Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

ministries. The burnt-out tank was still blocking the entrance to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when de Gaulle’ssenior diplomats, René Massigli and Hervé Alphand, arrived on 29 August. They discovered bloodstains on the main staircase and strips of German army shirts torn up to clean rifles in corners of its empty, echoing reception rooms. Eventually a few timid officials who had served the Vichy regime put in an appearance, not knowing whether they would be shot, imprisoned, or given back their old jobs.
    Apart from the handful who rallied to de Gaulle, the Quai d’Orsay was still, as Alphand wrote, ‘
peuplé de Vichy
’. In 1940, the majority of officials had continued to work for what they thought was the government of France. This almost certainly prejudiced de Gaulle against the Quai d’Orsay as an institution. Two days before D-Day, de Gaulle had confided to Duff Cooper that Roland de Margerie – who had been Vichy’s representative in Shanghai – was the man he found it hardest to forgive. ‘He could have helped me so much, saved me from many of the mistakes I made. If he had come then he would be Minister for Foreign Affairs now.’
    Alphand’s most vivid memory of those first weeks in the Quai d’Orsay was the lonely figure of Georges Bidault, hugging himself in an overcoat in front of a wood fire in an immense and empty reception room. The Germans had taken all the important files back to Berlin when they retreated, as well as most of the typewriters and filing cabinets. This booty was then shipped to Moscow in 1945 after the fall of Berlin.
    Most of the other ministries were in a similar position. Writing paper was in such short supply that they had to use up the remaining batches of Vichy letterhead, striking out ‘État Français’ at the top and typing in ‘République Française’ underneath. In some departments this embarrassing practice had to continue until the trial of Marshal Pétain the following summer.
    It was not just government ministries which were short of essential equipment. Hospitals lacked thermometers as well as drugs and bandages. In the terrible winter of 1944–5, there was little plaster of Paris left to mend the bones, brittle from malnutrition, which broke so easily in falls on the icy streets.
    The cold spell which started during the Ardennes offensive at the beginning of January and continued throughout most of the month was one of the worst that France had suffered for a long time. On 20 January 1945, the American ambassador sent the following telegramto Washington: ‘There has been snow on the ground for 17 days; previous record 10 days. It is still snowing – water frozen to hydroelectric plants – ice-breakers unable to smash thru 8″–12″ ice on canals fromcoalfields, so 70,000 tons of coal stuck in barges, ice-bound. Daily arrivals have dropped by a third down to under 5,000 tons for whole of Paris. Sixty-six trains frozen fast.’
    Even before this, the government’s greatest concern remained the food supply. White bread had appeared just after the Liberation, thanks to flour provided by the Americans, then disappeared again as soon as the provisional government was left to its own resources. Shortages became so acute that people were saying they had been better off under the Germans. Such complaints overlooked the fact that the transport system had been destroyed in the fighting. Several main lines were impassable for many weeks after the Liberation; and after the Germans had withdrawn, taking most vehicles with them, road transport depended on a very limited number of charcoal-burning
gazogène
trucks. The fundamental problem, according to the Sûreté Nationale, lay with peasant farmers resisting
la Collecte,
the compulsory purchase of food-stuffs at fixed prices. The reactionary peasantry of the Vendée was apparently the worst. In October 1944, no more than four tons of butter in the whole
département
were handed over. During the same month, the Pas de Calais, with only a few more dairy cattle, produced 355 tons for the official market.
    Money in these times seemed to have no politics. The Duc de Mouchy was mayor of Mouchy-le-Chastel in the Oise, a village whose peasant farmers mainly voted Communist. He was liked and trusted, to the point that one old farmer asked him to buy a diamond ring for his daughter the next time he was in Paris. The duke bought a ring as requested. But when he returned with it, the farmer promptly said that it