Andre Tardieu (22 September 1876 – 15 September 1945) was Prime Minister of France from 2 November 1929 to 21 February 1930 (succeeding Aristide Briand and preceding Camille Chautemps), from 2 March to 13 December 1930 (succeeding Chautemps and preceding Theodore Steeg), and from 20 February to 3 June 1932 (succeeding Pierre Laval and preceding Edouard Herriot). He was a moderate conservative affiliated with the Democratic Republican Alliance and the Republican Center.
Biography[]
Andre Tardieu was born Paris, France in 1876, and he worked as a journalist, founding the conservative newspaper L'Echo National. A Radical member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1914 to 1924 and from 1926 to 1936 (from 1932 for the Republican Center, which he co-founded), he was a close ally of Georges Clemenceau, whose tough policies during World War I and at the Treaty of Versailles he actively supported. Minister for Public Works from 1926 to 1928 and Minister of the Interior from 1928 to 1930, he held several other ministries until 1934. Though a virulent anti-communist, he also alienated many Radicals through his policies of "national retooling", which encompassed proposals for social reform and the modernization of industry and agriculture. He lacked the necessary parliamentary support to implement most of his proposals. He died in Menton, France in 1945 at the age of 68.