When effervescent Paul Reynaud became French Minister of Finance last November, France was fast slipping into an economic collapse that, following close after the Munich disaster, might have destroyed French democracy. Unemployment had increased 40,000 in a year (to 367,000) as production dropped to 25% below the 1930 level; one out of three dinky French freight cars was idle; sales of manufactured goods abroad had halved; industrialists said they saw no chance for profits under Popular Front reforms. Worst of all, the savings of millions of frugal Frenchmen were endangered by an...
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