With Neville Chamberlain he yielded to Hitler’s demands to annex the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Pact (1938). He had served as a Radical Socialist in various ministries and was Premier in 1933 and 1934 and again in 1938–40. Arrested by the Vichy government in 1940, he was tried at Riom, together with other democratic leaders, accused of responsibility for France’s military disasters. Although acquitted, he remained imprisoned in France and Germany. He was elected to the national assembly (1945–58) during the Fourth Republic.