Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

Communists might attempt a commando raid on the newspaper. Knowing that the police were too short-staffed in Paris to offer permanent protection, Moch sent round two containers of weapons from the Ministry of the Interior so that the staff of the paper could defend the building themselves. Leading figures in de Gaulle’s Rassemblement also felt in danger from surprise attack. ‘The Colonel sleeps with a great gun by his bed,’ wrote Nancy Mitford to her mother, ‘far more frightening than anything, as you can imagine he has no idea about guns!’
    By a curious stroke of fate, a prominent figure associated with de Gaulle was killed in an accident a few days later. On 28 November, a dark foggy day on which snow fell in Paris, news arrived in the evening that General Leclerc, the city’s liberator three years before, had died in an air crash aged only forty-four. A rumour rapidly circulated that somebody had put sugar in the petrol. Some compared his death to that of General Sikorski. ‘The whole population of Paris,’ wrote Nancy Mitford, in a sweeping generalization, ‘is certain it was sabotage and it’s done the Communists a lot of harm.’ She was, no doubt, repeating the Colonel’s firm belief.
    Palewski, whose brother-in-law was also killed in the crash, had dined with Leclerc a week before his death. He claimed that Leclerc had said that evening, ‘We are all in danger now.’ Rumours, almost certainly beginning in the wilder fringes of the Rassemblement, spread that Leclerc had even urged de Gaulle to seize power. The fact that
L’Humanité
devoted only a couple of lines to the announcement of Leclerc’s death somehow seemed to confirm Gaullist suspicions that the Communists had been responsible.
    At the same time as Leclerc’s death, public order operations took on an increasingly military aspect. The Ministry of the Interior was in constant contact with the Ministry of War, exchanging information and discussing options. French troops in the north were strengthened to stop Belgian Communists slipping across the border to sabotage the mines and prevent them from reopening. But even the army did not have enough men for the tasks allotted. Altogether 102,000 reservists from the classes of 1946 and 1947 had been recalled from the middle of November. In addition, the French army had reformed the Senegalesetroops guarding German prisoners of war into a further nine battalions ready for deployment. But even these reinforcements were not considered sufficient; the government announced on 30 November that it was recalling another 80,000 reservists from the class of 1943.
    In Paris, there had been comparatively few disorders. A minor insurrection took place in the 18th
arrondissement
when an officer of the fire brigade led 300 young Communists in an attempt to capture the telephone exchange. Before the assault the Communists, many of them sons of railway workers, smashed all the police telephones in the area. Those who escaped arrest were forcefully reprimanded by their superiors in the party for having acted without orders. The Prefect of Police, Roger Léonard, could hardly believe his luck that the Communists did not try more such adventures. He had only 150 policemen left in reserve to cover the whole city.
    The capital was particularly vulnerable to strike action. For those coming into the centre of Paris to work by métro or suburban rail, life became almost intolerable. ‘The train is jammed and often obliged to stop, either by sabotage or by the women and children of the strikers lying down on the tracks.’ Strikes in the public services included the mail, refuse collection and power supplies. Cooking became impossible, electricity was cut without warning as it had been the previous winter, and water pressure dropped so low that the top floors of buildings failed to get even a trickle from the tap.
    The real threat lay outside Paris. Moch felt forced to elaborate a contingency plan which would concentrate all his forces on Paris and the routes from the capital to Le Havre, Belgium, Lyons and Marseilles. The rest of the country outside these Y-shaped corridors would be effectively abandoned until sufficient troops could be brought back from Germany.
    On 29 November, the day after General Leclerc’s air crash, the Palais Bourbon – cordoned off by troops and police – became the scene of the most violent exchanges ever seen in the National Assembly. The Schuman government presented a group of