[October 15, 2016] Understanding the thinking of senior leaders is a difficult task under the best of circumstances but in doing so, even if imperfect, it helps us understand how leaders approach problems and make important decisions. Such is the theme of my “who is” series here at theLeaderMaker.com. French politician Pierre Laval is an example of how one’s ideology can get in the way of making correct moral decisions.
Largely unheard of to Americans, Laval is well known in French history as one of their traitors of World War II. Originally a socialist in the early 1900s he was concerned about the common man and the brutality, destructiveness, and waste of life from war and from unfair labor practices. He was not an orthodox socialist of the Karl Marx variety but Laval was clearly no capitalist; although he did make a fortune in investments.
After World War I there was considerable angst about the gross failures of socialism and Laval transformed himself from socialist to independent but never lost the mission of helping the common worker. He was a visionary when it came to strategic alliances in the European continent. For example, he wanted a close alliance with Italy, through Benito Mussolini, to balance the aggressiveness of Nazi Germany as war approached. However, this was seen as appeasement to Mussolini and his fascist government.
As the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain was pressured to halt the destruction of France, its military, and citizens. Pétain formed a government with Laval as Minister of Foreign Affairs where, he believed, he could better help his country. Laval agreed to be a part of the Vichy government which acquiesced to the occupation of France by the German military.
Laval had to make a number of difficult decisions. For example, when ordered to have all Jews in France rounded up and transported to German-occupied Poland, Laval negotiated a compromise that allowed only non-French Jews to be sent. They were, of course, being sent to their deaths. When ordered to send 300,000 skilled French workers to Germany for forced labor, he compromised by having one French prisoner of war repatriated for every three workers arriving in Germany.
In 1943, Laval became the leader of the notorious Milice française; a political paramilitary organization created to help fight against the French Resistance. Hitler was pressuring France to declare war on Britain and fight with the Nazis. In 1945, Laval was arrested by the advancing Americans and turned over to the Free French where he was flown to Paris and imprisoned.
On this date, October 15, 1945, Pierre Laval was executed by firing squad after being found guilty of “high treason” against the country of France. Only three executions were carried out, one for Fernand de Brinon, Vinchy’s Ambassador in Paris to the German authorities, one for Joseph Darnand, head of the Milice, and one for Laval.1
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