Most food demonstrations, however, occurred spontaneously. The forty demonstrations in the Var, in the first half of 1942, had nothing to do with the Communists. When the Communists in the département exploited the issue by trying to organize a march of women on Vichy on 11 November, they were unsuccessful.71 Nor did the Communists get much response to their call in 1942 for demonstrations on the anniversary of the battle of Valmy: there were only three demonstrations important enough to have left any trace.72 In 1942, therefore, the FTP was certainly not the activist tip of a massive Communist iceberg. Like other Resistance movements, it was a tiny elite largely cut off from the population. But the Communists were unique in having a theory about the relationship between political resistance and social mobilization, between elite and mass; this would serve them well in the future.
Nonetheless, the Communists were as surprised as anyone else when a wave of protests broke out in the Lyons region in October 1942. This was sparked off by the 4 September law authorizing the government to draft workers for labour service. Employers had to prepare lists of those who would be sent to Germany, and when the first names were posted up in the Oullins railway works at Lyons on 13 October, a strike broke out. Over the next few days, strikes spread throughout the area, affecting about 12,000 workers. The resistance movements were unsure how to react. The leaders of Libération-Sud divided between those who believed that these strikes were dangerously premature, and those, like Pascal Copeau and Raymond Aubrac, who wanted to exploit and encourage them.73 The strikes were soon crushed by the police, but they were to be followed by more extensive protest movements in Februrary 1943, after the introduction of STO. From this point, the Resistance really started to count as a force in French society.
Competitors
Paradoxically, the very success of resistance started to cause problems for the Resistance leaders at the end of 1942. As resistance became a wider social phenomenon, it became more difficult for them to control. They were faced with competitors in their ambition to mobilize the French population, most importantly the Socialists and Communists.
Having no Resistance movement of their own, the Socialists had joined various movements, especially Libération, on a purely individual basis. As the Socialists’ confidence revived after Riom, they became increasingly frustrated by the absence of any recognition of their specific contribution to the Resistance. When they suggested the possibility of the CAS being accorded separate representation on the Co-ordinating Committee set up in October 1942, the Resistance leaders would have none of it. They judged all political parties to be tainted by their past, and despite the contribution of individual Socialists, they would not accept the CAS on equal terms with the Resistance movements. Léon Blum, who had urged his comrades in London to rally to de Gaulle, wrote to the general from prison in November 1942 with warn against such ostracism: ‘there is no democratic state without parties. They must be moralized, renewed, but not eliminated.’74 What turned this Socialist dissatisfaction into mutiny was the impression that their traditional rivals the Communists were receiving different treatment.
The distinctiveness of the Communists was that besides being a political party, they also had their own resistance organizations: the FTP and the Front national (FN). They presented the FN as an independent organization, offering a unitary framework for the Resistance as a whole. The Communists scored a success in the Lyons strikes in October when tracts defending the strikers appeared in the name of the three Southern movements, the PCF, and the FN. For the Communists, this was a double victory: it placed the Party on a footing of equality with the Resistance movements and recognized the FN, by implication, as an independent movement. It is unclear who was behind these tracts which were probably the result of a local initiative. But their political implication was immediately obvious to the leaders of the movements, to London, and to the Socialists.75 This was not all. On 11 January 1943, Fernand Grenier, a member of the PCF Central Committee, arrived in London to bring de Gaulle the Party’s official support. This was a major boost to de Gaulle’s prestige, and he replied to the Central Committee in friendly terms a month later. Increasingly the Socialists feared that the Communists were stealing a march on them. Blum warned de Gaulle: ‘it would be a terrible mistake to stretch a hand to the Communists over the head of the Socialists’.76
The Socialists began to develop their counter-strategy. As early as June 1942, a number of Socialists had floated the idea of a sort of umbrella resistance committee to include representatives of parties and resistance movements. From November, this idea was taken up officially by Daniel Mayer and other Socialist leaders as a way of giving the Socialists an independent voice in the Resistance. They threatened that otherwise Socialists who had joined Resistance movements would withdraw from them.77 Defferre complained to Moulin that the Resistance leaders talked about political parties in terms suspiciously reminiscent of Vichy.78
This challenge to the Resistance leaders from within France occurred just as they were also beginning to wake up to the challenge from outside France in the form of de Gaulle. Had they forfeited too much of their independence to him? Moulin had never harboured any illusions that the movements would lightly give up their independence. Before leaving for France, he remarked that ‘money would be a powerful lever of command in relation to the Resistance organizations’; he would use it ‘to keep them in line [tenir la dragée haute]’.79 Frenay recalls in his memoirs that his delight at meeting an accredited representative of de Gaulle was clouded by the realization that Moulin came armed with instructions: ‘he showed us several more pages of microfilm that contained precise instructions covering everything down to the tiniest detail of out operations. In fact, they were orders.’80
Even if Frenay was reading later resentments back into this first meeting, it did not take long for the Resistance leaders to realize that de Gaulle intended to be more than a symbol: Moulin’s money came with strings attached. In theory, the decision to set up the AS represented a considerable loss of independence by the movements. In return, however, de Gaulle had agreed to recognize the three movements on the Co-ordinating Committee as representing the Resistance in the South: all people who wished to resist were to be told to join one of these movements. This clause in the agreement was a negotiating success for Frenay and d’Astier, but almost immediately it started to look increasingly out of touch with reality, as other political forces in France claimed their right to be heard. Could de Gaulle ignore them? And if he decided to listen to them, how would the Resistance react?
