Georges Mandel

Georges Mandel (5 June 1885 – 7 July 1944) was a French journalist, politician, and French Resistance leader.

Born Louis George Rothschild in Chatou, Yvelines, he was the son of a tailor and his wife. His family was Jewish originally from Alsace. They moved into France in 1871 to preserve their French citizenship when Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by the German Empire at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

Mandel began working life as a journalist for L'Aurore, a literary and socialist newspaper founded in 1897 by Émile Zola and Georges Clemenceau. They notably defended Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s. The paper continued until 1916.

As Minister of the Interior, Clemenceau later brought Mandel into politics as his aide. Described as "Clemenceau's right-hand man," Mandel helped Clemenceau control the press and the trade union movement during the First World War.

In 1919 Mandel was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Gironde. In September that year, he was delegated to try to draw the government out of its noncommittal attitude regarding the system of proportional representation adopted by both houses of the National Assembly earlier in the year. He lost his seat when the Cartel des Gauches swept the 1924 elections, but was reelected in 1928. By 1932, he had become the Chairman of the Chamber's universal suffrage committee. Its actions led to passage of legislation enfranchising women, although the proposal was an anathema to the Senate.

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