.

Georges Bonnet felt that the costs of the arms race with Germany were such that it was better for France to reach an understanding that might end the arms race than continue to spend gargantuan sums on the military.

Besides the economic problems associated with budgetary stability and his attempts to maintain the value of the franc against currency speculation, Georges Bonnet was concerned with the social conflict caused by the need for increased taxation and the decreased social services to pay for arms.

Georges Bonnet regarded himself as a "realist", and his thinking on foreign policy tended to be coloured in equal measure by pragmatism and insularity.

In January 1938, after the fall of Chautemps's government, Georges Bonnet made a serious effort to form a new government but in the end had to content himself with being appointed Minister of State.

One, the "peace lobby" led by Georges Bonnet, felt that France could not afford an arms race with Nazi Germany and sought a detente with the Reich.

The secretary-general of the Quai d'Orsay, Alexis St Leger, later wrote that of the many foreign ministers he served, Georges Bonnet was the worst, and he described Georges Bonnet as a man committed to appeasement.

Daladier's thought if Georges Bonnet were outside of the Cabinet, his ability to engage in intrigues to break up the Popular Front and seize the premiership for himself would be correspondingly increased.

The Radical Socialist Party, which had a largely-lower-middle class membership, was divided between a left-liberal wing associated with Daladier that was willing to accept participation in the Popular Front as a way to defend France from fascism both at home and abroad and a right-wing "neo-radical" wing that was associated with Georges Bonnet and saw the participation in the Popular Front as a betrayal of the party's traditional defence of private property and capitalism.

An additional complication in the Daladier-Georges Bonnet relationship was posed by Georges Bonnet's desire for the premiership, which gradually led to a breakdown with his once warm relations with Daladier.

Georges Bonnet was extremely critical of what he regarded as the "warmongers" of the Quai d'Orsay, and from the very beginning of his time as Foreign Minister, he tended to exclude his senior officials from the decision-making progress and preferred instead to concentrate authority in his own hands.

In Georges Bonnet's opinion, the Franco-Czechoslovak Treaty of 1924 committing France to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia in the event of a German invasion was a millstone and could lead France into a disastrous war with Germany.

Georges Bonnet believed that the best course for France in 1938 was to pressure the Czechoslovak government into conceding to German demands to prevent a Franco-German war.

Between 27 and 29 April 1938, Georges Bonnet visited London with Daladier for meetings with Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax to discuss the possibility of a German-Czechoslovak war breaking out and what the two governments could do to stop such a war.

That led to sharp complaints from the British that Georges Bonnet should do more to apply pressure on Benes.

Bonnet's great rival, Colonial Minister Georges Mandel allowed the Soviet arms to be transshipped via French Indochina over the intense protests of Bonnet, who warned him that the Japanese would invade French Indochina in response.

Between 9 and 14 May 1938, Georges Bonnet attended the spring sessions of the League of Nations in Geneva.

Meanwhile, Georges Bonnet was informed by the Polish and Romanian delegations at the League that if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, they would refuse the Red Army transit rights to Czechoslovakia's aid and that any Soviet violation of their neutrality would be resisted with force.

Adamthwaite wrote if the dispatches that Welczeck were sending back to Berlin recording what Georges Bonnet had told him had been public knowledge in France in 1938, Georges Bonnet would almost certainly would have been forced to resign in disgrace.

Georges Bonnet took "copious notes" on the British message and stated that "if Czechoslovakia were really unreasonable, the French Government might well declare that France considered herself released from her bond".

On 25 May 1938, Georges Bonnet told Welczeck that France would honour her alliance with Czechoslovakia if Germany invaded that nation, and he highlighted his main foreign policy goals when he declared that "if the problem of the minorities in Czechoslovakia was settled peacefully, economic and disarmament problems might be considered".

Welczeck reported to Berlin on 25 May 1938 that Georges Bonnet had told him during the same meeting that France "recognised the effort" made by German to prevent the May Crisis from turning into a war.

Georges Bonnet was not interested in Beck's offer and did not reply.

Georges Bonnet had his friend, the journalist Jules Saurerwein, tell Benes in an interview: "Victory is not a state that endures forever".

Daladier was for continuing arms shipments to the Spanish Republicans as long as the Italian forces were in Spain, but Georges Bonnet argued for ending arms supplies as a way of improving relations with Italy and even told Phipps that his country should "lay great stress with Daladier on the importance to the Pyrenees frontier remaining closed".

