André Maginot (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃dʁe maʒino]; 17 February 1877 – 7 January 1932) was a French civil servant, soldier and Member of Parliament. He is best known for his advocacy of the string of forts known as the Maginot Line.
Laurent Eynac (4 October 1886 – 16 December 1970) was a French politician who was appointed Minister of Transportation on 7 June 1935 until 24 January 1936. He was born in Le Monastier-sur-Gazeille, Haute-Loire.
In 1940 Eynac was appointed Minister of the Air in the government of Paul Reynaud. In this role he served as part of the War Committee put together at early in the Second World War and consisting of Reynaud, President Albert François Lebrun, Naval Minister César Campinchi, War Minister Édouard Daladier, Interior Minister Georges Mandel, Eynac as Air Minister, French Navy chief Admiral François Darlan, Chief of the Air Staff General Joseph Vuillemin and French Army generals Maurice Gamelin and Alphonse Joseph Georges.
Pierre Jules Cot (20 November 1895, in Grenoble – 21 August 1977, Paris), was a French politician and leading figure in the Popular Front government of the 1930s.
Born in Grenoble into a conservative Catholic family, he entered politics as an admirer of the World War I conservative leader Raymond Poincaré, but moved steadily to the left over the course of his career. Through the decrypting of 1943 Soviet intelligence cables through the Venona Project it was established that Cot was an agent of the Soviet Union with the code name of "Dedal". However, other sources suggest that Cot was a communist fellow-traveller rather than an agent. The British Secret Intelligence Service describes him as "a highly controversial figure, vilified at the time by the French Right, and since accused of having been a Soviet agent".
André Siegfried (April 21, 1875 – March 28, 1959) was a French academic, geographer and political writer best known to English speakers for his commentaries on American, Canadian, and British politics.
He was born in Le Havre, France, to Jules Siegfried, the French minister of commerce, and Julie Siegfried, the president of the National Council of French Women. An active member of the Democratic Republican Alliance like his father, André Siegfried was several times a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, but never won an election. On 23 January 1941, he was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France. A few months after the liberation of France in mid-1944, he was elected to the Académie française, taking the vacant seat of Gabriel Hanotaux (who had been elected in 1897). He died in Paris in March 1959.