Blum became the first socialist and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of France. As such he was an object of particular hatred from antisemitic elements.

Léon Blum is an idealist and a logician, a poet and a critic, a diplomat and a revolutionary, a politician and a gentleman. He is a Frenchman and a Jew.

left-wing anti-fascist coalition in France in the 1930s, was led by Léon Blum's French Section of the Workers' International but also included communists and social democrats.