[52] Despite not entering the cabinet, French newspapers portrayed France as governed by "a republic of professors" that consisted of a triumvirate of intellectuals, namely Herriot, Blum and Paul Painlevé, the leader of the Socialist Republicans.

[54] Despite being a member of the cartel des gauchers, Blum had the Socialists vote against a number of government bills in the Chamber that would have involved cutting the salaries and pensions of civil servants to assist with paying off the war debts, which caused much tension with his allies in the Radical Party.

[61] In January 1933, Blum and the Socialists brought down the Radical government of Joseph Paul-Boncour when he proposed cuts to the salaries of civil servants to help deal with the economic crisis caused by the Great Depression.

[62] By this stage, Blum had acquired the unenviable reputation as someone who refused to take the responsibility of power, who acted in a purely negative and irresponsible fashion by bringing down Radical governments without being prepared to propose constructive ideas and solutions.

Blum saw the riot of 6 February 1934 in the Place de la Concorde when a group of royalists and fascists attempted to storm the National Assembly as an act of insurrection against the republic, and argued that the main danger facing France was fascism.

[77] Herriot continued to take part in the right-learning coalition governments that followed the riot of 6 February 1934 while being opposed by the left-learing "young Radicals" such as Pierre Cot and Jean Zay who wanted an alliance with the Socialists and Communists.

[83] Faure, still an influential figure in the Socialist Party, charged that new anti-fascist line from the Comintern was all part of a devious scheme by Joseph Stalin to start another world war to bring to power Communist regimes everywhere.

[87] The same year, the Democratic Republican politician, Paul Reynaud, and his acolyte, Charles de Gaulle, championed a plan for an elite corps of armored divisions, which Blum voted against under the grounds it would be a "praetorian guard" that would meddle in politics.

Blum believed that the colonial question was the principal problem in Franco-German relations and that there was a "moderate" faction within the German government led by the Reichsbank president Dr. Hjalmar Schacht who were both willing and able to restrain Adolf Hitler.

The sums allocated to the arms race with some 21 billion francs for the French military committed in total accelerated this capital flight as bond investors saw the Popular Front's fiscal policies as irresponsible.

[128] After the remilitarization of the Rhineland, both King Carol II of Romania and Milan Stojadinović of Yugoslavia rejected the French offer and preferred to move closer to Germany out of the belief that France would do nothing to assist their nations in the event of a German invasion.

[128] Beck's friendship with Hermann Göring led to doubts on Blum's part about his precise loyalty to France, but the fact that Germany was still laying claim to the Polish corridor, Upper Silesia and the Free City of Danzig suggested that the German-Polish rapprochement might be only ephemeral.

[137] Blum was later to claim that his "grand design" would have prevented World War Two as he stated in 1947: "The close rapprochement of the Anglo-Saxon and French democracies with Soviet Russia, that is to say, an international Popular Front, would have been the salvation of the peace".

[144] Darlan became increasing vociferous in advocating the view that France needed a strong Marine to ensure command of the sea in the Mediterranean in order to bring over soldiers from the Maghreb to help the French Army face the Wehrmacht on more equal terms.

[145] Gamelin strongly argued in favor of a renewed attempt to make an alliance with Italy under the grounds that a rapprochement with Mussolini would be cheaper than a naval arms race, but Blum chose to accept Darlan's counsel that a stronger Mediterranean Fleet was the best way of safeguarding the sea-lanes to Algeria.

[145] In a covert operation, the Deuxième Bureau started to smuggle in arms from the colony of French Somaliland (modern Djibouti) to anti-Italian guerrillas in Ethiopia as a way to tie down Italian forces in the Horn of Africa, and keep them well away from France.

[152] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote both the governments of Blum and Chamberlain were serious about returning the former German African colonies in some form by 1937 as he noted there was a consensus that "...the price-as perceived from London and Paris if not from Douala and Lomé-would be worth paying".

[160] In its short life, the Popular Front government passed important legislation, including the 40-hour week, 12 paid annual holidays for the workers, collective bargaining on wage claims, and the full nationalisation of the armament and military aviation industries.

[164] The American Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. sent word to Blum that the Roosevelt administration would not oppose "temporary" exchange controls in France, though the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was non-committal when sounded out.

[171] During the debate on the Munich Agreement, Blum declared: "This deeply felt and impassioned will for peace cannot lead a people to accept everything; on the contrary, it strengthens the resolve to struggle, to sacrifice itself, in necessary for independence and freedom, it does not abolish the distinction what is just and unjust".

[180] In a speech delivered on 27 December 1938, Blum accused the governments of Germany, Italy and Japan of being committed to policies of ultra-aggressive imperialism and argued that the way to stop another world war was rearmament and an alliance of all the states threatened by the Axis powers.

In many minds, the danger spot today is Danzig...if an attempt were made to change the situation by force in such a way as to threaten Polish independence, they would inevitably start a general conflagration in which this country would be involved.

[185] On 22 August 1939, Blum expressed hope in an editorial in Le Popularie that the "clouds of pessimism" would soon disappear as he asserted that the "peace front" would soon be in existence, which would in turn would deter the Reich from invading Poland.

[202] Blum was told by the police to leave Bordeaux for his own safety as right-wing extremists were parading though the streets and denouncing those they deemed responsible for declaration of war on Germany, causing him to go to Toulouse, where he stayed with Vincent Auriol.

[204] One of Blum's friends, Rudolf Hilferding, a prominent Jewish Social Democratic leader who had fled to France in 1933 was under the terms of the armistice arrested by the French police and returned to German custody, where he was beaten to death.

[216] In July 1940, Blum ordered a young Socialist politician, Daniel Mayer, not to go to London to join de Gaulle's Free French movement, but to go to the unoccupied zone in the south of France to organize a resistance group.

"[226] On 16 October 1941, Marshal Pétain in a radio address to the French nation announced that the Council of Political Justice (whose members were all appointed by him) had convicted Blum, Daladier, Reynaud, Mandel and Gamelin of violating article seven of the Constitutional Act and as such were all sentenced to life imprisonment in a military prison.

[246] In March 1943, via a letter smuggled out of prison by Renée Blum, he wrote to General de Gaulle to declare his support, saying as the leader of the Socialist Party "we have from the very first hour recognized you as chief in the present battle".

On a more practical level, Blum soon discovered that his SS guards were jubilant over the news of Roosevelt's death as everyone in Germany seemed to believe that the new American president, Harry S. Truman, would ally the United States with the Reich and declare war on the Soviet Union.

[274] In 1947, he supported the voyage of the ship SS Exodus taking Jewish Holocaust survivors from France to Palestine that was stopped by the British, an action that Blum sharply condemned in an editorial in Le Populaire.