Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Her investors had been promised returns of 8% interest on savings and in investments forty percent a year —but by the time she died in prison, they were owed a hundred and fifty five million francs. Some people even credit her spectacular swindle to the political confluence that brought Leon Blum and his popular front to power in France at the end of the 1930s. This is the fascinating tale of just how far one woman was able to go to accumulate wealth and power by any means necessary.

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SOURCES:

Stéphanie Bee, "La Bancquiére des Annès Folles," Univers-L, January 11, 2020, https://www.univers-l.com/portrait_marthe_hanau.html

Janet Flanner, "The Swindling Presidente," The New Yorker, August 18, 1939, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/08/26/annals-of-crime

Paul Jankowski, Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

Dean Jobb, "The Ponzi of Paris," CrimeReads, December 3, 2021, https://crimereads.com/marthe-hanau-paris-ponzi-confidence-woman/

Rod Kedward, La Vie en Bleu - France and the French since 1900 (London: Allen Lane, 2005).

Wilfried Knapp, France--partial Eclipse: from the Stavisky Riots to the Nazi Conquest (London: Macdonald, 1972).

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner