Pierre Mendès France

Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France was a French politician who served as prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955. As a member of the Radical Party, he headed a government supported by a coalition of Gaullists, moderate socialists, Christian democrats and liberal-conservatives. Pierre-Mendès France is primarily remembered as the French Prime Minister who was in office at the outbreak of the Algerian independence war in 1954.