As more Resistance leaders visited London, they came to see that de Gaulle’s authority was more contested than they had realized. This emboldened them to become less deferential towards him. BCRA’s head of counter-espionage, Roger Wybot, commented of a conversation with Frenay in November 1942: ‘he seems less firm in his support for de Gaulle than he is in his writings… Losing his calm for the second time, he even shouted “never will anyone make me swear an oath to de Gaulle”.’81 Before he left London in November 1942, Frenay had a revealing dialogue with de Gaulle. What, asked Frenay, would happen if conflict arose between Moulin and the Resistance? ‘You will come to London and try and find a solution.’ ‘And if we can’t find one?’ ‘In that case’, replied de Gaulle, ‘France will choose between you and me.’82 The question in 1943 was what ‘France’ would decide.
19
Power Struggles 1943
De Gaulle’s relationship with the Resistance in 1943 was intimately linked to his conflicts with the British and Americans. These had worsened significantly after the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. De Gaulle was given only three hours’ notice of the landings because Roosevelt still harboured the belief that Vichy could be more useful to him than the Free French. Darlan’s slowness in rallying to the Allies did nothing to shake this conviction. Roosevelt told André Philip: ‘Darlan gave me Algiers, long live Darlan! If Laval gives me Paris, long live Laval! I am not like Wilson, I am a realist.’
1 Such ‘realism’ so shocked Allied public opinion that on 17 November Roosevelt tried to defuse criticism by announcing that Darlan was only a ‘temporary expedient’. This did not stop Darlan installing himself at the head of a committee of imperial proconsuls—including Boisson and Noguès—who had been loyal to Vichy. Pétainist legislation remained intact and North Africa became a sort of Vichy across the sea under the patronage of America. There were now three claimants to French sovereignty: the Vichy regime in France; Darlan in North Africa; de Gaulle in London.
Churchill, anxious not to antagonize Roosevelt, forbade de Gaulle from criticizing Darlan publicly. Public opinion, however, remained hostile to Darlan, and this assisted de Gaulle’s evolution into a symbol of democracy, even for those on the British left who had previously been suspicious of him. The choice of Darlan also alarmed the Foreign Office on the grounds that de Gaulle had now acquired legitimacy and that it would not be in Britain’s long-term interests to abandon him. In 1940 Churchill had backed de Gaulle in the teeth of Foreign Office reluctance; now Foreign Office officials frequently shielded de Gaulle from Churchill’s increasing animus against him.2
On 24 December 1942, Darlan was shot dead by a 22-year-old royalist, Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle. Because this was a crime for which everyone had a motive—even the Americans who were increasingly embarrassed by their deal with Darlan—speculation about who ordered the assassination has kept conspiracy theorists happy for fifty years. The finger has often been pointed at the Gaullists, but in fact Darlan’s disappearance was not an unmixed blessing for de Gaulle. Roosevelt replaced him by General Giraud, America’s original choice for the North African operation. Giraud, who was not tainted by collaboration, did not arouse the same opprobrium as Darlan. This meant that if he refused a deal with de Gaulle, he might prove harder to dislodge than Darlan. De Gaulle hoped that, in return for being offered the position of Commander-in-Chief of the army, Giraud would recognize his political authority. But Giraud, a man of reactionary views and no political sense, viewed de Gaulle merely as a dissident general, junior to himself. He rejected de Gaulle’s approaches, and far from relaxing the Vichyite legislation in North Africa, he gave a post to Marcel Peyrouton, who had been Pétain’s Interior Minister in 1940.
A meeting between de Gaulle and Giraud at Casablanca in January 1943, in the presence of Roosevelt and Churchill, solved nothing. They shook hands for the cameras, but de Gaulle returned to London empty-handed. His relations with Churchill sank to a new low; on 3 March, he was refused permission to leave England. In retaliation, he retreated to Hampstead, declaring himself a prisoner; Churchill instructed that the ‘monster of Hampstead’ must not be allowed to escape.3 Giraud retained the support of Roosevelt, who argued that until elections were held in liberated France, de Gaulle had no exclusive authority to speak for the French. De Gaulle’s future depended on proving him wrong.
The Resistance had been shocked by the Darlan affair. On 17 November, Moulin sent a telegram from the Southern movements to London, calling for de Gaulle, their ‘uncontested leader’, to be installed in North Africa. The message was also signed by representatives of political parties, including the Radicals, the PDP, and the Republican Federation. In addition, Blum wrote to Roosevelt and Churchill in support of de Gaulle.4 All this was a sign to de Gaulle that besides the recognition he had already received from the Resistance, he could also tap the support of the traditional political forces in France. At the same time, the Socialists were clamouring for fuller recognition of their role in the Resistance through the creation of a council of the Resistance. If de Gaulle wanted the backing of the Socialists, concessions would have to be made to them.
De Gaulle’s envoys in France were also beginning to see the advantages of a Resistance council. When this idea was first mooted in June 1942, Morandat had been favourable, but he was overruled by Moulin and Pineau. But by the end of the year, both Pineau and Moulin, alarmed by the increasing dissatisfaction of the Socialists, had changed their minds.5 On 14 December 1942 Moulin wrote that the ‘movements are not the whole Resistance…there are moral forces, trade-union forces and political forces’; the newly created Co-ordinating Committee could not pretend to control the whole Resistance. In a similar vein, