Word: laval
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After the war he played both sides of a Socialist split, formed his own group in Aubervilliers, married the simple, homely daughter of Socialist Leader Dr. Georges Claussat. He has since kept Madame Laval in the background. He began to prosper as a legal fixer, moved to a swank home in Paris, wangled an amnesty law for defeatists through the Chamber, and snuggled up to influential Joseph Caillaux...
...post-war years Laval was variously a Socialist, Communist (for a few days), and numerous shades of rightist. Running this gamut he became a past master of French political intrigue, served as Foreign Minister and in other posts with several Cabinets. He also began to make big money as a corporation lawyer and super-fixer. Said he: "I don't like to work amongst files and documents. Give me the human element...
Typically human transaction: Laval had a friend who was a director of the commissary department of the Wagons-Lits. Laval and he decided to put the bottled waters of Laval's birthplace, Chateldon, in every French dining car. But the Government sanitary authorities three times refused to endorse the waters of Chateldon, which had no special properties whatever. Laval got a friend appointed Health Minister in a fast-disappearing French Cabinet, got his endorsement, made his sales. Laval's legal manipulation was especially lucrative while his friend Caillaux occupied the Finance Ministry. He figured in many great French...
...France's Foreign Minister, Laval instigated the Franco-Soviet Pact of 1935 which brought French businessmen a billion francs in contracts. Sixteen months in advance he told Mussolini it would be all right to rape Ethiopia, and later set his seal on the deed in the Hoare-Laval Pact with Britain which sanctioned Ethiopia's enslavement...
Papal Count. Laval's politically ambitious daughter Jose, swarthy as her father, became his right-hand woman. They traveled together in Italy, Russia and the U.S., where Laval hobnobbed with Herbert Hoover at the White House. Through daughter Jose, Laval reached into French aristocracy. Jose married young Rene de Chambrun, son of the onetime French Ambassador to Italy, descendant of Xa-fayette, nephew by marriage of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Through the De Chambruns, Laval met Marshal Petain. Laval eventually rose so high as to be made a Papal Count...