Editing Pierre Mendès France (section)

{{short description|French politician (1907–1982)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2014}}
{{Family name hatnote|Mendès France|France}}
{{Infobox officeholder
|name             = Pierre Mendès France
|image            = Mendès-France Harcourt 1948.jpg
|caption          = Pierre Mendès France in 1948
|office           = [[Prime Minister of France]]
|term_start       = 18 June 1954
|term_end         = 23 February 1955
|president        = [[René Coty]]
|predecessor      = [[Joseph Laniel]]
|successor        = [[Edgar Faure]]
|office1          = Minister of Foreign Affairs
|term_start1      = 18 June 1954
|term_end1        = 20 January 1955
|primeminister1   = Himself
|predecessor1     = [[Georges Bidault]]
|successor1       = [[Edgar Faure]]
|office2          = [[Mayor (France)|Mayor]] of [[Louviers]]
|term_start2      = 13 March 1953
|term_end2        = 27 November 1958
|predecessor2     = Marcel Malherbe
|successor2       = André Vincelot
|term_start3      = 17 May 1935
|term_end3        = 20 September 1939
|predecessor3     = Raoul Thorel
|successor3       = Auguste Fromentin
|office4          = President of the General Council of [[Eure]]
|term_start4      = 6 October 1945
|term_end4        = 6 December 1958
|predecessor4     = Office established
|successor4       = Gustave Héon
|office5          = Minister of National Economics
|term_start5      = 4 September 1944
|term_end5        = 6 April 1945
|primeminister5 = [[Charles de Gaulle]]
|predecessor5     = Office established
|successor5       = [[René Pleven]]
|office6          = Commissioner for Finances
|term_start6      = 3 November 1943
|term_end6        = 4 September 1944
|president6       = Charles de Gaulle
|predecessor6     = [[Maurice Couve de Murville]]
|successor6       = [[Aimé Lepercq]]
|birth_name       = Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France
|birth_date       = {{birth date|1907|1|11|df=y}}
|birth_place      = [[Paris]], France
|death_date       = {{death date and age|1982|10|18|1907|1|11|df=y}}
|death_place      = Paris, France
|party            = [[Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party|Radical]] (1924–1959)<br>[[Autonomous Socialist Party (France)|Autonomous Socialist]] (1959–1960)<br>[[Unified Socialist Party (France)|Unified Socialist]] (1960–1971)
|spouse           = {{plainlist|
* {{Marriage|Lily Cicurel|1933|1967|end=died}}
* {{Marriage|Marie-Claire Servan-Schreiber|1971}}
}}
|children         = 2
|alma_mater       = [[University of Paris]]
}}

'''Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France''' ({{IPA|fr|pjɛʁ mɑ̃dɛs fʁɑ̃s|lang}}; 11 January 1907{{spnd}}18 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 (France)|Radical Party]], he headed a government supported by a coalition of Gaullists ([[Rally of the French People|RPF]]), moderate socialists ([[UDSR]]), Christian democrats ([[Popular Republican Movement|MRP]]) and liberal-conservatives ([[CNIP]]). His main priority was ending the [[First Indochina War|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.<ref>Maurice Larkin, ''France since the Popular Front: Government and People 1936-1996'' (1997) pp 240-1.</ref> At the 1954 [[Geneva Conference (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.<ref>{{cite book|author=Thomas J. Christensen|title=Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1v2pqaOmuEC&pg=PA123|year=2011|publisher=Princeton UP|pages=123–25|isbn=978-1400838813|access-date=21 September 2016|archive-date=27 May 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160527111951/https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1v2pqaOmuEC&pg=PA123|url-status=live}}</ref> He is considered one of the most prominent statesmen of the [[French Fourth Republic]].<ref name=BD/>