René Massigli

Nationality

France

Date of Birth

1888

Date of Death

1988

Political
Preference

René Massigli was a French diplomat and senior official at the Quai d’Orsay, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Born in Montpellier, Massigli studied history in Rome and Lille. During the First World War, he joined the French diplomatic service and analysed German newspaper content for the French government in Bern, Switzerland. After the war, he worked to established better relations between France and Germany. He became the Secretary-General at the Conference of Ambassadors of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers from 1920 to 1931, where he worked on the enforcement of the Versailles Treaty. In the 1930s, he participated in the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva and was involved in discussions on the prospects of economic integration in Eastern Europe and questions of German control over the area. 
 
In 1938, he was the French ambassador to Turkey, a turbulent position that ended in a pact of mutual security between the United Kingdom, France and Turkey. During World War II, Massigli was the foreign minister of the Free French in 1943-1944. Massigli favoured Franco-British relations over any kind of rapprochement with the Soviet Union, and was demoted to Ambassador of London in 1944, as de Gaulle considered him too much of an Anglophile. After World War II, his ideas on European integration were grounded in his belief that France and Britain had to work together as two European nations without Great Britain distancing itself from European Continental affairs. Distrustful of Germany and West German rearmament, he was in favour of a Franco-British alliance, rather than a larger European integration.