Raymond Poincare, a
conservative politician who had been elected president of the French Republic
over the objections of Georges Clemenceau and the French Left a month earlier,
takes office on this day in 1913.
Known for his right-wing
nationalist beliefs and his strong Catholic faith, Poincare served as France's
prime minister and foreign secretary before being elected to the presidency. A
native of France's Lorraine region, lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870-71, he bitterly hated and feared Germany. As prime minister in the
years before World War I,
Poincare worked to strengthen France's alliances with both Britain and Russia.
While Poincare was convinced that the system of alliances in Europe would
preserve the balance of power and avert a war, in reality the solidification of
the Triple Entente (an alliance among France, Britain and Russia) in the years
before 1914 made Germany increasingly nervous and only intensified the
atmosphere of tension that would soon explode into world war.
During the war, Poincare
fought to keep a spirit of strong national unity alive and urged France's
military and civilian population alike to stand firm against the onslaught of
the German enemy. In the spirit of this unity, Poincare appointed his liberal
nemesis, Georges Clemenceau, as prime minister in 1917. Though the two men
despised each other, they shared a hard-line attitude towards Germany and
fought together for strong penalties for the losing nations at the Versailles
peace conference, held in Paris in 1919.
Angered by what he saw as
excessive leniency towards Germany in the final Versailles treaty, Poincare
declined to stand for reelection and returned to the Senate in 1920. He was
again appointed prime minister in 1922. In this post, he enforced the payment
of German reparations; when the struggling country defaulted, he sent French troops
to seize the industrial zones of the Ruhr Valley in January 1923. Poincare
stepped down with the victory of a left-wing coalition in 1924, but returned to
the post of prime minister in 1926. He would head two more ministries until
1929, when he retired from government service for health reasons. Poincare died
in 1934.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/raymond-poincare-becomes-president-of-france
[18.02.2015]
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