ABSTRACT
The stockily built, bull-necked, shortish Daladier looked so much like a bundled-up Teddy Bear, with a disposition which often bordered upon the bearish, the dominant impression was one of stolid, purposeful strength; Bonnet had a taller build with a prominent nose and a mobile foxy countenance, giving a general impression of restlessness and subtle manoeuvrability. The Stavisky scandal of January-February 1934 almost ruined his career. The Vichy government of Marshal Petain first imprisoned Daladier and then put him on trial at Riom in February 1942 charging him with responsibility for the defeat of 1940. Gossip had it that Daladier drank too much and Andre Geraud, who under the pen name of Pertinax was one of the best known and most well-informed journalists of the period, spread stories of the Prime Minister being worse for drink at the conference in Munich in September 1938. The Vichy regime did not provide any pasture for the politicians of the Third Republic.