On 22 August 1938, Georges Bonnet had Charles Corbin, the French Ambassador in London, press for an explicit British commitment to come to France's side in the event of war breaking out in Central Europe and use the ensuing British refusal as a reason to justify France's lack of intervention in a possible German-Czechoslovak conflict.

On 9 August 1938, Welczeck reported to Berlin that Georges Bonnet had told him earlier that day that "we [the French] would have to go to the extreme limits of compromise in the Sudeten German question, even though this did not suit the Czechs".

Georges Bonnet went on to recommend informal contacts via the French military and air attaches in Moscow to find out what forces the Soviets planned to send to Czechoslovakia and finally to learn the answer to the long-sought question: the precise route that the Red Army planned to take on its way to Czechoslovakia.

Georges Bonnet promised to use the influence of the Quai d'Orsay to bring in the general staffs of Poland and Romania.

Only at the end would Georges Bonnet reveal what Thomas called the "sting in the tail": he planned to keep the British government fully informed and knew very well that the Chamberlain government would object to even the limited informal talks that the memo had just proposed.

In early September 1938, as part of his effort to prevent war by a mixture of threat and conciliation, Georges Bonnet had a series of meetings with Welczeck and told him that France would honour the terms of the Franco-Czechoslovak treaty if the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia but insisted that his government was quite open to a compromise solution.

On 2 September 1938, Georges Bonnet informed Welczeck, "France was definitely going to stand by its commitments".

Georges Bonnet told Phipps, "I repeated all this with emotion to Sir Eric Phipps telling him that at no price should we allow ourselves to be involved in war without having weighted all the consequences and without having measured in particular the state of our military forces".

Georges Bonnet went on to advocate as his preferred solution to the crisis the neutralization of Czechoslovakia with wide-ranging autonomy for the Sudetenland, but he was prepared as a "last resort" to accept a plebiscite on the Sudetenlanders joining Germany.

On his return to Paris, in a meeting with the Czechoslovak minister to France, Stefan Osusky, Georges Bonnet was very vehement for Prague to agree at once to the Anglo-French plan that had been agreed to in London.

The man Georges Bonnet most feared in September 1938 was Litvinov, who he was convinced would make an offer of Soviet support, which would ensure that Benes rejected the Anglo-French peace plan that just been imposed on him.

In that regard, Georges Bonnet especially valued the contribution of his close friend Bassee, who served as the political director of the Havas news agency.

Georges Bonnet saw France as primarily as a "Mediterranean" nation, which should not be involved in Eastern Europe, and believed that the Munich Agreement was the beginning of a disengagement from Eastern Europe, which would allow France to focus on its colonial empire and its interests in the Mediterranean.

In turn, Massigli accused Georges Bonnet of seeking to alter the documentary record in his favour by falsifying and burning documents.

On 24 October 1938, Georges Bonnet had Massigli sacked as the Quai d'Orsay's Political Director and exiled him by having him serve as Ambassador to Turkey.

Massiglii first learnt that Georges Bonnet had fired him by reading his morning newspaper.

Georges Bonnet had wanted to sack the Quai d'Orsay's Secretary-General Alexis Saint-Leger Leger and replace him with a man more in tune with his policies, but Saint-Leger Leger's increasing friendship with Daladier served to protect him.

On 12 October 1938, Georges Bonnet told Phipps that he envisioned "some revision of France's engagements towards Russia and Poland".

When Francois-Poncet reported to Paris Hitler's favourable attitude towards such a declaration and his willingness to send Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Paris to sign the proposed declaration, Georges Bonnet enthusiastically embraced the idea and felt that such a declaration might open the way for a series of economic and cultural agreements that would end forever the prospect of another Franco-German war.

In October 1938, Georges Bonnet became increasingly preoccupied with the subject of Jewish refugees from Germany who were arriving in France in increasing numbers, and sought a "friendly settlement" with Germany.

In November 1938, Chamberlain and Halifax visited Paris, where Georges Bonnet told them that he was "much preoccupied with the question of Jewish immigration into France".

On 31 October 1938, Georges Bonnet informed Welczeck that he wanted to see the German draft of the Declaration of Franco-German Friendship in the near future, as he wanted to sign the declaration before the end of 1938.

Georges Bonnet warned Welczeck that the French people had celebrated the Munich Agreement, which prevented a world war in 1938, but French public opinion was turning against the Munich Agreement with the feeling being that France had sacrificed too much in exchange for nothing in return.

