François Mitterrand

• 1. Introduction

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  François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand arrived in this world on the 26th of October 1916 in the small Charente town of Jarnac, and he died in Paris on the 8th of January 1996 having spent fourteen years as the most powerful man in France. He was the longest-serving president in the history of the Fifth Republic. He was also the first person from the left to hold that office.

  But those headlines conceal something far stranger. The man who abolished the death penalty had once recommended against clemency in 80% of Algerian independence cases he reviewed as Justice Minister. The man who became the standard-bearer of French socialism had, as a young student, marched alongside far-right nationalists and worked for the Vichy regime. He escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp, built a resistance network, and then, for most of his presidency, concealed a prostate cancer diagnosis from the French people.

  How does a Catholic conservative from provincial France become the first socialist president elected by universal suffrage? How does a man with a foot in Vichy's camp end up reshaping the French left for a generation? And what does it mean that the country's most transformative postwar leader spent his final years hiding a terminal illness while still governing? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A Far-Right Beginning

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  From 1925 to 1934, Mitterrand studied at the Collège Saint-Paul in Angoulême, joining the Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne, the youth wing of Catholic Action. When he arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1934, he enrolled at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, where he obtained his diploma in July 1937.

  Those Paris years placed him close to France's fractious far-right milieu. He took membership for roughly a year in the Volontaires nationaux, an organisation linked to François de la Rocque's Croix de Feu league, which had just played a role in the 6th of February 1934 riots that brought down the second left-wing coalition government. He also wrote articles for the newspaper L'Écho de Paris, which aligned closely with the French Social Party, and he took part in demonstrations against what nationalists called the "invasion métèque" in February 1935.

  He also had personal and family connections to members of the Cagoule, a clandestine far-right terrorist group active during the 1930s. When these associations were revealed in the 1990s, Mitterrand attributed them to the milieu of his upbringing.

  What began to shift him was friendship. In 1938, he became close friends with a Jewish socialist, whom he later said he saved from attacks by the Action française movement. He credited this relationship with making him question some of his nationalist convictions. That questioning accelerated dramatically when the war began and he found himself a prisoner of the Germans.

• 3. Prisoner and Resistant

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  Mitterrand was wounded by shrapnel on the 14th of June 1940 at Cote 304 near Verdun during the Battle of France. He was captured by the Germans on the 21st of June and taken to Stalag IX A, roughly 60 kilometres southwest of Kassel.

  He made his first escape attempt in March 1941 with fellow prisoner Father Xavier Leclerc. The two men trekked 550 kilometres over 22 days but were arrested at Egesheim, just 30 kilometres from the Swiss border, and returned to the camp. While imprisoned, Mitterrand was appointed one of ten chancellors of the ZUT, a temporary university at Ziegenhain, where he lectured on the ancien régime and Voltaire. He later said the people he encountered there began moving him further left.

  On the 28th of November he escaped again, this time with forged papers, reaching Metz before being betrayed by a hotel landlady. He was taken to a sorting camp in Boulay-Moselle, escaped through barbed wire on the 10th of December, and hid in a nearby hospital. A nurse named Marie Baron, who was herself under Gestapo surveillance for having helped other escapees, sheltered him and handed him to Hélène Studler, who ran an escape network. That evening Mitterrand rendezvoused at Saint-Martin Church in Metz with three other escapees and a courier who took them toward the border. He crossed into the unoccupied zone near Chamblay on the 16th of December.

  Back in France, Mitterrand obtained work as a mid-level functionary in the Vichy government looking after POW interests, and he published an article about his POW experience in a Vichy propaganda magazine. He also, from spring 1942, began building contacts with the resistance, sending false papers to prisoners still in Germany and attending meetings at the Château de Montmaur that formed the seed of his future network. Historians have used the term "Vichysto-résistant" to describe people who supported Marshal Pétain before 1943 but subsequently rejected the regime; Mitterrand fits that label precisely.

  In the spring of 1943, along with two former Cagoule members, he received the Order of the Francisque, the Vichy regime's honorific distinction. He later denied receiving it, though some accounts say he went into hiding before the medal ceremony could take place. Socialist resistance leader Jean Pierre-Bloch maintained Mitterrand was ordered to accept it as cover.

  The 28th of May 1943 is generally taken as the date Mitterrand broke fully with Vichy, when he met with Gaullist representatives about merging the three POW resistance movements. Pierre de Bénouville later described Mitterrand's spy network inside the POW camps as providing information that was "often decisive" about what was happening behind German lines.

  In November 1943 the Sicherheitsdienst raided a flat in Vichy looking for someone using the cover name "Morland" - Mitterrand's alias. They arrested a man named Pol Pilven instead; Mitterrand was in Paris. Warned by friends, he escaped to London aboard a Lysander aircraft on the 15th of November 1943, piloted by Squadron Leader Lewis Hodges, to promote his movement to British and American authorities.

  De Gaulle and Mitterrand clashed from their first meeting in Algiers. De Gaulle refused to fold Mitterrand's POW intelligence network into the broader Resistance unless de Gaulle's nephew Cailliau would lead it. Mitterrand refused. Under pressure from Henri Frenay, de Gaulle eventually relented. In December 1943, Mitterrand ordered the execution of one Henri Marlin, who was about to direct attacks on the Maquis, carried out by Jacques Paris and Jean Munier.

  When de Gaulle entered Paris after the Liberation and was introduced to Mitterrand among the men assembled for the provisional government, he reportedly muttered: "You again!" He dismissed Mitterrand two weeks later.

• 4. Climbing the Fourth Republic

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  At the November 1946 legislative election, Mitterrand won a seat as deputy from the Nièvre département, running on an explicitly anti-communist campaign to defeat a Communist candidate for the seat. He joined the cabinet in January 1947 as War Veterans Minister, the first of eleven different ministerial portfolios he would hold under the Fourth Republic.

  In May 1948 he was among the delegates at the Congress of The Hague, alongside Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, Paul-Henri Spaak, Albert Coppé and Altiero Spinelli. That gathering originated the European Movement.

  As Overseas Minister between 1950 and 1951, he fought the colonial lobby to propose a reform programme for France's overseas territories, then resigned from the cabinet in 1953 after the arrest of Morocco's sultan. In June of that year he also attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, where he reported spending much of the ceremony being psychoanalysed by the elderly Princess Marie Bonaparte, who was seated next to him.

  As Interior Minister in Pierre Mendès-France's cabinet from 1954 to 1955, he had to direct the French response to the Algerian War of Independence and declared: "Algeria is France." Then as Justice Minister between 1956 and 1957, he allowed the expansion of martial law in Algeria and had a role in 45 executions of Algerian prisoners, recommending President René Coty to reject clemency in 80% of the cases - a record he later said he came to regret deeply. He also served as official French representative at the wedding of Prince Rainier III of Monaco and actress Grace Kelly.

  In 1959, two years after the Algerian justice controversies, he became mayor of Château-Chinon, a post he held until 1981.

• 5. The Long Road to Power

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  Mitterrand was one of the few politicians to oppose Charles de Gaulle's creation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, describing the circumstances as a quasi-putsch. He lost his National Assembly seat in the elections that followed and spent years in what he called "crossing the desert." In 1964 he published Le Coup d'État permanent, a systematic critique of de Gaulle's personal power and his domination of foreign affairs and defence.

  In 1959, on the Avenue de l'Observatoire in Paris, Mitterrand claimed to have narrowly escaped an assassin by diving behind a hedge. Critics alleged he staged the incident himself. He accused Prime Minister Michel Debré of instigating the plot and named right-wing deputy Robert Pesquet as someone who had warned him he was a target. Before he died, Pesquet claimed Mitterrand had set up the fake attempt. Prosecution was initiated against Mitterrand but later dropped. When de Gaulle's aides urged him in 1965 to use the affair to discredit Mitterrand, de Gaulle replied: "No, and don't insist. It would be wrong to demean the office of the Presidency, since one day he may have the job."

  In the 1965 presidential election, Mitterrand stood as the first left-wing candidate to treat the presidential contest as a genuine path to defeating the right. Not a member of any specific party, he was accepted by all left-wing parties. De Gaulle was expected to win outright in the first round; Mitterrand won 31.7% of the vote, forcing a runoff. In the second round he pulled 44.8%, a performance widely regarded as honourable for someone expected to lose heavily.

  At the 1974 presidential election, running as the left's common candidate, he received 43.2% in the first round and faced Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the runoff. Giscard attacked him in a televised debate as "a man of the past." Mitterrand lost with 49.19% to Giscard's 50.81% - less than two percentage points.

  At the June 1971 Epinay Congress he had maneuvered brilliantly, pulling together internal opponents of the old Socialist establishment and winning the leadership of the reconstituted Socialist Party. In June 1972 he signed the Common Programme of Government with Communist leader Georges Marchais and Left Radical Robert Fabre, binding the left together behind a shared agenda.

  By 1977, however, the Communists and Socialists had failed to renew the Common Programme, and the left lost the 1978 legislative elections. Inside the party, Michel Rocard challenged Mitterrand's leadership, calling the Socialist programme "archaic" and "unrealistic" and polling more popular support than Mitterrand. Mitterrand nonetheless won the party vote at the 1979 Metz Congress, and Rocard stood aside.

  For his third presidential run in 1981, Mitterrand campaigned on 110 Propositions for France, projecting what his team called "the quiet force." He took 25.85% in the first round against the Communist candidate Georges Marchais's 15%, then defeated Giscard d'Estaing in the second round with 51.76%, becoming the first socialist elected President of France by universal suffrage.

• 6. Governing the Left

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  On the 10th of May 1981, Mitterrand's government became the first left-wing government in France in 23 years. He named Pierre Mauroy as prime minister, called a new legislative election, secured an absolute Socialist majority, and invited four Communists into the cabinet - a controversial choice that at the time alarmed many observers.

  The first two years brought the most sweeping domestic reforms France had seen in a generation. Mitterrand abolished the death penalty through the Badinter Act. The minimum wage was raised by 10%. The working week was cut to 39 hours. Workers gained five weeks of holiday per year. A solidarity tax on wealth was created. Old-age pensions for a single person rose from 1,400 francs to 1,700 francs per month, and housing allowances for low-paid workers went up by 25% in 1981 alone.

  The government also liberalised French media, authorising pirate radio stations and the first private television channel, Canal+, which gave rise to an entirely new private broadcasting sector. The Minitel interactive network and the Paris-Lyon TGV high-speed rail line were inaugurated only weeks after the election result.

  Key social reforms included abolishing the distinction in the age of consent between homosexual and heterosexual relationships - a distinction that had existed since 1942 - and removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. The government launched priority education zones to combat underachievement, expanded nursery education, and between 1981 and 1983 increased the teaching corps by 30,000.

  By March 1983, however, economic reality had forced a decisive reversal. Unemployment kept rising, the franc had been devalued three times, and Mitterrand adopted what became known as the "tournant de la rigueur" - the austerity turn - prioritising keeping France competitive inside the European Monetary System over further expansion. The Communists left the cabinet in 1984. Laurent Fabius replaced Mauroy as prime minister.

  In July 1985 came a scandal that remains one of the most damaging of his presidency. French agents sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior while it was docked in Auckland, New Zealand. The ship had been used in protests against French nuclear tests, whaling, and seal hunting. One Greenpeace member was killed. Defence Minister Charles Hernu resigned. France subsequently paid $8.16 million in damages to Greenpeace, NZ$13 million to the New Zealand government, and a further sum to the family of the deceased.

  During the first period of "cohabitation" from 1986 to 1988, when the right-wing RPR-UDF coalition won the legislative elections and Mitterrand was obliged to name Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister, Mitterrand concentrated on foreign affairs and defence while Chirac handled domestic policy. He refused to sign executive decrees of liberalisation, forcing Chirac to take them through parliament. He was re-elected in 1988 with 54% of the vote against Chirac in the second round, becoming the first president elected twice by universal suffrage under the Fifth Republic.

  His second term produced another wave of legislation, including the Revenu Minimum d'Insertion, which guaranteed a minimum income to anyone without other means; the 1990 Gayssot Act on hate speech and Holocaust denial; and the appointment of Édith Cresson in 1991 as France's first female prime minister. Cresson proved a costly appointment; her public remarks were widely described as offensive and she resigned after heavy Socialist losses in the 1992 regional elections.

  The contaminated blood scandal implicated former ministers including Laurent Fabius. The right won a crushing victory in the 1993 legislative elections, taking 485 seats to the left's 95. Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy, who had promised to fight corruption, killed himself on the 1st of May 1993. Mitterrand named RPR finance minister Edouard Balladur as Prime Minister for the second period of cohabitation, which was less contentious than the first since neither man intended to contest the next presidential election.

• 7. Europe and Africa

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  Mitterrand's partnership with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl defined European politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Together they drove the Maastricht Treaty, signed on the 7th of February 1992 and ratified by referendum with just over 51% of French voters approving it. When Kohl sought French agreement to German reunification - France was one of the four Allied powers whose consent was required under the Two Plus Four treaty - Mitterrand told him he would agree only if Germany abandoned the Deutsche Mark and adopted a shared European currency. Kohl accepted this package deal, reportedly without consulting Karl Otto Pöhl, then President of the Bundesbank.

  Mitterrand also helped the Single European Act come into effect in February 1986 and supported Spain and Portugal's accession to the European Community, which took place in January 1986.

  The major public statement of his Africa policy came in June 1990 at La Baule, when he tied French development aid explicitly to democratic progress in former French colonies. Drawing an analogy between the democratic movements sweeping Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a comparable "Southern wind" he saw blowing through Africa, he called on African leaders to pursue free elections, multipartyism, press freedom, an independent judiciary, and abolition of censorship. He also announced that the least developed countries would henceforth receive grants from France rather than loans, and he capped the interest rate on French loans to intermediate-income countries at 5%. African heads of state reacted at most with indifference. Omar Bongo of Gabon said he would rather "have events counsel him." Hissène Habré of Chad questioned how states could simultaneously pursue democratic reform and comply with IMF structural adjustment programmes that limited their sovereignty.

  Mitterrand's foreign policy also produced a settlement of the dispute over credit for the discovery of HIV. After American researcher Robert Gallo and French scientist Luc Montagnier both claimed priority, with the mediation of Jonas Salk, Mitterrand and President Ronald Reagan reached an agreement giving equal credit to both scientists and their teams.

  In October 1985, to mark the tricentenary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Mitterrand issued a formal apology to the descendants of Huguenots around the world, accompanied by a commemorative postage stamp stating that France is the home of the Huguenots.

• 8. Secrets and Legacy

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  Mitterrand's prostate cancer had been concealed from the French public for most of his presidency. He died in Paris on the 8th of January 1996, less than eight months after leaving office, at the age of 79.

  His private life contained further secrets that only became known over time. He and Danielle Mitterrand, whom he married on the 24th of October 1944, had three sons together. He also had an acknowledged daughter, Mazarine, born in 1974 with his mistress Anne Pingeot, and an unacknowledged son born in 1988 with a Swedish journalist.

  Mitterrand's record on the Vichy years remained contentious throughout his life. As late as 1994, while still President, he maintained that the wartime roundup of Jews sent to death camps was solely the work of "Vichy France," calling it an entity distinct from France itself and stating: "The Republic had nothing to do with this." President Jacques Chirac explicitly rejected this position in 1995, acknowledging that "4,500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders" had carried out Nazi demands. Emmanuel Macron, speaking on the 16th of July 2017 about the 1942 Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of 13,000 Jews, went further still: "It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. Yes, it's convenient, but it is false."

  François Mitterrand's political legacy is substantial and contested in equal measure. He made the French left electable. He presided over the rise of the Socialist Party to dominance of the left and the decline of the once-dominant Communist Party. A United Nations Human Development report found that from 1979 to 1989, France was the only OECD country apart from Portugal in which income inequalities did not worsen. His Grands Projets gave Paris the Louvre Pyramid, the Grande Arche at La Défense, the Bastille Opera, the Channel Tunnel, and the National Library of France.

  On the 2nd of February 1993, in his separate capacity as co-prince of Andorra, Mitterrand and Joan Martí Alanis, the Bishop of Urgell, signed Andorra's new constitution, later approved by referendum - a small footnote to a very long career, but a real one.