Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

Colonel said we couldn’t stay on account of the great cohorts of collaborators by whom we were surrounded; and firmly dumped me home’. She was mortified, having longed to show off her new dress, but made no objection.
    Waugh tried to disabuse her in his next letter: ‘Does it not occur to you, poor innocent, that the continental Colonel went back to the aristocratic ball and that while you lay sleepless with your fountain pen, he was in the arms of some well-born gestapo moll?’

17
    Communists in Government
    On the afternoon of Monday, 7 May 1945, word spread across Paris that the war was over. Germany had surrendered. Everyone waited for the bells to ring out, but only the newspapers, rushed off the presses, confirmed the news.
    After dinner, Jean Galtier-Boissière expected the streets to be full of people, but the only sign of celebration was the occasional jeep rushing past, driven by a GI and piled with young Frenchwomen frantically waving Allied flags. He went with some friends to the old Boeuf sur le Toit nightclub, where Moyses, the
patron,
offered them a free bottle of wine – ‘
une bouteille de la Victoire
’ – in celebration. The painter Jean Oberlé joined them and together they listened to the orchestra playing ‘Tipperary’ and ‘Madelon’, the words sung lustily by American, British and French officers.
    Everyone was in good spirits, but at about three in the morning a curious incident took place. Oberlé refused to shake the hand of a man who came up to him. The man, red in the face with anger, demanded why. Oberlé replied that he would not shake the hand of anyone who had broadcast on the German-controlled Radio-Paris. The man blustered, claiming he had been a prisoner and that someone else had spoken under his name. People at neighbouring tables joined in the argument. Suddenly, a waiter stuck out an accusing finger and shouted: ‘I’ve seen this man have dinner with German officers!’ This produced an uproar. But then a long-haired character, looking like ‘
une sorte de zazou
’, spoke up to defend the accused.
    ‘Who are you?’ several people demanded at once.
    ‘I’m a detective inspector!’ he replied, drawing himself up proudly.
    This provoked a roar of laughter. Then René Lefèvre, one of Galtier-Boissière’s friends, started an argument with the plain-clothes policeman and knocked him down. When the policeman stood up, Lefèvre hauled him to the door and kicked him all the way down the street. The sky was already light above eastern Paris. It was the dawn of VE Day.
    The long-awaited morning turned out sunny, yet the streets remained curiously empty until the afternoon. Around three, the Place de l’Étoile (where huge tricolours flew beneath the Arc de Triomphe), the Champs-Élysées and the Place de la Concorde began to fill with people. Almost every house and vehicle seemed to be decorated with flags. The jeeps full of soldiers and young women were brought to a halt by Parisian youth – the middle-aged and old mostly stayed at home. The afternoon was noisy, with klaxons hooting, Flying Fortresses crossing low overhead, artillery salutes, church bells and air-raid sirens sounding a final all-clear.
    General de Gaulle broadcast to the nation, making much of the fact that France had been represented at the surrender ceremony and was one of the victors. Once it was over, the Place de la Concorde became even more closely packed. The crowds were so thick that white-helmeted US military police had to force a way through to let people in and out of the American Embassy. When a man in khaki uniform came out on to the balcony and gave the victory salute, the crowd, thinking it was Eisenhower, yelled its acclaim. It was in fact William Bullitt, the pre-war American ambassador to France.
    As darkness fell, the most famous monuments in the centre of Paris – the Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde, the Madeleine and the Opéra – were illuminated for the first time since the beginning of the war, the Opéra in red, white and blue lights. The fountains were also reconnected and lit up.
    The Paris police struggled to push back the crowds in the rue Royale to make way for a ceremonial appearance of the Garde Républicaine on horseback, as they came trotting down from the Madeleine; but their arrival was as chaotic as the scenes around them. Their full-dress uniform, the shining cuirasses and dragoon helmets with long horsehair plumes, was dramatically offset by