Georges Bonnet expressed his concerns about the declaration being signed before the coming visit of Chamberlain to Paris on 24 November 1938 and stated that he wanted to avoid the impression that "the agreement had been made under British tutelage".

The anti-appeasement French political columnist Andre Geraud, who wrote under the pen-name Pertinax, stated that Georges Bonnet pursued only the line "of least resistance".

Georges Bonnet did a lot of really dirty work in 1938.

Lord Halifax wrote in response to Vansittart's memo: "I am disposed to think but I know it is a minority view that M Bonnet is not so black as he is often painted".

The editor of Le Petit Parisien newspaper, Elie J Bois, felt that Bonnet had "the makings of a good, perhaps a great, foreign minister".

On 25 November 1938, Georges Bonnet informed the French Ambassador to Poland, Leon Noel, that France should find an excuse for terminating the 1921 Franco-Polish alliance, but found that his views on that issue created considerable opposition within the Quai d'Orsay, which was argued that Poland was too valuable an ally to be abandoned, and if France renounced the Polish alliance, Warsaw would align herself with Berlin.

On 15 December 1938, Bonnet gave his account of his meeting with Ribbentrop at the Hotel Crillon on 7 December 1938 to Edwin C Wilson, the counsellor of the American embassy, in which he mentioned no moral objections to Nazi policies and instead asked for Germany to be "more reasonable".

In January 1939, Georges Bonnet commissioned a study for the French Cabinet that concluded that the 1935 Franco-Soviet alliance was now defunct, and there were no grounds for hope about help from the Soviet Union.

Besides seeking to end the cordon sanitaire, Georges Bonnet's major initiative in foreign policy after Munich was a series of economic agreements that he sought to negotiate with the Germans.

In January 1939, a pro-appeasement British newspaper proprietor, Kenneth de Courcy, reported after a visit to Paris: "Monsieur Georges Bonnet seems to be generally distrusted by most Frenchmen of the centre and right".

However, the fiercest criticism of Georges Bonnet came from the French left, which saw him as a someone who was all too willing to make deals with fascist regimes.

However, before any decisions were made in Paris about accepting the Italian demands, the news of Baudoin's secret visit was leaked to the French press, which forced Georges Bonnet to disavow him.

The continuing feud between Massigli and Georges Bonnet was reflected in Georges Bonnet's habit of refusing Massigli negotiating instructions for weeks on end to place Massigli in an embarrassing situation during his talks with the Turks.

On 20 January 1939, Georges Bonnet had a meeting with the former president of Mexico, Francisco Leon de la Barra, who was living in exile in Paris, and asked him to serve as an unofficial French diplomat in talks with the Spanish Nationalists.

Georges Bonnet told Berard to inform General Francisco Gomez-Jordana Sousa, the Nationalist Foreign Minister, that if Franco was willing to promise that all German and Italian forces were to be withdrawn after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Paris would recognise the Nationalists.

The major disputes during the talks between Berard and Jourdana were if the recognition of the Burgos government would be de jure, as Franco wanted, or de facto, as Georges Bonnet wanted, and if Franco would promise to remain neutral in a Franco-German war.

Much to the relief of Georges Bonnet, Franco kept his word about ensuring the withdrawal of Axis forces from Spanish territory, especially the departure of the Italians from the Balearic Islands.

On 24 January 1939, Georges Bonnet informed Welczeck that a speech that he was going to make before the Chamber of Deputies to affirm France's willingness to stand by its alliances in Eastern Europe "had been framed for domestic consumption".

Georges Bonnet read out to Welczeck several excerpts from the speech he was going to give and asked the ambassador to tell Ribbentrop not to take his speech literally.

That scare was combined with rumours that Georges Bonnet was secretly attempting to negotiate a Franco-German "special relationship", which might leave Britain facing a hostile Germany without any allies with the large armies that Britain lacked.

In March 1939, after the German destruction of the rump state of Czecho-Slovakia and the proclamation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Georges Bonnet had Herve Alphand of the Ministry of Commerce, who was in Berlin to negotiate a trade treaty, recalled in protest.

Ties between Daladier and Georges Bonnet were strained when in protest over the German coup, Daladier ordered the recall of Robert Coulondre, the French Ambassador to Germany, without consulting Georges Bonnet, who was much offended by Daladier's act.

Georges Bonnet argued that Britain should take the lead in persuading the Poles to come to Romania's aid and suggested that if Poland was involved, perhaps the Romanians might be persuaded to accept Soviet aid as well.

On 23 March 1939, Lebrun was having lunch with the royal family at Windsor Castle when Georges Bonnet had another meeting with Lord Halifax and mentioned that he had received a series of messages from Francois-Poncet.

Georges Bonnet claimed that it would create a highly-negative impression on Mussolini and would hamper efforts to detach him from his alignment with Germany if Britain and France aligned themselves with only the Soviet Union.

Georges Bonnet's statement was to lead the British government into considering the idea of making a "guarantee" of Polish independence as the best way of securing Polish support for Romania.

In that way, Georges Bonnet played a major if indirect role in the progress leading to the British "guarantee" of Poland on 31 March 1939.

Daladier was enraged with Georges Bonnet for giving his approval of the "guarantee", as he remarked to the French cabinet the next day: "the guarantee goes a long way, indeed further than our own alliance, because the decision to engage Britain's entire military strength will rest in Warsaw".

On 14 April 1939, Georges Bonnet had a meeting with Suritz and asked "in a form to be determined" for the Soviet Union to provide military support for Poland and Romania if they were attacked by Germany.

Georges Bonnet suggested to Surittz that an annex to the Franco-Soviet Pact of 1935 should be added to declare the Soviets would go to war if Germany attacked either Poland or Romania.

In particular, Georges Bonnet stated: "It was obvious that there had to be an agreement between the USSR and Romania or the USSR and Poland for the Franco-Soviet Pact to come usefully into play".

Georges Bonnet commented that he felt that it was time to "begin immediate discussions between France and the USSR in order to precisely determine the help the USSR could provide to Romania and Poland in the event of German aggression".

On 19 May 1939, Georges Bonnet met with Welczeck, who told him that the Reich did not want a war against France and attacked Britain for an alleged "encirclement" policy against Germany.

The French version had Georges Bonnet saying that France could not accept the use of force by Germany to resolve the Danzig crisis.

In contrast to his enthusiasm for improving ties with Moscow as the Danzig crisis began, Georges Bonnet felt the opposite about relations with Warsaw.

In May 1939, during talks in Paris with the Poles aimed at strengthening the political and military aspects of the Franco-Polish alliance, Georges Bonnet sabotaged the negotiations by bogging down the talks on the political accord on procedural details to ensure that no political accord was signed, which were the precondition for the military accords.

Georges Bonnet's sought to block the signing of the Franco-Polish political accord as a way of applying pressure on the Poles to grant the Soviets transit rights, because if the negotiations for the "grand alliance" failed, he did not wish to see France any more committed to Poland's defence.

Coulondre advised Georges Bonnet to make an unequivocal statement to Welczeck that France would stand by its alliance with Poland if Germany invaded, which Georges Bonnet ignored.

Daladier, in turn, ordered Georges Bonnet to make such a statement to Welczeck.

On 1 July 1939, Georges Bonnet told Welczeck that Germany should not try to unilaterally change the status of Danzig and that France would honour its alliance with Poland.

Besides working for the "peace front" with Britain and the Soviet Union, Georges Bonnet tried to enlist Turkey in the "peace front" in July 1939 by arranging for the French and the British treasuries to provide financial support to Ankara.

Georges Bonnet wrote to Halifax at the time, "We are reaching a critical moment, where we find it necessary to do everything possible to succeed".

Georges Bonnet's effort was blocked by Molotov, who stated that his government had no interest in issuing such a communique.

On 18 July 1939, Georges Bonnet had a discussion with Daladier in which he stated that he felt that Hitler was serious about going to war with Poland, and Georges Bonnet believed that the best solution would be for France to pressure Poland into allowing the Free City to "go home to the Reich" as the necessary price of peace.

Georges Bonnet recommended having France pressure Poland into returning the Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia, neither of which Hitler had yet demanded.

Georges Bonnet's preferred solution to the Danzig crisis was an international conference, and he stated that had a long conversation with Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, during his visit to Paris.

Georges Bonnet presented Henderson's views in a manner that implied that Henderson was speaking for London.

Georges Bonnet was not as quite sanguine as Daladier was about the "peace front", as he noted the issue of transit rights for the Red Army across Poland still had to be resolved, but he agreed that the "peace front" was the best way of deterring Hitler from war.

Georges Bonnet further maintained that his enemies within the Quai d'Orsay were St Leger, along with his friends, Coulondre and Corbin.

At a cabinet meeting on 22 August 1939, Georges Bonnet spoke against French mobilisation and argued that France should seek to find a way to end the alliance with Poland.

