Pierre Mendès France
Statesperson and former President of the Council of Ministers of FranceWikipedia
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Search complete. 7 mentions across 5 episodes found for "Pierre Mendès France".
Oct 26, 2026
Richard VinenGUEST
Although he comes from a background where people often are anti-Semitic, he's never really anti-Semitic with regard to French Jews.
Richard VinenGUEST
He accepts people like Pierre Mendès-France, who come to join him in London during the war, who is Jewish.
Richard VinenGUEST
But there is certainly that dimension in his life, and that is probably most visible in Poland.
Dan SnowHOST
I learned from your work that he goes to staff college in the 1920s, and he is said to have excessive self-confidence there.
Richard VinenGUEST
Although he comes from a background where people often are anti-Semitic, he's never really anti-Semitic with regard to French Jews.
Richard VinenGUEST
He accepts people like Pierre Mendès-France, who come to join him in London during the war, who is Jewish.
Richard VinenGUEST
But there is certainly that dimension in his life, and that is probably most visible in Poland.
Dan SnowHOST
I learned from your work that he goes to staff college in the 1920s, and he is said to have excessive self-confidence there.
John MerrimanHOST
Just as Vietnam has become a major sort of tourist center, and for oddly, not oddly enough, but I suppose it's good in bringing these things to an end, Americans who fought over there, and some of whom lost limbs over there, to go back and to put at least closure on all of that.
John MerrimanHOST
Pierre Mendès-France, who was the new socialist premier, succeeded in taking France out of the war in Vietnam.
John MerrimanHOST
And, as you know, he would be very less successful in trying to convince the French to drink milk as opposed to wine, a hopeless task, without question became the most eminent French politician not to hold power as president in France.
John MerrimanHOST
The Geneva Convention that year, France agreed to divide Vietnam into two states.
Steven BellHOST
So, so that thing.
Steven BellHOST
Anyway, in 1954, Bourgeaud was then implicated in a right-wing extremist plot to go and assassinate the French Prime Minister, Pierre Mendès France, who was viewed by hardline colonialists as a traitor for negotiating France's withdrawal from Indochina and moving more towards autonomy for Tunisia and Morocco.
Steven BellHOST
Bourgeau was arrested.
Steven BellHOST
He was convicted of criminal conspiracy and incarcerated for approximately 18 months in Fresnes Prison.
Steven BellHOST
In mid 1964, the Congo exploded into violence once more with the outbreak of the Lumumbist Simba Rebellion.
Steven BellHOST
As backed by the Soviet Union, Cuba, including Che Guevara's clandestine expeditionary team in eastern Congo, as well as radical African states, the Simbas went and seized over half the country, including Stanleyville, which would then take hundreds of European civilians hostage.
Steven BellHOST
Now, Moïse Tshombe was recalled from exile to serve as prime minister of the central Congolese government in Léopoldville, or Kinshasa, and Tshombe would go and rehire his former mercenary adversaries to actually spearhead the counteroffensive against the Simbas.
Steven BellHOST
And so operating in tandem with Belgian paratroopers that were dropped during Operation Dragon Rouge and CIA-piloted B-26 Invader attack aircraft, Denard's commandos would go and clear the rebellion across the northeastern Congo.
John MerrimanHOST
But all this fits together to create almost the impossibility of doing anything about the big problem of Americanism.
John MerrimanHOST
And when Pierre Mendès-France, whom we'll meet later, when he tries to run for president, he was the greatest politician who was never President of France, and a great, great man.
John MerrimanHOST
He tried to start a drink-milk campaign in 1954, and he was toast, or French toast, if you will, because they absolutely, they just destroyed him.
John MerrimanHOST
The wine lobby just destroyed him.