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André Pierre Gabriel Amédée Tardieu (ɑ̃dʁe taʁdjø; 22 September 1876 – 15 September 1945) was three times Prime Minister of France (3 November 1929 – 17 February 1930; 2 March – 4 December 1930; 20 February – 10 May 1932) and a dominant figure of French political life in 1929–1932. He was a moderate conservative with a strong intellectual reputation, but became a weak prime minister at the start of the worldwide Great Depression. Tardieu's paternal grandmother was the composer and pianist Charlotte Tardieu. Andre Tardieu was a graduate of the elite Lycée Condorcet. He was accepted by the even more prestigious École Normale Supérieure, but instead entered the diplomatic service. Later, he left the service and became famous as foreign affairs editor of the newspaper Le Temps. He founded the conservative newspaper L'Echo National in association with Georges Mandel. In 1914, Tardieu was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from the département of Seine-et-Oise, as a candidate of the center-right Democratic Republican Alliance (Alliance Démocratique – AD). He retained this seat till 1924. From 1926 to 1936, he represented the département of Territoire de Belfort. When World War I broke out, Tardieu enlisted in the army and served before he was wounded and invalided home in 1916. He then returned to politics. He served as Georges Clemenceau's lieutenant in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference and as Commissioner for Franco-American War Cooperation. On 8 November 1919, he became Minister of Liberated Regions, administering Alsace and Lorraine, and served until Clemenceau's defeat in 1920. In 1926, Tardieu returned to government as Minister of Transportation under Raymond Poincaré. In 1928, he moved to Minister of the Interior, continuing under Poincaré's successor Aristide Briand. In November 1929, Tardieu himself succeeded Briand as Président du Conseil (Prime Minister) and remained Interior Minister. Though generally considered a conservative, he introduced a program of welfare measures, including public works, social insurance, and free secondary schooling, and he encouraged modern techniques in industry.
