Mitterrand: last secrets of youth

INTERVIEW – In an explosive story based on unpublished archives and testimonies, Sébastien Le Fol reveals the exact nature of the links between the former socialist president and an environment he knew well in the 1930s and in which he linked his strongest friendships, which look like dangerous liaisons.

This is the story of a band worthy of the Three Musketeers. But secret. Of all the many circles of Mitterrand companions, he is the one who has remained the most unknown to the general public until today. Until the incredible and meticulous investigation of Sebastien LeFol, who wanted to understand the exact nature and extent of the links between François Mitterrand, Pierre de Bénouville, François Dalle and André Bettencourt. But also to show how these links forged in adolescence were able to survive the war and half a century of upheavals and political reversals.

The former director of Le Point also explains how the boss of the PS then President of the Republic was able to erase or conceal (with forceful lies) his past (very) on the right, in the shadow of Action Française and the Cagoule, his presence in Vichy in 1941, his activity against the Algerian separatists or his leniency for the partisans of French Algeria. Better (or worse): without his friends on the left knowing it, he…