Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

no more than enable the country to survive. The Marshall Plan offered the chance to rebuild. ‘Examples of such solidarity are very rare in history,’ wrote Hervé Alphand. But behind the scenes the State Department insisted that ‘the United States must run this show’.
    Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, was reputedly the first to leap at the opportunity. After a weekend of discussion and deliberation, he sent a ‘Most Immediate and Top Secret’ telegram to Duff Cooper in the middle of the night, instructing him to discuss the matter with Bidault in the morning. A week later Bevin himself flew over to Paris, with a large contingent of advisers fromvarious ministries. The city was still gripped by an endless succession of strikes. After dinner at the British Embassy with Ramadier, Bidault, Massigli, Chauvel, Alphand, Marjolin and Monnet, the discussions continued. ‘There was almost entire agreement on the line that we should take,’ Duff Cooper wrote the next morning. ‘The important thing is the approach to the Russians. They must be invited to participate and at the same time they must be given no opportunity to cause delay. This will not be easy.’
    On 27 June, a conference between Bidault, Bevin and Molotov to discuss the Marshall Plan opened at the Quai d’Orsay. The air was oppressive from the heatwave which had reduced Paris to torpor, and the atmosphere was further weighed down by Molotov’s suspicions. He was certain that some sort of trap had been laid for him by Bidault and Bevin at their private meeting ten days before. Soviet confidence had not been helped by an ill-judged statement for the press which had been released by the Quai d’Orsay before the Russians were told what was happening.
    Bevin, despite the heat, was in excellent spirits. Molotov, as expected, used blocking tactics from the start. Bidault described his intention as ‘
flagrante et obstinée
’. (Molotov did not say ‘
Niet
’ but ‘No K’, thinking that this was the antonymfor OK.)
    A great stormon the night of Saturday, 28 June, broke the heat, but the atmosphere was even heavier on Monday morning. Ignoring the aims of the proposal, Molotov read a prepared statement based on atelegramwhich had obviously just arrived from the Kremlin, demanding that the United States government should say in advance how much it was prepared to give and whether Congress would agree.
    That evening Jefferson Caffery came round to the British Embassy to compare reactions. Bevin, on Duff Cooper’s urging, ‘impressed upon him the importance of helping France at this juncture’. But Caffery’s reply was unequivocal: if the Communists got back into the government, France wouldn’t get a dollar from America. It was, as Duff Cooper put it, ‘an interesting evening’.
    Bevin’s mind was also made up. Bidault’s attempts to bridge the chasmbetween themand the Soviet Union were a waste of time. They would brook no further obstruction from Molotov. By the next morning, he had decided to ‘go straight ahead with the French and to issue invitations to all the nations of Europe to join in’. That afternoon Duff Cooper flew to London to brief the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. Attlee agreed with everything that Bevin was doing and asked for advice on the next step. Cooper replied that the circumstances did not require a meeting of the Cabinet, but a firm statement of support would no doubt be appreciated by the Foreign Secretary.
    The conference ended abruptly on 3 July. Alphand wrote in his diary the next day, ‘seeing Molotov descend the steps of the Quai d’Orsay, I said to myself that we were entering a new era which could last for a long time and even take a dangerous turn’.
    No time was wasted. Twenty-two countries in Europe were invited to a conference just over a week later to formulate a European plan for presentation to the United States government. If any government from behind the Iron Curtain expressed interest, that interest soon declined after pressure from Moscow. Nobody was surprised. The important point was to maintain a momentum of cooperation. ‘All is going well so far,’ noted the British ambassador on 7 July, ‘and the Ramadier government survives.’
    On 11 July, foreign ministers began to assemble for the conference, which took place in the dining roomof the Quai d’Orsay. The table was so long that it was impossible to hear what was said at the far end, but despite the acoustic problems