Georges Bonnet supported by St Leger-Leger and Daladier argued for making one more attempt to win the Soviet alliance.

Reynaud and Mandel both spoke for French mobilisation, which Georges Bonnet argued against and stated would increase Polish "intransigence".

At a meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defense, which comprised the Premier, the Ministers of War, the Navy, the Air and Foreign Affairs, and all of the top French military officials on 23 August 1939, Georges Bonnet sought to pressure General Maurice Gamelin into stating that France could not go to war in 1939, as Georges Bonnet maintained that France should find a way of renouncing the 1921 alliance with Poland.

Georges Bonnet argued that as Poland could be saved only by Soviet support, it was no longer possible for France to risk war because of the Non-Aggression Pact.

Georges Bonnet further asserted that oil-rich Romania, hemmed in by Germany and the Soviet Union, would now lean towards the totalitarian states and that the Soviets would not allow Turkey, which had been leaning in a pro-Allied direction, to enter the war if Germany attacked a state in the Balkans.

Georges Bonnet turned his back on Bonnet from the first minute.

At that cabinet meeting, Georges Bonnet stated that France should accept the Italian offer and reject the British precondition for acceptance, the demobilisation of the German Army.

Georges Bonnet was taken by surprise by Coulondre's letter and was left fuming in rage, as Coulondre's letter won over the cabinet.

The Comte de Ronceray dismissed the German invasion of Poland as an unfortunate contretemps but told Guariglia that Georges Bonnet had lied that Georges Bonnet had won over the cabinet into accepting Mussolini's conference.

Present in Georges Bonnet's office were his allies Francois Pietri; Henri Beranger, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee; Jean Mistler, the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies Foreign Affairs Committee; and Air Minister Guy la Chambre.

Georges Bonnet then ordered Francois-Poncet to see Mussolini about when the peace conference could begin.

Georges Bonnet argued very strongly in the cabinet against a French declaration of war and instead urged that the French take up Mussolini's mediation offer.

Later, that day, Georges Bonnet ordered the Ambassador in London, Charles Corbin, to tell the British that Mussolini's peace offers had been accepted by France.

Georges Bonnet was serious about the conference, but the proposed conference was aborted when Halifax stated that unless the Germans withdrew from Poland immediately, Britain would not attend.

Georges Bonnet told Daladier the lie that that Count Ciano had persuaded the Germans to accept an armistice as part of the peace plan, but in fact, Ciano had told Georges Bonnet the precise opposite.

Besides chairing meetings of the "peace lobby", which met six times during the Phoney War, Georges Bonnet otherwise remained silent as Justice Minister.

On 10 July 1940, Georges Bonnet voted in favour of granting the cabinet presided by Marshal Philippe Petain authority to draw up a new constitution, thereby effectively ending the French Third Republic and establishing Vichy France.

Georges Bonnet supported the Vichy government and served on its National Council from December 1940.

Georges Bonnet spent most of World War II living on his estate in the Dordogne and attempting to secure himself an office in Vichy, but Georges Bonnet was later to claim to have been involved in the French Resistance.

In November 1942, Georges Bonnet agreed to testify for the prosecution at the planned trial of Herschel Grynszpan.

Georges Bonnet was to testify that his efforts at reaching a rapprochement with the Reich had been sabotaged by the Jews, who were intent on starting a war with Germany, and that Grynszpan had assassinated Ernst vom Rath as part of an alleged Jewish conspiracy to push France into war with Germany.

On 5 April 1944, Georges Bonnet fled France for Switzerland and claimed that his life was in danger.

Many have charged Georges Bonnet with "editing" his papers to present himself in the best possible light, regardless of the facts.

At various points, Georges Bonnet claimed that British pressure had driven France towards Munich in 1938 and that his government wanted to fight for Czechoslovakia.

At issue was whether Georges Bonnet had, as Namier charged, snubbed an offer by Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Jozef Beck in May 1938 to have Poland come to the aid of Czechoslovakia in the event of a German attack.

Georges Bonnet denied that such an offer had been made, which led Namier to accuse Georges Bonnet of seeking to falsify the documentary record.

Namier charged that Georges Bonnet had other options and was carrying out the same foreign policy that he had wanted to carry out.

Readmitted to the Radicals in 1952, in 1953 Georges Bonnet was allowed to run for office again.

Georges Bonnet was expelled in 1955 for refusing to support Pierre Mendes France.