Born into a family of Radical politicians, Camille Chautemps was a lawyer by training and a noted amateur rugby-player in his youth, playing for Tours Rugby and Stade Français.

[4] In February, he granted married women financial and legal independence (until then, wives had been dependent on their husbands to take action involving family finances) and allowed them to go to university and to open bank accounts.

With the fall of Dunkirk on 5 June and the defeat of the French Army imminent, Chautemps, dined with Paul Baudouin on the 8th, and declared that the war must be ended and that Pétain saw his position most clearly.

[7] On the 11th, during a Cabinet meeting, Chautemps suggested for Churchill to be invited back to France to discuss the hopeless situation; he attended a conference at Tours on 13 June.

Chautemps now suggested that to break the deadlock, that they should get a neutral authority to enquire what the German terms would be, which if honourable, the Cabinet could agree to study.

Most of the others were persuaded against him by the arguments of Pétain, Chautemps and Jean Ybarnégaray, the last two seeing the offer as a device to make France subservient to Britain as an extra dominion.

[11] On 10 July 1940, Chautemps voted as a Senator in favour of granting the cabinet presided by Marshal Philippe Pétain authority to draw up a new constitution, thereby effectively ending the French Third Republic and establishing Vichy France.