Édouard Depreux

[1] A soldier in World War I, Depreux was injured in a gas attack, and was subsequently awarded the Croix de Guerre.

After serving as a member of the Sceaux commune council in 1935, and as a council member for Seine (1938–1941), he joined the French Resistance in the fight against the Nazi German military occupation, and held a high-ranking position in the SFIO executive committee, being the editor of the illegal newspaper Le Populaire.

After the liberation of Paris, Depreux became mayor of Sceaux (a position he would hold until 1959), and a member of the Provisional Consultative Assembly that served as the legislature of France prior to the creation of the Fourth Republic; he then was elected to the French Parliament for successive terms between 1946 and 1958.

In 1947, he revealed the existence of an American-sponsored secret "stay-behind army" in France codenamed Plan Bleu.

Hostile to the European Defence Community plan proposed by René Pleven, and highly critical of the colonialism accommodated by the SFIO, Depreux nonetheless led the Party's group in the French National Assembly on two occasions.