biography
| name: |
Clemenceau, Georges
|
pronunciation:
[klemãsoh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1841–1929)
|
| biography:
| French statesman and prime minister (1906–9, 1917–20), born in Mouilleron-en-Pareds, France. He trained as a doctor, worked as a teacher in the USA (1865–9), then returned to France, where he became a member of the National Assembly, and in 1876 a leader of the extreme left in the Chamber of Deputies. He fought for justice for Dreyfus (1897), but as minister of the interior and prime minister (1906–9) he ruthlessly suppressed popular strikes and demonstrations. Known as ‘the tiger’, he presided at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, showing an intransigent hatred of Germany, demanding the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the acquisition of the industrial Saar basin, and the permanent separation of the Rhine left bank from Germany, in addition to financial reparations which Germany found impossible to meet. A brilliant journalist, he founded L'Aurore, and other papers. |
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