• Président de la République Française Albert François Lebrun, 1871
• Prime Minister of France Paul Reynaud, 1878
• Minister of the Interior Georges Mandel, 1885

Born to a farming family in Mercy - le - Haut, Meurthe - et - Moselle, he attended the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines, graduating from both at the top of his class. He then became a mining engineer in Vesoul and Nancy, but left that profession at the age of 29 to enter politics. Lebrun gained a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1900 as a member of the Left Republican Party, later serving on the cabinet as Minister for the Colonies from 1912 – 1914, Minister of War in 1913 and Minister for Liberated Regions, 1917 – 1919. Joining the Democratic Alliance, he was elected to the French senate from Meurthe - et - Moselle in 1920, and served as Vice President of the Senate from 1925 through 1929. He was president of that body from 1931 – 1932.

Lebrun was elected president of France following the assassination of president Paul Doumer by Pavel Gurgulov on 6 May 1932. Re-elected in 1939, largely because of his record of accommodating all political sides, he exercised little power as president. On 10 July 1940, Lebrun was replaced by Philippe Pétain (although Lebrun never officially resigned) as head of state by a vote of the parliament.

He then fled to Vizille (Isère) on 15 July, but was captured on 27 August 1943 when the Germans moved into the region and was sent into captivity at the Itter Castle in Tyrol. On 10 October 1943 he was allowed to return to Vizille due to poor health, but was kept under constant surveillance.

On 9 August 1944, when the Allies restored the French government, Lebrun met with Charles de Gaulle and acknowledged the General's leadership, saying that he had not formally resigned as president because the dissolution of the National Assembly had left nobody to accept his resignation.

After the war, Lebrun lived in retirement. He died of pneumonia in Paris on 6 March 1950 after a protracted illness.

Refusing to participate in the Vichy government, he resigned and was arrested in June 1940 by Philippe Petain's administration. First held at Fort du Portalet, Reynaud was transferred to German custody in 194x and held in Germany until the end of the war. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946, he became a prominent figure again in French political life, serving in several cabinet positions. He favored a United States of Europe. He participated in drafting the constitution for the Fifth Republic and resigned from government in 1962.

Reynaud was born in Barcelonnette, Alpes - de - Haute - Provence. His father had made a fortune in the textile industry, enabling Reynaud to study law at the Sorbonne. He entered politics and quickly became active.

Reynaud was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies from 1919 to 1924, representing Basses - Alpes, and again from 1928, representing a Paris district. Although he was first elected as part of the conservative "Blue Horizon" bloc in 1919, Reynaud shortly thereafter switched his allegiance to the center - right Democratic Republican Alliance party. Reynaud later became the vice president of his party.

In the 1920s, Reynaud developed a reputation for laxity on German reparations, at a time when many in the French government backed harsher terms for Germany. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, particularly after 1933, Reynaud's stance hardened against the Germans at a time when all nations were struggling economically. Reynaud backed a strong alliance with the United Kingdom and, unlike many others on the French Right, better relations with the Soviet Union as a counterweight against the Germans.

Reynaud held several cabinet posts in the early 1930s, but he clashed with members of his party after 1932 over French foreign and defense policy. He was not given another cabinet position until 1938. Like Winston Churchill, Reynaud was a maverick in his party and often alone in his calls for rearmament and resistance to German aggrandizement. Reynaud was a supporter of Charles de Gaulle's theories of mechanized warfare in contrast to the static defense doctrines that were in vogue among many of his countrymen, symbolized by the Maginot Line. He strongly opposed appeasement in the run up to the Second World War.

He also clashed with his party on economic policy, backing the devaluation of the franc as a solution to France's economic woes. Pierre Étienne Flandin, the leader of the Democratic Republican Alliance, agreed with several of Reynaud's key policy stances, particularly on Reynaud's defense of economic liberalism.

Reynaud returned to the cabinet in 1938 as Minister of Finance under Édouard Daladier. The Sudeten Crisis, which began not long after Reynaud was named Minister of Justice, again revealed the divide between Reynaud and the rest of the Alliance Démocratique; Reynaud adamantly opposed abandoning the Czechs to the Germans, while Flandin felt that allowing Germany to expand eastward would inevitably lead to a conflict with the Soviets that would weaken both. Reynaud publicly made his case, and in response Flandin pamphleted Paris in order to pressure the government to agree to Hitler's demands. Reynaud subsequently left his party to become an independent. Reynaud still had Daladier's support, however, whose politique de fermeté was very similar to Reynaud's notion of deterrence.

Reynaud, however, had always wanted the Finance ministry. He endorsed radically liberal economic policies in order to draw France's economy out of stagnation, centered on a massive program of deregulation, including the elimination of the forty - hour work week. The notion of deregulation was very popular among France's businessmen, and Reynaud believed that it was the best way for France to regain investors' confidence again and escape the stagnation its economy had fallen into. The collapse of Léon Blum's government in 1938 was a response to Blum's attempt to expand the regulatory powers of the French government; there was therefore considerable support in the French government for an alternative approach like Reynaud's.

