Laval, Pierre

Laval, Pierre (1883-1945), French politician, who headed the collaborationist Vichy government of German-occupied France during World War II. He was born June 28, 1883, in Châteldon, Puy-de-Dôme Department, and educated at the Law School of the University of Paris. In 1914 he was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies for Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris. He served in World War I and in 1924 was re-elected to the chamber. In the following year he was appointed minister of public works in the Cabinet of Premier Paul Painlevé and subsequently held various Cabinet posts.

From 1931 to 1932 Laval was Prime Minister and minister of foreign affairs. He visited Washington, D.C., on August 1, 1931, and he negotiated a moratorium on the French World War I debt to the United States. After serving as minister of labour in 1932, Laval held the ministry of foreign affairs (1934-1935), in which office he concluded a mutual military assistance pact with the Soviet Union. In June 1935 he once more became premier and minister of foreign affairs, sponsoring with Sir Samuel Hoare, British secretary for foreign affairs, the so-called Hoare-Laval Treaty, by the terms of which Ethiopia was to cede outright a large portion of its territory to Fascist Italy. The storm of public indignation aroused by the disclosure of this treaty led to its speedy repudiation in both Paris and London; Hoare was forced to resign and the Laval government fell (January 1936).

Following the defeat of France by Germany in June 1940, Laval, who had been a strong proponent of peace at any price, became vice-premier of the right-wing provisional government of France, with its capital at Vichy, and chief aide to the premier, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, who concluded an armistice with Germany. Two years later Laval succeeded to the premiership, in which post he adopted a policy of complete collaboration with the Axis Powers. He instituted measures to abolish the last vestiges of the parliamentary system and organized the Vichy government along the totalitarian lines of National Socialist Germany. After the liberation of France, a trial found him guilty of plotting against the state and of collaborating with the enemy. On October 15, 1945, Laval was executed in Fresnes Prison, in Paris.