Pierre Cot

Who was Pierre Cot?

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Pierre Cot, French politician, was a leading figure in the Popular Front government of the 1930s. Born in Grenoble into a conservative Catholic family, he entered politics as an admirer of the World War I conservative leader Raymond Poincaré, but moved steadily to the left over the course of his career. Through the decrypting of 1943 Soviet intelligence cables through the Venona Project it was established that Cot was an agent of the Soviet Union with the code name of "Dedal"

In the 1920s Cot was a supporter of Aristide Briand, an independent socialist. In 1928 he was elected to the National Assembly as a Radical Deputy for Savoy. In December 1932 he was appointed Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the centre-left government of Joseph Paul-Boncour. In January 1933 he became Minister for Air in the Radical government of Édouard Daladier. He oversaw the establishment of Air France, and advocated a major expansion of the French Air Force, but left office in February 1934 when the Stavisky Affair forced Daladier from power. He was again Minister for Air in three brief governments led by Camille Chautemps.

In 1936 Cot, by this time a convinced Socialist, became a leading support of the Popular Front, an alliance of the Radicals and the Socialists led by Léon Blum, with the support of the French Communist Party. An antiwar activist, though not a pacifist, he was president of the International Peace Conference from 1936 to 1940. He received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953.