The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

Baptiste, Antoine
What did French MPs think about it? Political reactions and speeches
about Ribbentrop – Molotov pact.
As French historians have been little attention about it, 1 1939 French MPs
have little interview in German-Soviet pact. They have remained silence most
of the time in Hemicycle as in the Palais-Bourbon corridors. And the few
interventions we could found in the French press are, most of the time, fleeting,
without any substance. We also find this quietness in French scientific works in
which the analysis of the MPs reactions is completely reduce very often to a
few lines.
Yet the international situation is the most execrable situation : Munich,
Czechoslovakia, Steel Pact, Italian political expansionism, Spanish civil war
and the Polish aims of the hitlerian wills. Actually, the German-Soviet pact
chooses „l'ultime étape [...] d'une longue période de tensions internationales” 2
during which French political life is influenced by a lot of information and
different pretension of the Third Reich offensive policy.
Thus it is more surprising that in such context of the rise of perils which
leads directed to the war – we don’t know it yet at that time, and we are see that
a lot of people don’t think about it – the elected people of the Nation were
prostrated in a silence which become deafening. Such a paradox must drow the
historian’s attention how is surprised by such dissension. Where are the
speeches address to the gallery? The invectives between political parties?
Where are the strong opinions, calls to the people in the press and on the radio?
Actually, nowhere. In front of this lack of speech and of argued debate, the
material necessary to the historian, the sources, matrix of his reflexion, is
considerably reducing. 3 A problem without solution is not a problem, lets take
this lack of sources on the other way round and makes a demonstration in the
1 About the french historiographic report of Ribbentrop-Molotov pact read: LACHAISE,
Bernard: L'historiographie du pacte Ribbentrop – Molotov en France depuis 1945.,
communication (published in this book) at the international conference, Ribbentrop-Molotov pact
August 1939 and this European effects at ELTE, Budapest, December 3 th and 5 th 2009.
2 BRUNET, Jean-Paul: La presse française et le pacte germano-soviétique (août 1939), In:
Relations internationales, 1974, n 2, 187-212.
3 By lack of informations on the first selected subject : The Ribbentrop – Molotov pact to the
Palais-Bourbon, the corpus of sources, initially centered on the parliamentary debates of the
period, was extended to the MPs reactions and speeches in the French press of 1939, in particular
the great figures and the parliamentary presidents of groups. Were targeted by our research: Léon
Blum (SFIO), Albert Chichéry (Radical Party), Renaud Jean (PCF), Maurice Thorez (PCF),
Jacques Duclos (PCF), Marcel Gitton (PCF), Joseph Denais (Republican Federation), Léon
Barety (Democratic Republican Alliance), Gabriel Lafaye (USR), Georges Mandel (Republican
Independence), Jean Ybarnegaray (French Social Party) and Édouard Daladier in the double
focal distance of president of Council, minister for the War and National defense, and great
figure of the Radical Party.
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