Description:

World War II
various, ca. 1931-1939
1930s French Archive Describing European Politics & Rise of Nazism On Cusp of WWII: 200+ Letters, 800+pp, From Important Churchill Ally Pierre-Étienne Flandin, Ex-Forbes
Archive
A massive French-language archive of autograph letters and autograph letters signed by Pierre-Étienne Flandin (1889-1958), the career politician, Prime Minister of France from 1934-1935, and important anti-appeasement ally of Winston Churchill. The archive dating from 1931-1939 includes 219 letters, many averaging 4pp in length, for an approximate conservative page estimate of 800pp total. Several examples of Flandin's signature can be found, most frequently by his initials "P.E.F.," and in one instance, signed in the third person in the text. Flandin addressed the correspondence to his friend, confidante, and lover, Ava Wigram (1895/6-1974), the future Lady Anderson. On display are dozens of examples of stationery including "Ministre d'État," "Ministère des Affaires Étrangères," Ministère des Finances," etc. With few exceptions the letters come with their original transmittal envelopes. Also included are a few pieces of contemporary ephemera: Flandin's business card, a telegram, and a newspaper clipping. Expected wear and weathering, else near fine, clean, and crisp. Stored in archival box measuring 11.625" x 15.125" x 3.25." Please refer to catalog photos for additional information related to condition. Ex-Collection of Steve Forbes; Ex-Sotheby's, March 28, 1983 sale, Lot 38, where it sold for $2,229.

The archive has not been exhaustively investigated and should provide hours and hours of more gratifying discoveries. But what we've seen so far demonstrates that Flandin wrote Wigram with uncensored candor about domestic French affairs; international politics (Nazism, Fascism, the Spanish Civil War, Catalan separatism, etc.); the United Nations; the international economy and currency; and tensions in European relations with the United States. A brilliant statesman, Flandin was uniquely situated to make observations about the modern world, and the 1930s represented the apogee of his political career. Flandin served as the leader of the Conservative Party, l'Alliance Démocratique, after 1933. The chronological span of the archive thus encompasses Flandin's tenure serving as some of the most powerful positions in French government: as Minister of Commerce and Industry, as well as Minister of Finance (ca. 1931-1932); Minister of Public Works (ca. 1934); Prime Minister (November 1934-June 1935); and Minister of Foreign Affairs (ca. 1936).

It is unclear how Flandin and Ava Wigram knew each other. The archive reveals that the two were involved in an intensely passionate affair, definitely sexual in nature, but also containing an important intellectual component. Ava, a British socialite, was married to Ralph Wigram (1890-1936), who commanded the Central Department at the Foreign Office. Wigram regularly supplied Winston Churchill - not then in political office - with information about German militarization. Wigram, Churchill, and Flandin all thought that Nazism should never be underestimated, or, more importantly, appeased. Churchill viewed Flandin as an important foreign ally in the impending - perhaps inevitable - war against Germany.

The archive mentions the following important historical individuals (sorted by nationality and then alphabetically):

French

- Léon Blum
- Georges Bonnet
- Édouard Daladier
-Édouard Herriot
- Pierre Laval
- Paul Painlevé
- Baron Eugène Daniel von Rothschild
- Albert Sarraut
- André Tardieu

British

- Stanley Baldwin
- Neville Chamberlain
- Winston Churchill
- Anthony Eden
- David Lloyd George
- Harcourt Johnstone
- Ramsey MacDonald
- Leslie Runciman, 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford
- Sir John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon
- Edward Spears, 1st Baronet
- Robert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart
- King Edward VIII (also as "Duc de Windsor")
- Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
- King George VI

Other

- Adolf Hitler
- Benito Mussolini
- Franz von Papen

Notable translated excerpts (in chronological order)

May 3, 1932 - "After the second ballot, M. Tardieu will have lost his majority… the 'Leftists' will have taken 36 seats from us. The big victors are the Radical-Socialists who will have increased their number by 45 units and will be around 150. The Republican Socialists (Painlevé) will have won 3 or 4 seats. The Socialists will have lost 7 or 8 and the Communists 5 or 6…"

