Prison journal, 1940-1945

The French Prime Minister who signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 and who one year later led his country into war against Hitler's Germany, Edouard Daladier was arrested by the Vichy regime and imprisoned in France and Germany until the war's end. As a pastime and a catharsis, Daladier wrote. He wrote about what had happened to him and to his country, about day-to-day conditions in captivity, and about what he could glean of the anti-Nazi war effort through newspaper accounts, from the visits of his friends and family, and from his well-hidden radio receiver. He wrote of the accusations made against him by his former proteges and comrades-in-arms; and of his trial, during which the charges oddly metamorphosed from having declared war on Germany to not having sufficiently prepared France for battle (the charges were of little importance, as the verdict had been previously decided). Ever the statesman, Daladier wrote most of all about his hopes and fears for France and Europe - which hung so heavily, at first, upon the battlefield successes of the British, American, and Allied forces; and later, upon the Allies' refusal to recognize in Soviet power the danger of the very totalitarianism that they had been fighting to eliminate. At the war's end, witnessing the devastation of Germany, Daladier wrote with a poignant sympathy that is unexpectedly moving. Daladier's notes remained forgotten and unpublished until twenty years after his death, when they were discovered and compiled by his son Jean. They are presented here in English for the first time. By turns sorrowful, enraged, humorous, and philosophical, this lively narrative gives fresh insights into the tangled politics of the era.