Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

cent of the vote against the Communist Party’s 30 per cent. The Socialists achieved only 19 per cent. Such a result, compounded by an even greater swing to Gaullist candidates in the second round, lifted conservative hearts.
    A few days later, at lunch at the Escargot, Duff Cooper and Louise de Vilmorin heard the latest news of the Rassemblement from Malraux, who told them that the Gaullists were ‘very pleased with the story that when the results of last Sunday’s elections were coming out on the radio [the General] switched it off and played patience’.
    Whatever the Gaullist successes, the real struggle was developing between the Communist Party and the CGT on one side and the government on the other. The Communist objective was to destroy the French economy before the Marshall Plan could be made to work.
    Britain, which still had the commitments of a world power, reachedthe point of bankruptcy in October; and Europe as a whole faced ruin that winter after the drought and disastrous harvest. The question for many, ever since Vyshinsky had accused the Americans and the British of preparing to fight, was not whether the Marshall Plan would have a chance to work, but whether the third world war would break out first. Madame de Gaulle timidly broke into a lunch-time discussion to suggest that there might be an enemy parachute drop round Colombey-les-deux-Églises in the first few hours of hostilities.
    Almost all gatherings in Paris that autumn had a nervous edge. ‘People talk only of the imminence of war!’ wrote Roger Martin du Gard to André Gide, who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize. ‘People don’t doubt that it will happen, they only discuss how soon it will start. It is hard to react against this atmosphere of inevitable catastrophe!’ Offcials and ambassadors at parties found themselves buttonholed by frightened women and men who asked how many days it would take the Russians to reach the Channel ports or the Pyrenees.
    Cold War fever had affected both sides of the Atlantic. It was depressing, wrote Duff Cooper to the British Foreign Secretary, but not surprising, that even Bidault should be catching it, ‘when supposedly responsible people, such as the American Senator Bridges, shout down the dinner table at the American Embassy – “Say, Monsieur Bidault, we want to know what you’re going to do when we drop our first atomic egg on Moscow.”’

26
    The Republic at Bay
    The unrest which France had experienced in the summer of 1947 appeared minor by the autumn. On 28 October, a pitched battle took place in the streets round the Salle Wagram near the Place de l’Étoile. Anti-Communists organized a meeting in the hall – used until quite recently by GIs for Tuesday dances – to denounce Stalin’s crimes. Some 10,000 Communist counter-demonstrators advanced to attack. But large forces of police, gendarmerie and CRS riot squads managed to maintain their cordon round the area. The heavy fighting left one killed and 300 injured, including Communist municipal councillors and mayors. The police were almost as tough in their treatment of press photographers and newsreel teams.
    That day had also seen a stormy session in the Assembly. Jacques Duclos had accused the government of being Pétainist valets of the United States. ‘It was a remarkable parliamentary performance,’ wrote one observer. ‘He succeeded in goading everybody else to fury while remaining perfectly calm himself.’
    Two weeks later, Marseilles erupted in riots. The Communists, exploiting a rise in tramfares, led an all-out attack on the new Gaullist mayor, Maître Carlini, the winner in the municipal elections. The law courts were sacked by a mob intent on releasing prisoners arrested in earlier demonstrations. The crowds then converged on the Hôtel de Ville, which they took by storm, and proceeded to beat up Carlini. Things were so bad that Gaston Defferre, the Socialist baron of the city, did not dare go out in a car without a sub-machine-gun on his lap.
    On 17 November, the mining regions of the north and the Pas-de-Calais came out on strike, demanding pay rises to catch up with inflation. Within five days every coalfield in France had been closed down. The situation was equally volatile in Paris and its suburbs. Metalworkers, including those at Renault, came out on strike in the middle of November, demanding a 25 per cent pay increase. De Gaulle warned his entourage that the franc would collapse. There was only one