One of France’s leading socialists, Jean Jaurès was assassinated just days before the outbreak of World War I. An impassioned defender of working-class internationalism, his murder signaled Europe’s descent into war.

In the years before World War I, Jean Jaurès was one of the leaders of the international workers’ movement — and he was assassinated on July 31, 1914, because of his courageous stand against the looming bloodbath. A martyr for peace, Jaurès was soon canonized both by Communists for his internationalism and by Socialists for his democratic vision of social change. In Leon Trotsky’s words, Jaurès was both one of the “two most outstanding representatives of the Second International” of socialist parties and the “greatest man of France’s Third Republic.” Founder of the newspaper

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