In 1914, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), and he remained committed to his pacifist convictions during the First World War.

Seeking to contain Germany, he pursued foreign policies favourable to Italy and the Soviet Union, but his handling of the Abyssinia Crisis, which was widely denounced as appeasement of Benito Mussolini, prompted his resignation in 1936.

[17] The years before the First World War were characterised by labour unrest, and Laval defended strikers, trade unionists and left-wing agitators against government attempts to prosecute them.

In the 1914 legislative election, held three months before the outbreak of World War I, the trade unions sought Laval as the Socialist candidate for the Seine, the district comprising Paris and its suburbs.

The hope of peace in spring 1917 was overwhelmed by discovery of traitors, some real and some imagined, as with Malvy, who became a suspect because he had refused to arrest Frenchmen on the Carnet B. Laval's "Stockholm, étoile polaire" speech had not been forgotten.

In the 1919 elections the Socialists' record of pacifism, their opposition to Clemenceau and anxiety arising from the excesses of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia contributed to their defeat by the conservative National Bloc.

Not all of that money was his own, but some came from a group of financiers that had the backing of an investment trust, the Union Syndicale et Financière, as well as two banks, the Comptoir Lyon Allemand and the Banque Nationale de Crédit.

[24] Two of the investments that Laval and his backers acquired were provincial newspapers, Le Moniteur du Puy-de-Dôme and its associated printing works at Clermont-Ferrand, and the Lyon Républicain.

In the words of its leader, Léon Blum, the Socialist opposition was amazed and disappointed that the ghost of Tardieu's government had reappeared within a few weeks of being defeated with Laval at its head "like a night bird surprised by the light".

Besides Briand, André Maginot, Pierre-Étienne Flandin and Paul Reynaud, Laval brought in as his advisors, friends such as Maurice Foulon from Aubervilliers and Pierre Cathala.

With a conservative policy of contained wages and limited social services — and with its colonies — France had accumulated the largest gold reserves in the world after the United States.

However, Laval blocked the proposed package for nationalist reasons and demanded for France to receive a series of diplomatic concessions in exchange for its support, including renunciation of a prospective German-Austrian customs union.

[page needed] The proposed moratorium would also benefit Britain's investment in Germany's private sector by making more likely that those loans would be repaid while the public indebtedness was frozen.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the German Army spied on the Brüning cabinet and fed information to Der Stahlhelm and the Nazis, which effectively froze any overtures towards France.

Hoover thought that it might have helped "Mexico, India, China and South America", but Laval dismissed the silver solution as an inflationary proposition and added that "it was cheaper to inflate paper.

The second Cartel des Gauches resigned after the 6 February 1934 crisis had involved anti-parliamentarist groups of far-right leagues, veterans organizations and the French Communist Party(PCF).

On 2 May 1935, he signed the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance,[37] and he met with Josef Stalin, Premier Vyacheslaff Molotoff and Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinoff in Moscow about 13 May 1935 to seal the alliance.

[38][39] Laval's primary aim before the Italo-Abyssinian War was to retain Italy as an anti-German power and to avoid driving it into Germany's hands by adopting a hostile attitude to an invasion of Abyssinia.

Laval realised that only through that position could he effect a reversal of alliances and bring himself to favour with Nazi Germany, the military power that he viewed as the inevitable victor.

His name did not appear in the chronicles of events until June, when he began to assume a more active role in criticising the government's decision to leave France for North Africa.

In an infamous radio speech on 22 June 1942, Laval outlined his policy objectives by expressing his "desire to re-establish normal and trusting relations with Germany and Italy".

[57] The effect of such speech on public opinion was disastrous, since it made clear to everyone that the Vichy government was de facto subservient to the Germans; Pétain and the other ministers were also bewildered and highly irritated by Laval's nerve.

[63] When the Allied landings in French North Africa (Operation Torch) began in November 1942, Germany and Italy occupied the Zone libre, thus ending any factual sovereignty of the Vichy government over Metropolitan France.

Hitler continued to ask whether the French government was prepared to fight at his side and required Vichy to declare war against Britain: Laval and Pétain agreed to maintain a firm refusal, struggling against ultracollaborationist ministers.

[68] Laval's machinations failed: after being initially collaborative, Herriot refused to go on with the plan due to the absence of Jeanneney,[69] while the Germans changed their minds after the intervention of the ultracollaborationists Marcel Déat and Fernand de Brinon.

[discuss] Numerous scholars, including Robert Paxton and Geoffrey Warner, believe that Laval's trial demonstrated the inadequacies of the judicial system and the poisonous political atmosphere of that purge-trial era.

"Father-in-law wants a big trial which will illuminate everything", René de Chambrun told Laval's lawyers: "If he is given time to prepare his defence, if he is allowed to speak, to call witnesses and to obtain from abroad the information and documents which he needs, he will confound his accusers".

To the charge of collaboration, Laval replied, "Monsieur le Président, the insulting way in which you questioned me earlier and the demonstrations in which some members of the jury indulged show me that I may be the victim of a judicial crime.

Only three of the death penalties were carried out: those of Laval; Fernand de Brinon, Vichy's Ambassador in Paris to the German authorities; and Joseph Darnand, the head of the Milice.

In his memoirs, Otto Abetz, German Ambassador to France from 1940 to 1944, subsequently described Laval in high terms:He was one of the greatest statesmen of our time, and, in any case, its last truly great liberal politician.