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Concept
René Massigli
Summary
René Massigli (ʁəne masiɡli; 22 March 1888 – 3 February 1988) was a French diplomat who played a leading role as a senior official at the Quai d'Orsay and was regarded as one of the leading French experts on Germany, which he greatly distrusted.
The son of a Protestant law professor, Massigli was born in Montpellier in the southern French department of Hérault. After graduating from the elite École normale supérieure in Paris with an agrégation d'histoire, he attended the French Academy in Rome in 1911-1912, studying history under Louis Duchesne. In 1913-1914, he attended the University of Lille, where he was awarded a maître de conférence.
He joined the French foreign service during the First World War. He served in the Maison de la Presse section of the Quai d'Orsay in Bern, Switzerland, where he analysed German newspapers for the French government. In the spring of 1919, Massigli was sent on several unofficial missions to Berlin to contact German officials about the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In May 1919, Massigli had a series of secret meetings with various German officials in which he offered on behalf of his government to revise the peace terms of the upcoming treaty in Germany's favour in regards to territorial and economic clauses of the proposed treaty. Massigli suggested "practical, verbal discussions" between French and German officials in the hope of creating "collaboration franco-allemande" (Franco-German collaboration).
During his meetings, Massigli let the Germans know of the deep divisions between the "Big Three" at the Paris Peace Conference, namely Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau. Speaking on behalf of the French government, Massigli informed the Germans that the French considered the "Anglo-Saxon powers", the United States and the British Empire, to be the real postwar threat to France; argued that both France and Germany had a common interest in opposing "Anglo-Saxon domination" of the world and warned that the "deepening of opposition" between the French and the Germans "would lead to the ruin of both countries, to the advantage of the Anglo-Saxon powers".
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