Gamelin, the former commander-in-chief of the French Army, refused to recognise the right of the court to try him and maintained complete silence. La Chambre and Jacomet were seen as minor figures. Daladier and Blum were thus left to carry the burden of the defence. Blum, who was a lawyer as well as a politician and polemicist, turned on what was widely recognised as a brilliant performance, cross-examining the government's witnesses and exposing the falsity and illegitimacy of the charges. He argued that the largest reductions in defence spending under the Third Republic had taken place under governments in which both Pétain and Pierre Laval, the Vichy regime's Prime Minister, had held offices. On the other hand, he showed that the Popular Front had made the greatest war efforts since 1918. Blum even defended the French Communist Party (PCF), declaring about Jean-Pierre Timbaud, a Communist who had been executed along with 26 other communist hostages in retaliation for the assassination of a Nazi official (Karl Hotz), the following: ""I was often opposed to him. However, he has been executed by a firing-squad and died singing the "Marseillaise"... Thus, I have nothing to add concerning the PCF.""