Bidault, Georges

Bidault, Georges (1899–1983) French resistance leader With Jean Moulin, Georges Bidault was the central leader of the French resistance and underground movements following the fall of France. In postwar France, he served two terms as prime minister and three as minister of foreign affairs. Born in Moulins, Bidault received his early formal education at an Italian Jesuit school. He served in the French Army just after World War I and participated in the occupation of the Ruhr in 1919. After military service, he attended the Sorbonne, from which he received degrees in history and geography in 1925. A Roman Catholic activist, he founded in 1932 L'Aube (Dawn), a Catholic leftist daily, and wrote the paper's foreign affairs column until the outbreak of war in 1939. As a high-profile leftist, Bidault was a target for German authorities immediately after the fall of France. He was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned in Germany. Released and returned to France in 1941, Bidault became active in the resistance movement and was a charter member of the National Council of Resistance when it was formed by Jean Moulin in May 1943. With the death of Moulin the following month, Bidault became head of the council. By 1944, the Gestapo discovered Bidault's involvement in the council, but he managed to stay one jump ahead of his pursuers and even found opportunity to create the Mouvement Républicain Populaire, a Christian- Democratic Party. Bidault was an ardent supporter of the wartime Free French government-in-exile of Charles de Gaulle and was appointed foreign minister in the provisional government in 1944. In this capacity, he signed the Franco-Soviet alliance of December andvoiced his support of the Yalta Agreement in 1945. In the immediate postwar years, Bidault concluded key economic agreements with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and, on behalf of France, signed the Charter of the United Nations. In 1946, Bidault was head of the provisional government, then once again served as foreign minister during 1947–48. Although his leftist sympathies at first favored wide latitude toward the Soviet bloc, the 1948 Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia persuaded him of the need for both western European economic union and a defense alliance. He thus became a proponent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Bidault served a second term as prime minister in 1949–50 and was minister of defense in 1951–52 and foreign minister in 1953–54. Bidault steadily drifted to the right, breaking with de Gaulle over the issue of Algerian independence (de Gaulle moved toward it, Bidault opposed), and founded in 1958 a new, right-wing Christian-Democratic Party. Bidault, now a member of the National Assembly, became increasingly militant on the subject of Algerian independence and, in 1961, founded a national council of resistance, which advocated terrorism in France as well as Algeria to halt the movement toward independence. Reverting to his wartime ways, Bidault went underground and labeled the de Gaulle government illegitimate and illegal. For his incitement to terrorism, Bidault was charged in absentia with conspiracy and formally stripped of parliamentary immunity from arrest. A fugitive now, he fled France in 1962, settling in Brazil from 1963 to 1967, but returning to France in 1968 after the suspension of his arrest warrant. In that most turbulent political year, he founded a new rightwing organization, the Mouvement pour le justice et la liberté, but found that he had become a largely marginalized figure, although his Christian- Democratic Party made him its honorary president in 1977.