Paul Marchandeau, Daladier's first choice for finance minister, offered a limited program of economic reform that was not to Daladier's satisfaction; Reynaud and Daladier swapped portfolios, and Reynaud went ahead with his radical liberalization reforms. Reynaud's reforms were successfully implemented, and the government stood down a one - day strike in opposition. Reynaud addressed France's business community, arguing that "We live in a capitalist system. For it to function we must obey its laws. These are the laws of profits, individual risk, free markets, and growth by competition."

Reynaud's reforms proved remarkably successful; a massive austerity program was implemented (although armament measures were not cut) and France's coffers expanded from 37 billion francs in September 1938 to 48 billion francs at the outbreak of war a year later. More importantly, France's industrial productivity jumped from 76 to 100 (base = 1929) from October 1938 to May 1939. At the outbreak of war, however, Reynaud was not bullish on France's economy; he felt that the massive increase in spending that a war entailed would stamp out France's recovery.

The French Right was ambivalent about the war in late 1939 and early 1940, feeling that the greater threat was from the Soviets. The Winter War put these problems into stark relief; Daladier refused to send aid to the Finns while war with Germany continued. News of the Soviet - Finnish armistice in March 1940 prompted Flandin and Pierre Laval to hold secret sessions of the legislature that denounced Daladier's actions; the government fell on 19 March. The government named Reynaud Prime Minister of France two days later.

Although Reynaud was increasingly popular, the Chamber of Deputies elected Reynaud premier by only a single vote with most of his own party abstaining; over half of the votes for Reynaud came from the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party. With so much support from the left – and the opposition from many parties on the right – Reynaud's government was especially unstable; many on the Right demanded that Reynaud attack not Germany, but the Soviet Union. The Chamber also forced Daladier, whom Reynaud held personally responsible for France's weakness, to be Reynaud's Minister of National Defense and War. One of Reynaud's first acts was to sign a declaration with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that neither of the two countries would sign a separate peace.

Reynaud abandoned any notion of a "long war strategy" based on attrition. Reynaud entertained suggestions to expand the war to the Balkans or northern Europe; he was instrumental in launching the allied campaign in Norway, though it ended in failure. Britain's decision to withdraw on 26 April prompted Reynaud to travel to London to personally lobby the British to stand and fight in Norway.

The Battle of France began less than two months after Reynaud came to office. France was badly mauled by the initial attack in early May 1940, and Paris was threatened. On 15 May, five days after the invasion began, Reynaud contacted his British counterpart and famously remarked, "We have been defeated... we are beaten; we have lost the battle.... The front is broken near Sedan." Charles de Gaulle, whom Reynaud had long supported and one of the few French commanders to have fought the Germans successfully in 1940, was promoted to brigadier general and named undersecretary of war. On 18 May Reynaud removed commander - in - chief Maurice Gamelin in favor of Maxime Weygand.

As France's situation grew increasingly desperate, Reynaud accepted Marshal Philippe Pétain as Minister of State. Pétain, an aged veteran of the First World War, advised an armistice. Soon after the occupation of Paris, there was increasing pressure on Reynaud to come to a separate peace with Germany. Reynaud refused to be a party to such an undertaking, and was among the few in the cabinet to support accepting the British proposal on 16 June to unite France and the United Kingdom to avoid surrender. Discouraged by the cabinet's hostile reaction to the proposal and its preference for an armistice, and believing that his ministers no longer supported him, Reynaud resigned that evening.

Pétain, who became the leader of the new government (the last one of the Third Republic), signed the armistice on 22 June. On 28 June, Reynaud and his mistress the Comtesse Helène de Portes were involved in a road accident in the south of France. The car Reynaud was driving left the road and hit a tree. De Portes was killed instantly; Reynaud suffered a head injury. It has been suggested they were fleeing to Spain, but were traveling to Reynaud's holiday home on the Riviera. Hospitalized at Montpellier, Reynaud allegedly told Bill Bullitt, American ambassador, 'I have lost my country, my honor and my love'. After his discharge from hospital, Reynaud was arrested on Pétain's orders and imprisoned at Fort du Portalet.

Pétain decided against having him charged during the Riom Trial, and transferred him to the Germans. They held him as prisoner until the end of the war. Reynaud was liberated by Allied troops with other French prisoners in the Itter Castle near Wörgl, Austria, on 7 May 1945.

After the war, Reynaud was elected in 1946 as a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He was appointed to several cabinet positions in the postwar period and remained a prominent figure in French politics. His attempts to form governments in 1952 and 1953 in the turbulent politics of the French Fourth Republic were failures.

