Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

Vendroux, that the reason for coming down was to make sure that if he did resign, the country would not think that the decision had been taken on the spur of the moment.
    ‘On January 20th,’ wrote Duff Cooper, ‘the eve of the anniversary of Louis XVI’s execution, General de Gaulle cut off his own head and passed into the shadow-land of politics.’ The ambassador was in a doubly bad mood because he had discounted all the rumours of an imminent resignation, when asked directly by the Foreign Office whether they were true. He had refused to believe that de Gaulle could contemplate resignation just when France was negotiating a vital loan from the United States.
    De Gaulle’s announcement was, however, entirely in character. He summoned his ministers to the rue Saint-Dominique and, without waiting for Bidault, who was a few moments late, he announced: ‘Gentlemen, I have decided to resign. Bonjour. Au revoir.’ Bidault appeared in the door and de Gaulle simply said to him, ‘Good-bye, Bidault, the others will tell you why I have asked you to come here.’
    De Gaulle’s entourage reacted in a mixture of shock, bewilderment, sorrow and anger. Several voiced a determination to fight on. André Malraux, who went to lunch at the British Embassy two days after the resignation, ‘was as usual very interesting and somewhat alarming,’ wrote Duff Cooper. ‘He is convinced that France is moving towards a dictatorship and I don’t think he regrets it. The question will be whether it is to be a dictatorship of the Communists or of de Gaulle, and it will be settled by force. He says that the resignation of de Gaulle is not the end but the beginning of Gaullism, which will now become a great movement throughout France.’
    At first, the Americans were alarmed by de Gaulle’s abrupt departure; Caffery feared ‘a political crisis of the first magnitude’, with the Communistsincreasing their grip through a Socialist–Communist coalition. But then they realized that the Communists might not want to be associated with economic failure, when they did not have complete power. The population of France as a whole took the upheaval far more calmly than expected. Caffery reported that de Gaulle’s disappearance ‘caused hardly a ripple’. In Paris there was a rather world-weary shrug, while in the provinces the notion that ‘the great man fell victim to base political intrigues’ confirmed provincial suspicions about the iniquity of the capital. According to the reports of prefects to the Ministry of the Interior, people were far less perturbed than during the political crisis of November. The Communists, sensing the mood, ‘demonstrated their satisfaction with discretion’. Marcel Cachin claimed that they had got rid of de Gaulle without frightening the masses.
    De Gaulle’s belongings were removed rapidly from the rue Saint-Dominique. All his personal archives were piled in a corner of a room which had been lent to him. The only dustsheet which could be found was a huge Nazi flag, scarlet with a swastika in the middle, which had flown from the Hotel Continental and had been presented to the General after the Liberation.
    A week later, an ADC of de Gaulle’s delivered a letter from the General to the British ambassador. The handwriting was shaky. Diana Cooper asked how the General was. ‘Far from well,’ came the answer. ‘He never sleeps.’
    General de Gaulle retired to the hunting lodge at Marly. It was all that remained of Louis XIV’s private domain; but de Gaulle, with a dramatic view of his own circumstances, compared it to Longwood, Napoleon’s house on St Helena.
    Some six weeks after the resignation, Hervé Alphand went out there to visit the self-exiled ruler. Snow covered the park and the surrounding woods. To Alphand’s surprise, there were no armed guards. He pushed open a wooden gate and only after he had rung the bell for ten minutes did Captain Guy arrive to let him in.
    De Gaulle, who was working in an eighteenth-century study, rose to greet his visitor. Alphand found him far more relaxed than during the previous months. If he had any regrets, he certainly did not reveal them.
    Alphand warned de Gaulle that the United States wanted to rebuilda new Germany out of the western zones as a bulwark against Russia. The Americans, especially Robert Murphy and General Lucius Clay, who headed their military government from Frankfurt, were putting heavy pressure on the French. ‘You cannot imagine how