October 4, 1932 - "Have you read the interview… [in which is discussed] all of the history that I recounted to you about the military alliance propositions made to H. by von Papen. It is a version of the German attitude that they seek more and more to accredit in France. I get the impression of a redoubling of authority of the pro-German clan. I hope that, on your side, they understand that the Franco-British rapprochement isn't only a matter of literature…"

November 11, 1934 - "For me, you know well the ordeal that they inflicted on me. Up to the present I have victoriously triumphed over the difficulties to which the little comrades thought I would succumb to! What comforts me, is to have avoided the blood flowing … I think I will have at least 400 voices at the Chamber Tuesday. After we will see…"

April 16, 1936 - "You will see that I dedicate a lot of action to visiting the Foreign Office, but I get the impression that, facing a Germany that dislikes great authority, we are losing time. I am well convinced that the military, naval and aerial rearmament of England has large importance but that diplomatic instructions have also theirs… and I would like it very well to know the point of view of Downing Street…"

May 31, 1937 - "I don't wish either to free myself from my surroundings and I've never dreamed of playing the Mussolini from any point of view… 'Hardness'… fills me with horror and I am perfectly incapable of it…"

December 18, 1937 - "I think that my horrors of Italy are cancelled (?) by facing the rather brilliant realities. The powerlessness of the demarcation and their lines (?) inside each dramatic day! What madness it would be to allow themselves to lose, after so many others, the occasion to collaborate with Germany, even if, by that, it is necessary to renounce this old cadaver, the S.D.N…"

January 8, 1938 - "I refuse to understand the blindness of the leaders of the radical-socialist faction. They say that the monarchical regime was lost through the faults of the aristocracy directing France at the end of the 18th century. I believe that the parliamentary Republic is in the process of losing itself by the incapacity and the cowardice of its bourgeois leaders…

I got the impression of a great wavering in British politics. As much as I understood it S. appeared to me to seek out above all an accord with Berlin, whatever the difficulties in reconciling it with the traditional inclination of British politics… which system of collective organization on the part of Europe, other than the hegemony, pure and simple, of Germany…

[The solution] excludes that we let Germany take, with brilliant success, Austria then Czechoslovakia…

If you have the chance to see Neville, you can tell him all that on my part…

Already the technicians of the Party [the Front Populaire] wish to put in place projects… of organization and commerce that would consolidate the control of changes and transform the liberal regime of the French economy into a centralized regime after the Italian and German manner…

Or will there be a French Hitler, a Mussolini or a Napoleon? The dictatorship of the historic presidents in France. Unfortunately we have never had this, nor England either…"

June 5, 1938 - "…I will be in London from the 16th to the 22nd June. I've already written to Sir John Simon, to Vansittart, to Spears to Winston and with Kennely to signal his ruin…

I was received in a charming manner at Versailles by the Duke of Windsor. He is much more calm and happy than when I met him in London. He was wearing a Scottish kilt, a ravishing black vest and a white muslin cravat around his neck… I spent almost the whole afternoon alone with the Duke and we spoke a lot about politics. He seems to have a great admiration for Neville C. and is more severe with Eden of whose politics he disapproves. What a shame that he did not stay King. When I saw him the first time he especially questioned me. This time he spoke with greater ease, and of knowledge of problems and horrors. He has a horror of war and would have known how to avoid it. On this point… I share his opinion… that if we allow to develop the politics of disarmament it will lead inevitably to war. It is a real shame, evidently that Hitler pursues the Jews but that is not a sufficient reason to conclude the matter…"

November 16, 1938 - "Naturally I would be enchanted to see Neville in Paris. But I think that I would be removed from all the official receptions, because, being the only one to have courage and character, I have become the bête noire and I am known (?) to be the leader of Fascism, Nazism and Anti-Semitism etc…If I can't see Neville I will content myself with sending flowers to Mrs. Chamberlain…"

January 12, 1939 - "I have been invited 10 times a month to go to Germany and I have refused… Here, Daladier's government will hold…"

As this archive eloquently shows time and again, Flandin fiercely condemned German militarization and Nazism in the years leading up to World War II. Yet he did hold political office in the Vichy government after the Fall of France. He was arrested on collaboration charges by Free French forces in December 1943 in Algiers. Imprisoned for 26 months, Flandin's trial took place in November 1945. After some intercession on Churchill's part - through his son Randolph - Flandin was exonerated and released.

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