Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

hard they are pushing: they’re blackmailing us with the threat of cutting off all provisions to our zone if we don’t agree to follow them, and proclaiming all over the place that we don’t understand the situation at all, that we are confusing 1946 and 1919, that tomorrow the enemy will not be the Germany that we want to keep down, but Soviet Russia against whom we must unite all forces, including those of a reborn Germany.’
    This news triggered an explosion of all de Gaulle’s resentment against the United States: ‘The Americans have been wrong about us for years.’ Only when the Russians marched into Paris would they see, ‘what a grave mistake they have made in wanting to restore Germany and not France’. But like all exiled rulers, de Gaulle could do no more than rage in private.
    Malcolm Muggeridge, returning to Paris as a journalist after his wartime service with the Secret Intelligence Service, arranged to interview de Gaulle. He found there was little competition. Gaullist fortunes were at such a low point that all the foreign correspondents in Paris had written the General off as being of no further interest.
    Muggeridge went to de Gaulle’s office and found him seated behind a desk that was far too small for him. The air was thick with his cigarette smoke and he did not look well. ‘His stomach already protruded noticeably, his complexion was muddy and his breath bad; yet, as always, I found in him a nobility, a true disinterestedness, even a sort of sublime absurdity… Our conversation began with one of his tirades about the
pourriture
of French politics, and ended with my asking him what he proposed to do now, to which he replied with a majestic: “
J’attends!
”’
    Gaston Palewski moved to 1 rue Bonaparte. There, he later became the neighbour not only of Nancy Mitford, who – living at number 20 – was delighted by the proximity, but also of Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom he almost came to blows eighteen months later when Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir did a radio programme attacking de Gaulle and his entourage.
    With his charm and tact, Palewski had done all he could to persuade de Gaulle to be more flexible, but he had never seriously examined thepotential flaws in the General’s world view. André Dewavrin, still known by his code-name of ‘Colonel Passy’, seems to have been the only member of the old team from London who did.
    ‘Passy,’ reported the British military attaché to the Directorate of Military Intelligence in London, ‘said that de Gaulle’s foreign policy was wrong from the start because it was a paradox. He was temperamentally anti-Anglo-Saxon, which led him to believe that the future of France lay in close accord with Russia as France’s only chance of survival as a great power, and yet on the other hand de Gaulle was violently anti-Communist and finally ended up by thinking that he could act as a bridge-builder between the Anglo-Saxons and the Soviets.’ This assessment could hardly have been more accurate.

Part Three
    INTO THE COLD WAR
19
    The Shadow-Theatre: Plots and Counter-Plots
    The institution which was most disturbed by de Gaulle’s resignation was the officer corps. There was nobody left to defend the armed forces from cuts in the military budget, and many officers feared that General de Lattre de Tassigny might take advantage of the situation. The Allies too had heard rumours that de Lattre viewed himself as de Gaulle’s replacement.
    De Lattre was a controversial character. His vice-regal style when commanding 1st Army from Lindau on Lake Constance, where his headquarters received some touches worthy of Versailles, led to the names of ‘
Le roi Jean
’ and ‘
Le général soleil
’. His flamboyant manner, combined with a new affinity for left-wing writers – Aragon, Elsa Triolet, Claude Roy and Roger Vailland were all invited to visit himin Germany – prompted another nickname: ‘Général le Théâtre de Marigny’.
    For all his intolerance and impatience, de Lattre was undoubtedly a great military leader. A brilliant mimic, he was excellent company, and his wife was universally admired and respected. He got things done quickly, sometimes with spectacular fits of anger. But the theatrical side of his character probably had something to do with his bisexual nature. A number of officers referred to him as ‘
cette femme
’. General du Vigier, when asked by the Canadian military attaché how he got on with de Lattre, replied: ‘Very