Edouard Daladier

Edouard Daladier (1884-1970) served as Prime Minister of France on three seperate occasions between 1933 and 1940. He also served as Minister of War at the outset of World War II. Following the fall of France, he fled to Morocco on the assumption that te government would continue the struggle from there, but was arrested by the Vichy regime. He was interred at Germany's Buchenwald concentration camp and at Itter Castle in France. He was released in 1944 as the Allied Forces liberated France. After the war he continued to participate in French politics.

He is perhaps best remembered for representing France at the Munich Conference, at which he approved letting Germany seize control of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

Edouard Daladier in Hitler's War
Edouard Daladier represented France at the Munich Conference. Though France, like Britain, was obligated by treaty to protect Czechoslovakia from German aggression, Daladier was desperate to avoid the need to fight another war against Germany. Thus, he was prepared to allow Hitler to seize the Sudetenland unchallenged. However, when news of the assassination of Konrad Heinlein reached the conference, Daladier assumed Hitler had arranged the event to give himself an excuse to invade Czechoslovakia. He had not, but he seized upon the opportunity to do so anyway, prompting France to go to war with Germany.

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