Pierre Cot
Pierre Jules Cot (20 November 1895, in Grenoble – 21 August 1977, Paris), was a French politician and leading figure in the Popular Front government of the 1930s.
Born in
Biography
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In the 1920s Cot was a supporter of
In January 1933, he became Minister for Air in the Radical government of
In 1936, Cot, by this time a socialist, became a leading support of the Popular Front, an alliance of the Radicals and the
When Blum became Prime Minister in June 1936, Cot returned to the Air Ministry. He oversaw the nationalisation of the aeronautical industry and the launch of a re-armament program to meet the challenge of the fast-growing German Luftwaffe.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Blum's government reluctantly supported the policy of non-intervention, but Cot became a leading organiser of clandestine aid to the Spanish Republic. He organized a fictitious sale to Hejaz, Finland and Brazil of war planes, that made a flight scale in Spain.[4] The head of his ministerial office, Jean Moulin (later a leader of the French Resistance), made several trips to Spain. This brought Cot into close collaboration with the communists, with whom he had increasingly sympathised since a visit to the Soviet Union in 1933. His activities were one of the factors leading to the withdrawal of the right-wing of the Radical Party from the government and Blum's resignation in June 1937. In Blum's second government in March and April 1938, Cot was Minister for Commerce.
When Daladier returned to office and signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler, Cot broke finally with the Radical Party.
In May 1940, Prime Minister
During this period in the United States operating as a Soviet spy, his controller was
Cot was an influential figure among French political exiles, and in 1943 de Gaulle appointed him a member of the provisional French advisory assembly based in Algiers. De Gaulle also sent him to Moscow to negotiate Soviet recognition of the Free French government in exile.
In 1945, Cot was again elected as Deputy for Savoy, styling himself a republican although everyone knew he remained close to the communists. In 1951, he shifted to the
Cot's son, Jean-Pierre Cot, was a minister in the Socialist government of Pierre Mauroy in 1981–82 and was a member of the European Parliament in 1978–1979 and 1984–1999. Since 2002 he has been a member of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
References
- ^ "The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors" Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel pp 56–57
- ^ "Pierre Cot: un antifasciste radical" Sabine Jansen.
- ^ "Pierre Cot and the British Secret Services, 1940–41
- ^ Jackson, Gabriel (1976). La República Española y la Guerra Civil. Editorial Crítica. p. 229.
- ^ "The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors" Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel pg. 56
External links
- French biographical website on Pierre Cot (with photo). This website is the main source for this article.
- Newspaper clippings about Pierre Cot in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW