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TRUE OR FALSE. Daladier/Chamberlain and Le Pen/Orbán… Does Valérie Hayer’s comparison hold up historically?
Valérie Hayer, head of the Renaissance list in the European elections, compared Édouard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain to Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbàn, to point out the collusion of the RN with Russia. Is the comparison relevant?
(franceinfo)
Valérie Hayer, head of the Renaissance list in the European elections, compared Édouard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain to Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbàn, to point out the collusion of the RN with Russia. Is the comparison relevant?
In the middle of the European campaign, on March 9, 2024, this is the comparison made by Valérie Hayer, head of the Renaissance list regarding the situation in Ukraine: “Yesterday, Daladier and Chamberlain, today Le Pen and Orban. The same words, the same arguments, the same debates. We are in Munich in 1938”. Valérie Hayer therefore compares Marine Le Pen to Édouard Daladier, the French President of the Council in 1938. The sentence made people cringe.
A historical reminder is in order: Édouard Daladier is a figure of the radical left in France and of the Popular Front, a far cry from Marine Le Pen. Neville Chamberlain is the British Prime Minister. In 1938, Hilter, in power in Germany, became more and more threatening. He wants to annex the Sudetenland, Czech territories, populated mainly by Germans, and promises peace in exchange. Daladier and Chamberlain agreed to abandon these territories during the Munich Accords, signed on September 29 and 30, 1938. War was then avoided, for a time only.
Quite far from historical reality
In 2024, Valérie Hayer implies that Marine Le Pen would be ready to sacrifice Ukraine to avoid war with Vladimir Putin. According to Isabelle Davion, historian at La Sorbonne University, the comparison between the two moments does not hold. “Daladier will sign the Munich agreements to gain time, to not give Hitler the war he wants. Making Daladier someone who refuses to help a country at war to save France from war is a error“, she believes.
Édouard Daladier therefore signed the Munich agreements with death in his soul, fully aware that war was inevitable. Valérie Hayer therefore sought to point out the collusion of the RN with Russia. But his comparison with Édouard Daladier seems quite far from historical reality.
