Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

Teitgen, the Minister of Justice, was privately uneasy about the way the affair had been handled.
    The Passy scandal may have been the talk of Paris, but it seems to have made little impact in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Simone de Beauvoir’s life was busier than ever, as the record of her afternoon on Friday, 10 May, shows. After lunch at the Brasserie Lipp, she went to the offices of
Les Temps modernes,
which Gaston Gallimard had lent them. Vittorini of the Italian Communist Party paid a visit. He was very put out to hear that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were to be the guests of ‘
un éditeur réactionnaire
’ on their forthcoming visit to his country.
    Gaston Gallimard arrived. Simone de Beauvoir went into his office, but found André Malraux and Roger Martin du Gard there too. Embarrassedat encountering a political enemy, she found herself obliged to shake Malraux’s hand. Then she had to listen to Gallimard’s explanation of Genet’s lost manuscript before she could escape. Back in her own office, she was buttonholed by an aspiring young novelist who had brought her his typescript to read. He naïvely asked if Sartre would vote for him on the jury of the Prix de la Pléiade. She then had a brief chat with Michel Leiris, and took the novelist Nathalie Sarraute’s manuscript to Jean Paulhan. He showed her a little painting by Wols – a painter whom Sartre greatly admired also – which he had just bought. Finally, at seven o’clock she left the office and went to meet Raymond Queneau at the bar of the Hotel Pont-Royal.
    This day was easy in comparison to some, and no doubt Castor rather welcomed the manic activity around her. It must have helped her forget her fears at this time that Nathalie Sarraute was trying to take her place as Sartre’s intellectual companion.
    On 12 May there was a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the victory of the year before. Félix Gouin ‘made a good speech,’ Duff Cooper recorded, ‘but he looks terribly insignificant on such occasions. His generous reference to de Gaulle was loudly cheered.’ De Gaulle, however, had refused Gouin’s invitation to attend. Instead he had gone to the Vendée to pay homage at Clemenceau’s tomb on the same day, the day commemorating Joan of Arc.
    A few days before, Claude Mauriac had asked the General if he would make a speech during this visit. ‘I will perhaps say a few words, yes,’ he had said, ‘but we must not tell anyone.’ This was disingenuous. Claude Guy, his ADC, was already organizing a reception for journalists.
    The speech over Clemenceau’s grave was to be the forerunner of several which, although ostensibly commemorating a particular event or anniversary, had a definite political purpose. De Gaulle had seen that his prestige was rising again and was preparing the ground for the foundation of a full Gaullist political movement. André Malraux told Louise de Vilmorin that the General ‘will be President of the Republic in September and that he, Malraux, will be Minister of the Interior’.
    The crowd awaiting de Gaulle at Clemenceau’s tomb was large. Claude Mauriac felt uneasy at the cries of ‘
De Gaulle au pouvoir!
’ and was embarrassed by the event’s faintly fascist aspect. The supposedlymodest visit was well attended by the French and international press, who were briefed by one of de Gaulle’s staff.
    There is no doubt that the Communists were chastened by the results of the May referendum. The setback had been doubly embarrassing for the party leadership, since Molotov was in Paris at the time for a meeting of foreign ministers.
    In 1946, most Western intelligence agencies had very little information on Communist objectives. In Paris, a number of attempts were made to penetrate the inner circles of the French Communist Party. The only successful operation at the time seems to have been that of the former Resistance leader Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. Although Kim Philby had rejected her material, it would appear that she had better luck in placing it with the Americans.
    The first summary from US military intelligence covered a politburo meeting on 16 May, chaired by Marcel Cachin. They discussed Molotov’s setback at the Big Four conference in Paris with dismay. James Byrnes, the American Secretary of State, and Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, had surprised the Soviet delegation with their firmness.
    Then Thorez, chastened by the failure of the referendum vote on 5 May, expressed