Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

by playing poker with themand losing most generously. Joanovici, who had testified against his former comrades in the Bonny–Lafont gang, had been as happy to make money with the Communists as with the Nazis. The minister promptly gave orders for the arrest of two leading Communists in the police who had links with him, a risky course, with the lack of evidence at the time. The Communist press exploded in anger, but Depreux kept his nerve.
    His other move was to replace Luizet by Roger Léonard, a strong anti-Communist reputed to be a ‘very effective administrator’. During the Occupation, Léonard had been a Vichy official, but was fortunate to have been sacked by his superiors early enough to escape the attentions of a purge committee at the time of the Liberation. Just to be sure, theAmerican Embassy reported, he had even pretended to be a fellow-traveller ‘for reasons of temporary political opportunism’.
    Forcing back the inroads of Communist infiltration was just one side of Depreux’s strategy. What he and his colleagues feared most was an attempted coup from the right, which would allow the Communists to cast themselves as the saviours of Republican liberty. Depreux knew that, above all, he must not allow himself to be portrayed as purely anti-Communist. He therefore made conspicuous moves against right-wing plotters, including such cynical manoeuvres as the arrest of a group of priests and nuns who had been sheltering collaborators.
    Depreux and his colleagues had good reason to be worried about a plot from the right playing into the hands of the Communists. In May 1947, the American Embassy was informed that two colonels from the US army in Germany had been offering to arm rightist groups. This shadowy affair was hushed up. Depreux, however, made another plot public, a conspiracy known as the ‘Plan Bleu’, because the document was on blue paper.
    The police had been amassing evidence for several months, but Depreux waited for the right moment before making anything public. The opportunity came in June 1947, shortly after the Communists left Ramadier’s government. Depreux’s timing of the announcement that a plot against the Republic had been thwarted was aimed at elements within his own party. The left wing of the Socialist Party wanted to attack the anti-Communist stance of their ministers.
    The details of the plot itself were too sketchy to be really convincing. It apparently involved General Guillaudot, the Inspector-General of the Gendarmerie Nationale, and several veteran anti-Communists including Loustaunau-Lacau, the only member of the Resistance to have testified on behalf of Marshal Pétain. General de Larminat was also suspended from his duties on grounds of suspected collusion. The uprising against the government was supposed to start in Brittany, where small groups would seize arms depots and American stores to equip rebel formations. ‘At the same time four tactical groups, one of them armoured, would advance on Paris.’
    Caffery feared that Depreux had overplayed his hand. His dramatic version of the plot had allowed the Communists to exploit the ‘plot to [a] maximum, smearing all present and potential anti-Communistelements – General de Larminat, General Koenig, General de Gaulle and even widening the attack to include the MRP, “party of the Cassocks and the reactionary West”’.
    Depreux’s next move, ten days later, was to deprive the Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité, the riot police, of its light machine-guns and mortars. The CRS had a strong Communist presence, through party members from the Resistance who had joined from the FFI. The French Communist Party immediately denounced this measure as an attempt to leave the Republic defenceless against would-be military dictators.
    François Mitterrand, the new minister for Anciens Combattants et Victimes de la Guerre, also impressed many by the stamina and effectiveness of his efforts to reduce Communist control within his jurisdiction. This had grown up during Laurent Casanova’s time in the ministry.
    In the Ministry of War, the Communists’ chief enemy, General Revers, managed to resist all the calls for his removal from the post of chief of staff of the French army. Revers, while punctiliously polite to the new Minister of National Defence, swiftly removed Communists or fellow-travellers from sensitive appointments. He also purged the Gendarmerie Nationale, which came under the ministry’s control. Of the