Paris After the Liberation: 1944 - 1949 by Antony Beevor, Artemis Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

Communists, into key positions. Nowhere were they more successful in this than in Paris, where they soon controlled the capital’s Comité de Libération, a form of local provisional administration which they hoped would take over everything before Gaullist officials arrived from London.
    At the Casablanca conference of January 1943 the Americans, supported by Churchill, promoted a ‘shotgun wedding’ between de Gaulle, ‘the bride’, and Giraud, ‘the bridegroom’. Roosevelt, however, was only interested in acknowledging a symbolic military leadership. As far as he was concerned, France did not exist as a political entity until elections were finally held in the whole territory. He still suspected de Gaulle of harbouring dictatorial ambitions.
    Roosevelt, and also Churchill, had failed to realize how far things were changing within occupied France. The dramatic shift in de Gaulle’s favour was confirmed on 10 May 1943, the anniversary of the German invasion, when the National Council of the Resistance (CNR) was established, acknowledging de Gaulle’s leadership.
    General Giraud, proud of his cavalry moustache and well-cut uniform, was devoid of personal ambition. His basic political education was supervised by Jean Monnet, sent by Roosevelt to strengthen his hand against de Gaulle. But Monnet, one of the few Frenchmen Roosevelt trusted completely, was much more of a realist than the President. He did all he could to prepare an orderly transition of power to de Gaulle.
    De Gaulle arrived in Algiers on 30 May. Giraud, with a band playing the Marseillaise, was waiting to receive him on the runway. The American and British representatives remained in the background. The next few days would be marked by furious manoeuvres: there were even rumours of coups and kidnap plots. The scheming prompted General de Bénouville to remark that ‘nothing was more like Vichy than Algiers’.
    Once again de Gaulle’s inflexibility, rooted in his implacable sense of mission, proved indomitable against anyone with a lesser will. On 3 June, the Comité Français de Libération Nationale was set up. Its constitution was almost entirely dictated by de Gaulle. Giraud found himself having to concede on almost every decision. One of the most significant was the legalization of the Communist Party. This dramatic change acknowledged their importance in the Resistance and led to their recognition of de Gaulle as leader of the government-in-waiting.
    When the newly legalized Communist Party in Algiers heard that their arch-enemy, Pierre Pucheu, had turned up in Morocco, they could hardly believe his foolhardiness and their luck.
    Pucheu had retired from Vichy politics after Admiral Darlan was replaced by Pierre Laval on 17 April 1942. A year later, he decided to join the ‘repentant Vichyists’ in North Africa – what one Resistance leader described as ‘
Vichy à la sauce américaine
’. Giraud gave him a safe-conduct on condition that he stayed out of politics. Pucheu accepted, utterly failing to understand the hatred he had generated as Minister of the Interior, and how dramatically the balance of power in North Africa had changed since Darlan’s assassination.
    On 14 August, he was arrested. In the following months new legislation was passed to deal with members of the Vichy government. Giraud, who had signed Pucheu’s
laissez-passer,
found himself attacked from two directions. The right-wing colonists, who had supported Vichy, asked what the value of Giraud’s signature on a safe-conduct was if it did not save you; while the Communists called for Giraud’s head for having been Pucheu’s protector.
    Pucheu had a further value for de Gaulle: his condemnation would also serve as the condemnation of the Vichy government. In March 1944, Pucheu was put on trial for his life and the Marshal’s reputation. Proving a regime’s criminality, as this trial sought to do, did not necessarily prove its illegality, but it was a useful act of