François Mitterrand: Encyclopedia II - François Mitterrand - Early career

François Mitterrand - Early career

Mitterrand was born in Jarnac, Charente. In his youth he was a staunch conservative and an ardent Catholic. His first political act was to join the ultranationalist Croix de Feu, which he did in preference to the larger but equally conservative Action Française due to the proscription of the latter organisation by the Vatican.

Enrolled during WWII, he was made prisoner in 1940 and his political views evolved as he met prisoners from all kinds of social backgrounds. He escaped in 1941 on his second attempt. He then reached the so-called free zone and became an employee of the Vichy government and served as a spy for the Free French Forces.

In 1943 he received the Francisque, the honorific distinction of the Vichy regime. When Mitterrand's Vichy past was exposed in the 1950s, he initially denied having received the Francisque.

After the war he quickly moved back into politics. In 1946 he was elected as representative for the Nièvre département and in 1947 joined a centerist grouping, the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR). He held various offices in the Fourth Republic as deputy and minister (with eleven portfolios), before resigning in 1957 over the French policies during the Algerian war of independence. Mitterrand is said to have covered up, as justice minister, various illegal acts, including torture, during the repression of the independence movement.

In 1958, he was one of the few to object to the nomination of Charles de Gaulle as head of government, and de Gaulle's plan for a French Fifth Republic. This attitude may have been a factor in Mitterrand losing his seat in the 1958 elections, beginning a long "crossing of the desert" (note: this term is usually applied to de Gaulle's decline in influence for a similar period). In 1959, on the avenue de l'Observatoire in Paris, Mitterrand escaped an assassin's bullet by diving behind a hedge. The incident brought him a great deal of publicity, boosting his political ambitions. Some of his critics claim that he had staged the incident himself. Prosecution was initiated on the issue but was later dropped.

In the Fifth Republic he stood in the Presidential elections against Charles de Gaulle in 1965 but was defeated. President of the Democratic and Socialist Federation of the Left (coalition of socialists and liberals) from 1965 to 1968, he turned to the French Socialist Party (PS), becoming leader of the party by 1971, following the Congress of Epinay. He stood again in 1974 opposite Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and was again defeated.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early career", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki