Jean Bartu French statesman and diplomat. Date of Birth: 25.08.1862 Country: France

Biography of Jean Bartou

Jean Louis Bartou (1862-1934) was a French statesman and diplomat. He was born on August 25, 1862, in the town of Oloron-Sainte-Marie in southwestern France. His father was a small tradesman dealing in hardware goods. At the age of 13, Jean attended a provincial high school in Pau, where he studied Latin and Roman classics. After completing his education, Bartou continued his studies at the law faculty of the university. In 1884, he became a lawyer in the administrative center of the Atlantic Pyrenees department, the town of Pau. Four years later, he was elected to the municipal council. In the parliamentary elections held on January 27, 1889, Bartou won a seat as a deputy, which he held for the next 33 years until his election to the Senate. He joined the Republican political group that proclaimed themselves as progressives.
On May 30, 1894, Bartou became the Minister of Public Works in the Dupuy government. This period also brought changes in his personal life. At the age of 32, Jean-Louis married the daughter of a wealthy wine merchant. His fiancée was interested in the country's political life, as well as French literature, theater, music, and painting. The following year, they had a son named Max. On April 29, 1896, Bartou became the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior in the Melines government. After the resignation of the cabinet on June 15, 1898, Bartou focused on literary work and expanding a library that gained European recognition.
Bartou returned to ministerial activity in March 1906. In the frequently changing governments, he held positions such as Minister of Public Works, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Vice Prime Minister, and Minister of Justice. On March 20, 1913, Raymond Poincaré appointed Bartou as the Prime Minister. The cabinet presented a project to increase the size of the French army in peacetime by extending the service of conscripts and simultaneously lowering the conscription age from 21 to 20. On July 19, 1913, the Chamber of Deputies approved this project, which Bartou considered a major political success.
However, the proposal for an internal government loan faced strong opposition from the radicals. As a result, on December 4, 1913, the Chamber of Deputies refused to grant confidence to the Bartou cabinet. Later that evening, the Prime Minister submitted his resignation to Raymond Poincaré. The First World War, which lasted more than four years, involved 24 states. Bartou's 19-year-old son Max was killed during the war. His wife was unable to recover from the blow. Bartou temporarily withdrew from active parliamentary activities. Until the autumn of 1917, he did not appear on the ministerial stage, focusing on literary work. Two books, "Lamartine" and "On the Path of Justice," were published under his pen name.
On September 12, 1917, Louis Barthou became a Minister of State (a minister without portfolio) in the government of radical politician Painlevé, and on October 25, he became the Minister of Foreign Affairs. His main task was to secure the return of Alsace and Lorraine, which could become a significant strategic gain for France, creating a strong defensive barrier. However, this required defeating Germany. On November 11, 1918, the signing of the armistice marked the end of the fighting on the fronts of the First World War. Barthou, as part of the French delegation, actively participated in the Paris Peace Conference and became one of the "architects" of French victory in the war. However, he realized that the threat of German revenge was still present. "Peace is a state of vigilance," he warned.
In January 1920, Bartou, who renewed his parliamentary mandate on the Democratic Union list, was elected Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies. At one of the first committee meetings, he stated that he was against secret diplomacy and believed that foreign policy should be under parliamentary control with "unrestricted transparency." Bartou considered the full and unconditional implementation of the Treaty of Versailles, which came into effect on January 10, 1920, as France's main foreign policy task.
On January 15, 1922, Raymond Poincaré formed a new government of the Third Republic. Bartou was appointed as the Minister of Justice and concurrently as the Minister for the Affairs of Alsace and Lorraine. He was also appointed as the head of the French delegation to the conference in Genoa.
At the International Economic Conference in Genoa in April 1922, the French delegation immediately tried to take the initiative. Bartou declared, "We came here to act, we are not observers but participants, ready to take part in the common work and bear our share of responsibility." During negotiations with the delegation of Soviet Russia, Bartou showed himself to be an educated and amiable interlocutor, as recalled by M.M. Litvinov: "His public speeches were characterized by directness, seriousness, and persuasiveness. He did not resort to diplomatic phrases at the expense of the meaning and clarity of his speeches... Thanks to his intellect, wit, and comprehensive education, conversations with him were always a genuinely aesthetic pleasure."
As a preliminary condition for the normalization of relations with the Soviet state, Bartou demanded the repayment of Tsarist debts. The Soviet side put forward its counterclaims against the interventionist countries. During the plenary session of the conference, Bartou resorted to an ultimatum. He hoped for a unified position of all creditors. However, Germany unexpectedly signed a treaty with the Soviet state. Chicherin immediately assured Bartou that the Rapallo Treaty had no anti-French orientation. On May 1, 1922, Bartou wrote to the Soviet People's Commissar that he "had no doubt about the sincerity of the intentions expressed in the letter of the Russian delegation" and immediately noted the immense historical significance of France's military collaboration with Russia during the First World War. "Some political figures," Bartou explained his position, "are accused of always turning with the wind. But that's exactly what you need to do, turn with the wind. The weakness of politicians is that, so to speak, they turn against the wind."
In July 1922, Louis Barthou was elected to the Senate. In October, he became the chairman of the Reparation Commission, responsible for implementing the reparation articles of the Treaty of Versailles. On January 9, 1924, the Reparation Commission, chaired by Bartou, with three votes (France, Belgium, Italy) against one vote from the British delegate, noted that Germany was not fulfilling its reparation obligations under the Treaty of Versailles. On January 11, French and Belgian troops crossed the German border and entered Essen, Gelsenkirchen, and Bochum.
As the chairman of the Reparation Commission, Louis Barthou found himself at the center of intense diplomatic struggle. French finances were burdened with the heavy cost of occupation. Resistance to French occupation from Germany was growing. In search of a compromise, Bartou agreed to establish an "Experts Committee," which was insisted upon by Britain and the United States. On April 9, Chicago banker Charles Dawes outlined his vision for resolving the issue in a letter to Bartou. Poincaré wanted to reject the American plan, which was exclusively advantageous for Germany, by making amendments. However, Bartou took a more "political" position, leaning towards accepting the proposed plan, which received support from the British.
Bartou emphasized that in the current political situation, one of the important tasks of French diplomacy was to refute the "widespread slander" that France, by occupying the Ruhr, allegedly sought to "annex" German territories. With his position, Bartou sought to show that by accepting the Dawes Plan, as he himself wrote, "neither the rights of France nor the rights of its government were sacrificed."
On January 15, 1930, he suffered a heavy blow when Madame Barthou passed away. After the loss of his wife, Bartou took a trip to Norway and visited the Alps in Switzerland.
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, Bartou had strengthened his ties with the leading military circles of the Third Republic. This was facilitated by his tenure as Minister of War in the "great minority" cabinet formed on December 13, 1930, by right-wing Senator Steeg.
On February 8, 1934, Bartou became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the "National Unity government." The goal set by the new head of government, Édouard Daladier, was to ensure international peace based on the situation that had developed in Europe after the First World War, by strengthening France's position towards Germany. Bartou firmly rejected the pressure from British diplomacy, which sought a "compromise" with Germany at the expense of French concessions. Édouard Daladier informed British Foreign Secretary Henderson of the government's refusal to recognize "equality" in armaments for Germany. Bartou considered such a "balance" unsatisfactory. He immediately realized that British diplomacy was attempting to link the conclusion of the "Eastern Pact" with a "weakening of the arms issue in favor of Germany" and "categorically objected" to such a connection.
In the final communique, the Franco-British disagreement over the issue of German rearmament was downplayed. On July 12, the British Foreign Office informed Rome, Berlin, and Warsaw through the English ambassadors about its support for the French project of the "Eastern Pact."
Bartou also succeeded in gaining support for the entry of the USSR into the League of Nations from England, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and several other countries. On September 15, the USSR received an invitation to join the League of Nations, signed by representatives of 30 states. Louis Barthou considered this a major success of his diplomatic activity. He believed that an important step had been taken toward establishing Franco-Soviet cooperation and strengthening the "rear alliances." "My main task has been achieved," Bartou said, "the government of the USSR will now cooperate with Europe."
Mussolini's diplomacy did not exclude the search for temporary and partial agreements with France. These searches intensified from the spring of 1933 as Italian-German contradictions became apparent and intensified. Bartou's main focus, aimed at involving Italy in the orbit of French policy, was the plan to create a complex of agreements designed to cover the Balkans and the Mediterranean, which the French Foreign Ministry called the Mediterranean Entente. Considering that on September 2, 1933, the Treaty of Friendship, Non-Aggression, and Neutrality between the USSR and Italy was signed in Rome, Bartou hoped to bridge the diplomatic gap between the Mediterranean Entente and the "Eastern Pact" in the future.
By the end of September, Bartou had prepared a draft comprehensive agreement, according to which France, Italy, and the countries of the Little Entente - Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Romania - were to collectively guarantee the independence of Austria. The participation of the countries of the Little Entente in the agreement was intended to paralyze Mussolini's calculations for the restoration of the monarchy of the Austrian Habsburgs. Through Czechoslovakia and Romania, this intended contractual "guarantee" combination was linked to the "Eastern Pact," becoming a link in the system of European collective security.
An important role in implementing Bartou's plan was given to the visit of Yugoslav King Alexander I Karageorgevich to Paris. "Bartou had to convince the Yugoslav king of the need for negotiations with Italy," wrote P. Aloi, a diplomat. The U.S. Embassy in Berlin was better informed. "The king's visit aimed to create a coalition of France, Italy, and Yugoslavia against Germany and Poland." "This time," Bartou said in an interview with journalist J. Tabui the day before the Yugoslav king's arrival in France, "I will really make a difference and convince the Yugoslav king of the need for negotiations with Italy."