Douglas Johnson review of Sarkozy's Mandel biography appeared in the TLS
of March 29, 1996.
Nicolas Sarkozy
GEORGES MANDEL
Le moine de la politique
328pp. Paris: Grasset. 130fr.
2 246 46301 7.
Georges Mandel's life (1884–1944) was dominated by politics. He was a man who
detested idleness, whose eye was everywhere, whose knowledge was vast and
whose ambitions were inexhaustible. Nicholas Sarkozy (who is deputy mayor of
Neuilly) has taken his title from Andre Tardieu, who called Mandel "le
moine de la politique". This allusion derives a certain verisimilitude
from Mandel's constant formality of dress, with his black suit, high stiff
collar and bowler hat, as from an excessively polite manner of speech that
made informality impossible and friendship unlikely. There was, however,
nothing submissive about Mandel as a political fighter. He was accustomed to
being mocked for his appearance, attacked for his Jewishness (why did he
take his mother's name, Mandel rather than that of his father, the more
resonant Rothschild?), questioned about his personal finances, condemned for
his failure to join the army in 1914, and much else.
Mandel's hero, from an early date, was Georges Clemenceau, possibly because it
was his newspaper L'Aurore which published Zola's article "J'accuse",
a turning-point in the Dreyfus Affair. Mandel attached himself to Clemenceau
as a journalist and an adviser, and endeavoured to assist him in the
Assembly by becoming a deputy. But his real success began on November 15,
1917, when the President of the Republic, Raymond Poincare, invited
Clemenceau to form a government. Mandel became his Director for Civil
Affairs and was a powerful figure, virtually the Minister of the Interior.
His job was to maintain public order, to sustain morale, to prevent
defeatists from gaining publicity and workers from undermining the war
effort with their strikes. Inevitably, he was accused of being dictatorial,
and while there were those who praised his remarkable abilities as an
administrator and who accepted his undoubted patriotism, he made many
enemies. The Socialists and Radicals disliked him (although he claimed to be
a Radical) and important individuals (including Aristide Briand, Poincare
and Edouard Herriot) awaited their moment of revenge against "Monsieur
Rothschild-Mandel".
Mandel felt that full weight of public dislike when he left the immediate
protection of Clemenceau, to seek election as a deputy. Sarkozy relates the
story of his successes in 1919 and 1928 and his failure in 1924 more fully
than preceding biographers. In the Gironde, these were rough elections, and
Mandel required a good deal of physical courage to stand up to his
opponents. He replied in kind and there are stories of hired bruisers
breaking up the meetings of his opponents. At times, however, he also acted
foolishly, stating that he had been educated at the Ecole Normale
Superieure, that the names of his ancestors were inscribed on the Column of
July in the Place de la Bastille which commemorates the 1830 revolution,
that he had two brothers who had been killed in the war; all claims that
could easily be disproved. On one occasion, he said that an attempt had been
made to assassinate him, and he gave three different accounts of the
incident to three different newspapers. Perhaps such happenings were
frequent in French politics at the time. What was more typical was the way
in which Mandel made himself a notable of the Gironde region and looked
after its development.
Mandel gained his first ministerial post in 1934, when he was put in charge of
posts and communications. He was typically unorthodox in his approach,
joining the queue in the post office of the Place Victor-Hugo; being badly
received when he asked for a trunk-call, he waited in the office of the Chef
du Service until the latter returned after a lengthy lunch and sacked him.
Naturally, Mandel once again made enemies and had conflicts with the trade
unions, but there were those who remembered how reforms in broadcasting
enabled them to hear Moliere performed by the Comedie-Francaise.
But the crisis of Mandel's career had been developing and had little to do
with the electoral proceedings in the Gironde. He liked to quote Clemenceau: "We
French know the Germans better than anyone else. We know that if we make one
concession they will ask for more." And the concessions had grown, from
the revisions of the Treaty of Versailles to the occupation of the
Rhineland. When he joined Edouard Daladier's government of April 1938, he
had hoped to be made Minister of Defence, but both the army and the prime
minister opposed him. He wanted a government of national unity and to get
rid of pacifists such as Georges Bonnet, the Minister for Foreign Affairs;
he opposed the Munich agreement, but did not resign from the government,
remaining as Minister for Colonies reconstituting the colonial army. His
resolution won the admiration of many, from Churchill to the French
Communist Party, but received only scorn from Pierre Laval, who mocked him
for wishing to play the "petit Clemenceau", and, in more sinister
fashion, warned that he would have to face up to those "who were less
Jewish than him".
It was not until military defeat was evident in May 1940 that Mandel was
appointed Minister of the Interior. After twenty-three days, he left Paris
with the government and began to organize opposition to those who wanted to
sign an armistice. Perhaps, as his biographer suggests, he was not
sufficiently firm in his defence of Paul Reynaud and the cause of continuing
the war. And as to his refusal to accompany General Spears and join
Churchill in London, Sarkozy suggests that it was Mandel's Jewishness that
prevented him from leaving France. He also says that Mandel did not want to
do anything illegal. It was therefore in North Africa that he proclaimed
that he had set up a new and independent government. But this move was a
farce. It was a gesture for which both Vichy and the Germans made Mandel pay
dearly, in the course of his various incarcerations. In July 1944, he was
brought from Germany to France by aeroplane and was put in the Sante prison.
On July 7, members of the French Milice took him by car, ostensibly to
Vichy. But after reaching the forest of Fontainebleau, they shot him. Laval,
who knew that he was being brought back to Paris, and who did nothing to
protect him, burst into tears when he heard of Mandel's death. "C'etait
mon ami." Nicholas Sarkozy writes that the terms were probably genuine.
But they were too late.
It is often said that if Mandel had accepted the first British proposal to
come to London in June 1940, then it would have been he who would have been
the leader of Free France. Churchill would certainly have supported him.
Would that have made a difference? One has the suspicion that the disciple
of Clemenceau could never have played the role of Clemenceau.
