Georges Bonnet - Early Career

Early Career

Bonnet was born in Bassillac, Dordogne, the son of a lawyer. He studied law and political science at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and Sorbonne, and then went to work as an auditeur at the Conseil d'état. In 1911, he launched a political career after marrying Odette Pelletan, the granddaughter of Eugene Pelletan. Bonnet's wife, often known as Madame Soutien-Georges, ran a salon, and had great ambitions for her husband; one contemporary reported that Madame Bonnet was "so wildly ambitious for her husband that when a new ministry was being formed he was afraid to go home at night unless he had captured a post for himself". Many privately mocked Bonnet for the way in which his wife dominated him.

The moniker "Madame Soutien-Georges" directed towards her was a French pun on the word for brassière (soutien-gorge) and was both a reference to Bonnet and to the size of her breasts. In 1914, Bonnet joined the French Army and in 1918 served as director of demobilization. During his service in World War I, Bonnet was a much-decorated soldier who won the Croix de guerre medal for bravery under fire. In 1919, Bonnet served as a secretary to the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and wrote a book, Lettres á un Bourgeois de 1914, that called for widespread social reforms.

Bonnet served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1924 to 1928 and again from 1929 to 1940. He was appointed undersecretary of state in 1925, the first in a series of high ministerial positions throughout the 1920s and 1930s. During his time as in the Chamber, Bonnet was regarded as a leading expert in financial and economic matters. As a minister, Bonnet had a reputation for hard work, always well prepared in parliamentary debates and excelling at political intrigue. In 1932, Bonnet headed the French delegation at the Lausanne Conference. During the Lausanne Conference, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, commenting on Bonnet's abilities, asked "Why isn't he in the Cabinet?".

In 1933, Bonnet was a prominent member of the French delegation to the London Conference, where he was a leading critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's actions during the conference. In 1936, Bonnet emerged as the leader of 18 Radical deputies who objected to their party's participation in the Front Populaire. As a result, the French Premier Léon Blum effectively exiled Bonnet by appointing him the French Ambassador to the United States in January 1937 even if Bonnet never learned English. Upon hearing of Bonnet' appointment, the American Ambassador to France, William Christian Bullitt, Jr. wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about Bonnet:

I don't think you'll like him. He is extremely intelligent and competent on economic and financial matters, but he's not a man of character. You may remember that he led the French delegation to the London economic conference where he led the attacks against you.

Despite his short stay in the United States and his inability to speak English, Bonnet claimed for the rest of his life to be an expert on all things American because of his time as French Ambassador in Washington.

On 28 June 1937, Bonnet returned to France when the Premier Camille Chautemps appointed him Finance Minister. Bonnet's first major act as Finance Minister was to oversee the devaluation of the franc (the second devaluation in less than nine months), with the value of the franc going from 110.8 francs per British pound to 147.20. The devaluation was forced on Bonnet by the fact that the 10 billion francs that had been set aside in September 1936 in a Currency Reserve Fund to defend the value of the franc following the devaluation of that year had been spent by the middle of 1937. As Finance Minister, Bonnet imposed sharp cuts in military spending.

Bonnet felt that the costs of the arms race with Germany were such that it was better for France to reach an understanding that might end the arms race than continue to spend gargantuan sums on the military. Besides the economic problems associated with budgetary stability and his attempts to maintain the value of the franc against currency speculation, Bonnet concerned himself with the social conflict caused by the need for increased taxation and decreased social services in order to pay for the arms race.

In a meeting with Franz von Papen, the German Ambassador to Austria, in November 1937, Bonnet and Chautemps expressed the hope that an understanding might be reached in which France might accept Central and Eastern Europe as Germany's sphere of influence in return for German acceptance of Western Europe as France's sphere of influence. Moreover, Bonnet became the leading spokesman within the French Cabinet for the idea that the French alliance system in Eastern Europe, the so-called cordon sanitaire, was a net liability that only served to embroil France in conflicts with Germany.

Throughout his career, Bonnet was noted as an advocate of "sacred egoism" and that France must do what helped French interests over any other country's. Bonnet regarded himself as a "realist", and his thinking on foreign policy tended to be colored in equal measure by pragmatism and insularity.

Bonnet's cuts in military spending created a major row with the War Minister Édouard Daladier, who was able to persuade the Cabinet to rescind the most severe of Bonnet's cuts to the budget of the French Army by pointing out that in the current international climate, the French Army needed more funding, not less. Since the Ministers of the Air and the Marine were not as substantial personalities as Daladier, the French Navy and French Air Force were not able to reverse the Finance Minister's cuts. In January 1938, following the fall of Chautemps's government, Bonnet made a serious effort to form a new government, but in the end, had to content himself with being appointed Minister of State.