Volume 29, Number 21 & 22 · January 20, 1983
Founding Uncle
By Robert O. Paxton
Léon Blum
by Jean Lacouture, translated by George Holoch
Holmes and Meier, 571 pp., $39.50; $24.50 (paper)
Léon Blum, who became in 1936 the first socialist and the first Jew to govern France, aroused feelings whose virulence seems out of all proportion to his scholarly, mild demeanor. For the right, he was a red ideologue who moved nationalist deputies to declare that 'only Hitler can save France from the Left,' and 'the choice is for Stalin or for Hitler.'[1] For communists, he was a bourgeois reformer who, except for a few months in 1936, was treated more as an enemy than as a friend.[2] For the rampant anti-Semites of 1930s France, he was the essence of foreignness, the corrupter of all things French, who sprang from some Eastern ghetto and ate from golden plates while setting the French people against their natural leaders.
Review, 3496 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |