Paul Baudouin
Paul Baudouin[1] (19 December 1894 – 10 February 1964)[2] was a French banker[3] with the Banque d'Indochine[4] who became a politician and Foreign Minister of France in 1940. He was instrumental in the relocation of the French Government to Vichy and for arranging a cessation of hostilities between France and Germany in June that year, resulting in an Armistice.
Enters government
Following the fall of the troubled French Government of Édouard Daladier, on 20 March 1940, his Finance Minister Paul Reynard was asked by President Albert Lebrun to form a new Cabinet, even though he only had a majority of one. Daladier remained, for a few more months, as Minister of Defence. One of the civilian members appointed to the new Cabinet was Paul Baudouin, a known opponent of France's declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939, as Under-Secretary of State to the Prime Minister.[5][6] On 16 June 1940 following the resignation of Reynard, after just two and a half months in office, Baudouin joined Marshal Philippe Petain's new Cabinet as Foreign Minister. Soon, this young technocrat, attentive to the rising generation, would be the centre of a Roman Catholic/Action Française cohort set on re-educating French young people, inspired by a host of new programmes of Marshal Pétain's government, drawing upon his Catholic scout or Revue des jeunes contacts.
Sources
- ↑ Association X-Résistance, Ministres de Vichy issus de l'École polytechnique, Paul Baudouin Template:Webarchive
- ↑ Chan,C.Peter, @ http://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=533
- ↑ Williams, Charles, Pétain, Little Brown (Time Warner Book Group UK), London, 2005, p.306, ISBN|0-316-86127-8.
- ↑ Werth, Alexander, France 1940-1955, Robert Hale, London, 1957, p.32.
- ↑ Williams, 2005, p. 306
- ↑ Warner, Geoffrey, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1968, p. 163.
- Baudouin, Paul, The Private Diaries of Paul Baudouin, London, 1948, p.153.
