![]() Daladier remained, however, Minister of Defense, and his antipathy to Paul Reynaud prevented Reynaud from replacing Maurice Gamelin as Supreme Commander of all French Armed Forces. In March 1940, Daladier resigned as Prime Minister in France because of his failure to aid Finland’s defense during the Winter War and he was replaced with Paul Reynaud. In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, he was reluctant to go to war, but he did so on 04-09-1939, inaugurating the Phony War. He then commented to his aide, Alexis Léger: “Ah, les cons, the fools!” When the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Viacheslaw Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop (see Annelies von Ribbentrop-Henkell) was signed, Daladier responded to the public outcry by outlawing the French Communist Party, which had refused to condemn Josef Stalin’s action. On his return to Paris, Daladier, who was expecting a hostile crowd, was acclaimed. In fact, he told the British in a late April 1938 meeting that Adolf Hitler’s real aim was to eventually secure “a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble.” discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government, as well as traumatized by France’s blood-bath in World War I that he personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately let Chamberlain have his way. Unlike Chamberlain, Daladier had no illusions about Hitler’s ultimate goals. Daladier was pushed into negotiating by Britain’s Neville Chamberlain without which war would have been inevitable at that time. ![]()
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