French Radical Party political leader who served as Prime Minister of France in the early years of World War II. In 1936, he began serving as Minister of War for a left-wing coalition called the Popular Front.
He was one of the key figures in the 1926 separation of the Radical Party from the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) socialist political organization.
As Prime Minister, he signed bills offering greater government support to French children and families.
A native of the southeastern Vaucluse region of France, he later relocated to Paris (where he died at the age of eighty-six).
In the years leading up to World War II, he was forced into negotiations with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that resulted in an early (and regrettable) appeasement policy toward Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
