Pierre Mendès France
Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France (; 11 January 190718 October 1982) was a French politician who served as
prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955. As a member of the
Radical Party, he headed a government supported by a coalition of Gaullists (
RPF), moderate socialists (
UDSR), Christian democrats (
MRP) and liberal-conservatives (
CNIP). His main priority was ending the
Indochina War, which had already cost 92,000 lives, with 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured on the French side. Public opinion polls showed that, in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to regain Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by
Ho Chi Minh and his
Viet Minh movement. At the 1954
Geneva Conference, Mendès France negotiated a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed him to pull out all French forces. He is considered one of the most prominent statesmen of the
French Fourth Republic.
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