In this video beginning at 46:20 the historian Michael Neiberg discusses Jean Jaurès and around the 48 minute mark he states that Jean Jaurès had intended to support WW1, despite his prior pacifistic and anti-militarist stances, due to the fact that France had been thrown into the war because of factors outside of their control. According to Neiberg, Jaurès intended to publicly support the war but was killed before he could.
Is there any source for this? This seems so contradictory to the legacy of Jaurès that I find it difficult to believe and would like to read a source on the details.
Here is the sequence of events that led to Jaurès' assassination by Raoul Villain on 31 July 1914 at 21:40.
On 30 July, arriving from Brussels, Jaurès learned of the mobilization in Russia. With other deputies, he went to see the Président du Conseil René Viviani. Viviani and Jaurès were long time friends, having founded the newspaper L'Humanité together. Viviani was reassuring and told the deputies that the government had decided to hold French troops 10km from the border but he did not tell them that France was committed to support Russia if it was attacked by Germany. Albert Bedouce, a member of the delegation, said one year later in Le Populaire du Centre (3 August 1915, cited by Kriegel, 1964) that Jaurès had told them after meeting Viviani:
You know, if we were in their shoes, I don't know what more we could do now to ensure peace.
The following day, Jaurès published in L'Humanité an optimistic paper titled Sang-froid nécessaire that began as follows:
Let us put things in the worst possible light, let us take the necessary precautions in view of the most formidable hypotheses, but please let us keep a clear mind and firm reason everywhere. Judging by all the known elements, it does not seem that the international situation is desperate. It is serious for sure, but all chances of a peaceful settlement have not disappeared.
Jaurès spent part of the afternoon of 31 July at the Chamber of Deputies, where he tried to convince Ministers and Deputies that France had to restrain Russia. Then at 13:00 the news broke that Germany had proclaimed drohende Kriegsgefahr, the threat of war. At about 17:30-18:00, Jaurès and the Socialist deputies tried to meet Viviani but the President was receiving the German ambassador (who was delivering an ultimatum). The Socialists could only meet Abel Ferry, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ferry was little reassuring and did not tell them much. He asked what the Socialists would do if events took a turn for the worse. Jaures replied: “We will clear our party of any guilt; to the very end, we will continue to struggle against war.” Ferry answered: “No, you won’t be able to continue. You will be assassinated on the nearest streetcorner.” He pulled Bedouce aside and told him: “Everything is finished.” The deputies turned to Jaurès who told them: "I understand that well". Bedouce said at Villain's trial:
[Jaurès] was overwhelmed like a man who has just been clubbed; we had seen him all day so distressed by the misfortune that was weighing on our country, that the moral suffering was translated into real physical pain.
Jaurès was still clinging to a last shred of hope: a British mediation, perhaps with American support. He went to the offices of L'Humanité, where he told people:
Tonight I’m going to write a new J’Accuse! I will expose everyone responsible for this crisis.
At 21:00, Jaurés went to eat with his friends at the Café du Croissant and he was shot by Raoul Villain forty minutes later (Goldberg, 1962). This version of Jaurès' state of mind in the hours preceding his death comes from his Socialist friends. It shows a man under incredible stress but who still believed in peace.
Neiberg's version tells a totally different story, that of Jaurès rallying the war at the last minute. It is derived from one single testimony, that of former deputy Pierre Dupuy, who wrote a letter to the newspaper Le Monde published on 12 February 1958, 44 years after the facts.
Less than an hour before his death, Jaurès was in the Palais-Bourbon, in the large central room behind the session room, and there he explained to a dozen deputies, among whom I was, the latest news that had just reached him.
He explained what the "Kriegrgefahr" decreed by the German government was, corresponding more or less to what in France is called "proclamation of a state of siege". He said that he had just received reliable information that the German Socialists of the Workers' International had decided to obey the general mobilisation without reservation and that, under these conditions, he himself was going to write an article entitled "En avant" (Forward) in the evening, to be published the next morning in his newspaper, L'Humanité. He felt that in the presence of the now definitive failure of all his efforts and those of his party to maintain peace, it was absolutely necessary to avoid giving the enemy of tomorrow the impression of a disunited and frightened France.
[...] By publishing tomorrow morning the article whose title and content I have just indicated, I am unfortunately exposing myself to being assassinated by one of those doctrinaires of pacifism, some of whom are ready for all violence and rebellion, even after a formal declaration of war or the beginning of hostilities. These people will certainly not forgive me for no longer thinking and acting solely for national defence.
Dupuy's story was widely criticized when it appeared. Dupuy had been part of the moderate left, and he had been for decades the owner of the popular newspaper Le Petit Parisien. During WW2, he had voted to give full powers to Pétain and had kept running his newspaper under German occupation, which made him a collaborationist. He had not been sentenced after the war, but his career was over. For those on the left, a story uncovered half a century later by such a unreliable narrator was not credible.
However, historian Annie Kriegel was more willing to believe it (Kriegel, 1964). For her, what was particularly interesting in Dupuy's narrative was the part about the German Workers obeying the mobilisation order. If Jaurès was aware of this, it made his main hope for peace - the union of workers on both sides of the border - useless. It could explain why Jaurès, at the last minute, would have chosen to write an article that, while still critical of the way the French government had handled the situation, was calling for what was termed four days later by Poincaré l'Union sacrée, the Sacred Union.
That said, the Dupuy story remains problematic. It is not mentioned in the latest biography of Jaurès (Candar et Duclert, 2014) or in Becker's L'année 14 (2014). Becker's mentions the article of his sister Annie Kriegel to say that whatever Jaurès thought in these last hours "no longer had any importance". If we believe Dupuy, Jaurès had been announcing his article and his dramatic change of heart to a dozen deputies, including political opponents, in the middle of the Chamber. Not only nothing ever filtered of this meeting before 1958, but Dupuy's version contradicts all the testimonies of Jaurès' friends, who do reflect the confusion and pain felt by Jaurès. The idea that Jaurès would have used a battle cry (Forward) as a title for his article also stretches credulity (Fonvieille-Alquier, 1968). For the latter author, the story looks like an attempt at using Jaurès' prestige to make him a posthumous supporter of the war effort.
What it certain is that Jaurès never got to write this last article for L'Humanité.
[Neiberg's version is based on Dupuy but includes several mistakes. Jaurès met Viviani, not Poincaré on 30 July; the fateful meeting is the one with Abel Ferry the following day. The exchange between the two men as told by Neiberg does not exist in the record. Jaurès did not tell his Socialists friends "we must support this war" just before being shot.]
Sources