SAMEER AL-DOUMY / AFP
Valérie Hayer, head of the Renaissance list in the European elections, during the launch of her campaign in Lille on Saturday March 9.
POLITICS – Summoning history is good. Doing it without making any misunderstandings is better. Valérie Hayer, who yesterday launched her campaign for the European elections surrounded by all the heavyweights of Macronia, should remember this. While the presidential camp devoted most of its speech to targeting the National Rally and its Russophilia, the head of the Renaissance list went much too far in the historical analogy. To the point of drawing a risky parallel which has made several historians jump.
“ Yesterday Daladier and Chamberlain, today Le Pen and Orban. The same words, the same arguments, the same debates. We are in Munich, in 1938 », Launched the Macronist candidate. However, if we understand correctly that Valérie Hayer refers to what we call “ the Munich spirit » to castigate those who call to cede everything to Vladimir Putin with the aim of “ save the peace » between Moscow and kyiv, the parallel drawn between the actors of the Munich agreements (Édouard Daladier for France and Neville Chamberlain for Great Britain) and Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban is more than inadequate.
Because at the time when France ratified this agreement aimed at resolving the Sudetenland crisis with a triumphant Adolf Hitler with a dominant position in Europe, the French political community was mainly in favor of peace with Nazi Germany. Unlike the President of the French Council of Ministers at the time, who did not believe that the Führer was going to be satisfied with this border region with Czechoslovakia. A minority among the allies, and aware of the superiority of the German air force, Édouard Daladier signed this agreement reluctantly, at the end of a meeting perceived retrospectively as a “ trap “.
Inconsistencies
On his return to France, he expected to receive a hostile reception and to be accused of having given in to the Germans. But when he got off his plane at Le Bourget, he was cheered by the crowd. Which provoked this comment, which remains famous, made to his chief of staff: “ Ah, idiots! If they only knew! » Another inconsistency, the political identity of Édouard Daladier, figure of the Radical Socialist Party brought to power by the wave of the Popular Front. Not exactly the same political stuff as Marine Le Pen or her friend Viktor Orban.
Even more embarrassing for Valérie Hayer’s analogy, the person concerned was arrested by Vichy after the failure of his boarding on the Massilia, a ship which was to allow French parliamentarians to reach North Africa in order to organize a Resistance government.
Édouard Daladier was then deported to Germany in 1943, and was tried at the famous Riom trial. A political trial wanted by Marshal Pétain where the radical socialist appeared alongside Léon Blum. Not enough to make the person concerned a clone of Marine Le Pen, herself heiress to a far-right political party founded by former collaborators.
Unsurprisingly, several historians have therefore jumped upon discovering this parallel. “ Stupid historical comparison. Who is Daladier today? The pen ? Who is Chamberlain today? Orban? », asked Christian Delporte, professor emeritus of contemporary history at the University of Versailles, about X. “ Édouard Daladier deserves better than this kind of pathetic little exploitation of our history », adds on the same social network Maxime Micheletwho recalls that the former President of the Council was “ otherwise less naive than his British counterpart “.
Professor of history and author of several works dismantling historical myths and their political exploitationChristophe Naudin was more direct : “ We have to stop with the stupid historical parallels, on the right and on the left, 1914 and 1938. And even more so when we don’t know anything about it “. This is what is said.
Also see on HuffPost: