Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

did not improve his mood. Ravanel, the head of the
maquis,
fared little better, even though he had been appointed by General Koenig. He had travelled in the other car with André Diethelm, the Minister for War, who refused to acknowledge his presence. Ravanel was included in the lunch; yet de Gaulle’s attitude towards him and his officers was one of conspicuous disdain. He asked each member of this ‘
belle brochette de colonels
’ what their real rank had been during their military service. This degradation of Resistance rank by a career officer was reinforced during his speech to the populace, when he spoke only of the achievements of regular French forces, without mentioning the Resistance.
    When Starr appeared in his British uniform in the Prefect’s office, the General’s fury reignited at the thought of an Englishman being so influential on French territory. He even said that Starr and his followers were no more than a band of mercenaries. Starr, restraining his temper, pointed out that a number of his subordinates were regular officers of the French army. This made de Gaulle even angrier and he ordered him to leave Toulouse immediately. Starr retorted that he came under the orders of Allied Forces Headquarters, not the provisional government, and that he would not abandon his post until instructed. If General de Gaulle wished to arrest him, then that was his decision.
    The silence which followed was unbearable. De Gaulle was finally forced to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Starr’s popularity in the region was such that news of his arrest could lead to serious disorder, to say nothing of further problems with the Allies. De Gaulle, mastering his own emotions, had the sense and good grace to stand up, walk round the desk and shake the British officer’s hand.
    Starr was still obliged to leave Toulouse shortly afterwards, but de Gaulle later agreed that he should receive the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur for his services.
    De Gaulle’s confrontation with the Resistance in Toulouse, although partly symbolic, was also an experiment before attempting his decisivemove of forcing the FFI, in practice as well as in theory, to become part of the conventional armed forces of the provisional government. He saw very clearly that the Communists did not want their forces thrown into battle against the Germans under Allied command. They wanted to keep them back for the crucial struggle, arguing that their forces should provide the model for a new ‘army of tomorrow’. A number of Communist leaders had convinced themselves that de Gaulle was the French Kerensky and Maurice Thorez was their Lenin about to return to power.
    Towards the end of October de Gaulle played his trump card. He had ignored the Communist Party’s heavily orchestrated campaign of rallies and marches demanding ‘
le retour de Maurice Thorez
’, just as he had ignored Thorez’s telegrams from Moscow. Thorez was de Gaulle’s hostage and now the time had come to make an exchange (just as Thorez had suspected, according to a letter to Dimitrov exactly three weeks earlier). On 28 October de Gaulle’s representative in Moscow informed Thorez that he would receive an amnesty for his desertion from the French army in 1939, thus allowing his return to France, but he must say nothing until the decree was published in the
Journal Officiel
. Dimitrov immediately sent a memorandum to Stalin informing him of the development.
    That same day, de Gaulle summoned a council of ministers. Everyone present knew that he was about to demand payment for allowing the return of Thorez. A proposal for disbanding the patriotic militias was put to each member in turn, but all eyes were on the two Communist ministers, Charles Tillon, the Minister for Air, and François Billoux, the Minister for Health. They knew that they had no choice. As a result even Charles Tillon, the great leader of the FTP, raised no objections when his turn came to respond. Republican legitimacy had prevailed.
    The mass of French Communists, who had no idea of Stalin’s policy, were shaken at this blow to the Resistance. Over the next ten days the party went through the motions of protest, with rallies and rousing speeches, but there was never any question of confrontation with the government. Duclos himself was almost certainly far from happy with the situation, but, as had been the case with the Nazi–Soviet pact, he knew that the interests of the Soviet Union