Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

18th
arrondissement
used to organize a dance known as
la goguette,
the name coming from Saturday-night parties on the banks of the Marne before the First World War. They danced
le swing
and loved
le bebop
. The Communist Party decided not to maintain its anti-jazz line too strictly – it needed to recruit the young.
    Hersz Gager’s weekly cell meeting took place in the rue Jean Robert and started after supper. He always shaved carefully before setting out. (Cell meetings in factories took place after work, but most workers preferred to avoid a cell linked to their job because if the boss found out you would be the first to be fired.)
    The Communist year had its feast-days and days of political observance. Supposedly the happiest, like an ancient spring rite, was the
fête des remises de cartes
. This was a family event, with cakes and wine, and singing and dancing to an accordion. The cell secretary would make a speech, and then present the party membership cards with jocular remarks, such as ‘Perhaps this year you’ll manage to sell a few more copies of
L’Huma
!’ Other major festivals included May Day, the masspilgrimage up to the Mur des Fédérés at Père Lachaise where the Communards had been shot, and the Fête de l’Humanité. Even protest marches were a social event, however serious their purpose.
    At the opposite end of Paris from the artisan workshops of Belleville lay the vast, disciplined Renault complex at Boulogne-Billancourt. Sirens regulated the day. Each morning, the crowd of capped workers assembled at the tall entrance gates, and when they opened, the men ambled forward under the eyes of the security guards. Then the gates closed again. A young intellectual who joined the workforce to share the experience compared it in an article in
Les Temps modernes
to entering a prison each day.
    Food remained the greatest cause for concern in poor districts of Paris. Their inhabitants, whether industrial workers or state employees, were the most vulnerable in all of France. The country, as a SHAEF report put it, suffered from ‘a chronic shortage of food made worse by an imbalance in consumption’. With average incomes still 20 per cent lower than before the war, the urban poor and those on weekly salaries were receiving 30 per cent less of the share of national income.
    Nine months after the Liberation, SHAEF reported that ‘the food position in France continues to be grave. Urban France has never approached the ration of 2,000 calories per head.’ The ration target for the ‘non-farm population’ in the summer of 1945 was 350 grams of bread a day, 100 grams of meat a week and 500 grams of fats a month. In April the population of Paris averaged only 1,337 calories a day, but this overall figure hid terrible imbalances between the
beaux quartiers
and working-class districts, where many, especially the old, virtually starved to death. The effect of malnutrition on the young should not be underestimated either. The average height of children was to fall dramatically.
    Subsequent improvements during 1945 were short-lived. The announcement that bread rationing, which had been relaxed, was to be reintroduced on 1 January 1946 had provoked turmoil in the last few weeks of de Gaulle’s administration. Groups which had nothing in common politically, from the newly formed Comité de Défense de la Petite et Moyenne Boulangerie to the Communist-dominated Union des Femmes Françaises, protested vociferously. And just before NewYear, people stormed bakeries in a surge of panic buying. Customers at the back of the queue attacked those coming out with several loaves, even though they too had planned to buy as many as they were allowed.
    Those with peasant relatives not too far from Paris stood a much better chance of obtaining provisions. The less fortunate needed all their wits to survive. As during the Occupation, you had to resort to ‘
le Système D
’ – the D standing for
débrouiller,
getting yourself out of trouble by any means necessary. This encompassed everything from raising rabbits and hens to dealing on the black market, selling items stolen from work and, above all, avoiding the cash economy. Almost everyone exchanged goods and services. Prostitutes, garage mechanics, plumbers and artisans rarely received payment in cash. Even factory workers were often given produce from the factory in lieu of wages. It was not surprising that the government had such trouble in collecting taxes.
    Penury