Reynaud supported the idea of a United States of Europe, along with a number of prominent contemporaries. Reynaud presided over the consultative committee that drafted the constitution of France's (current) Fifth Republic. In 1962, he denounced his old friend de Gaulle's attempt to eliminate the electoral college system in favor of direct vote. Reynaud left office the same year.

Reynaud remarried in 1949 at the age of 71 and fathered three children.

He died on 21 September 1966 at Neuilly - sur - Seine, leaving a number of writings.

Mandel began working life as a journalist for L'Aurore, a literary and socialist newspaper founded in 1897 by Émile Zola and Georges Clemenceau. They notably defended Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s. The paper continued until 1916.

As Minister of the Interior, Clemenceau later brought Mandel into politics as his aide. Described as "Clemenceau's right - hand man," Mandel helped Clemenceau control the press and the trade union movement during the First World War.

Mandel was an economic conservative and an outspoken opponent of Nazism and Fascism. In the 1930s, he played a similar role to that of Winston Churchill in the United Kingdom, highlighting the dangers posed by the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. He opposed Pierre Laval's plan to partition Ethiopia following its invasion by Benito Mussolini's Italy (the Second Italo – Abyssinian War of 1935 - 1936). Mandel advocated a French military alliance with the Soviet Union and opposed the Munich Agreement.

In 1919 Mandel was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Gironde. He, in September that year, was delegated to try to draw the government out of its noncommittal attitude towards the bastardized system of proportional representation passed by both houses of parliament earlier in the year. He lost his seat when the Cartel des Gauches swept the 1924 elections, but was returned to office in 1928. By 1932, he had become the Chairman of the Chamber's universal suffrage committee. Its actions led to passage of legislation enfranchising women, although the proposal was an anathema to the Senate.

In 1934, Mandel was appointed as Minister of Posts (1934 – 1936) and oversaw the first official television transmission in French. During the 1936 Albert Sarraut government, Mandel served as both Minister of Posts and High Commissioner for Alsace and Lorraine. After the fall of the Popular Front government, he served from 1938 as Minister of Overseas France and her Colonies until 18 May 1940, when Premier Paul Reynaud appointed him, briefly, as Minister of the Interior.

In September 1939, after the outbreak of the German - Polish War, Mandel argued that the French Army should fight an offensive war. Mandel was accused by some on the right of being a warmonger and of placing his Jewish ancestry above France's interests.

Mandel opposed the Armistice with the rapidly advancing Germans. On 16 June, in Bordeaux, the British general Edward Spears, Churchill's military liaison officer, offered Mandel the chance to leave on his plane, together with Charles de Gaulle. Mandel declined, saying: "You fear for me because I am a Jew. Well, it is just because I am a Jew that I will not go tomorrow; it would look as though I was afraid, as if I was running away."

Mandel sought to persuade Albert Lebrun, the President of the Republic, the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate, and as many members of the Cabinet as possible to travel to French North Africa, to continue the fight against the Germans. Only 25 other deputies and one senator embarked with Mandel on the Massilia on 21 June, including Pierre Mendès France and the former Popular Front education minister, Jean Zay, both of whom also had Jewish ancestry. Most of those on the ship were Socialists or Radicals.

Mandel was arrested on 8 August 1941 in Morocco by General Charles Nogues on the orders of Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of the Vichy government. He was conveyed to the Château de Chazeron via Fort du Portalet, where Paul Reynaud, Édouard Daladier and General Maurice Gamelin were also being held prisoner. Churchill tried unsuccessfully to arrange Mandel's rescue. He described Mandel as "the first resister" and is believed to have preferred him over Charles de Gaulle to lead the Free French Forces. Following pressure from the Germans and trials in Riom, all four were sentenced to life imprisonment on 7 November 1941.

In November 1942, after the Germany Army moved into unoccupied France and took it over, the Vichy government transferred Mandel and Reynaud to the Gestapo. The Nazis took over the former Free Zone to counter the threat from the Allies, who had just landed in North Africa. The Gestapo deported Mandel to Oranienburg, and then to Buchenwald, where he was held with the French politician Léon Blum.

In 1944 the German Ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz suggested to Laval that Mandel, Blum and Reynaud should be executed by the Vichy government in retaliation for the assassination of Philippe Henriot, Minister of Propaganda, by the Algiers Committee, the Communist Maquis of the Resistance. Mandel was returned to Paris on 4 July 1944, supposedly as a hostage. While being transferred from one prison to another, he was captured by the Milice, the paramilitary force.

Three days later, the Milice took Mandel to the Forest of Fontainebleau, where they executed him. He was buried at Passy Cemetery.

Laval was appalled and protested that he could not condone the execution: "I have no blood on my hands... and no responsibility for these events." He added that the members of the Vichy Cabinet were unanimous "in favor of refusing to hand over any hostages in future or to condone reprisals of this nature."

A monument to Mandel was erected near the site of his execution, next to the road connecting Fontainebleau to Nemours.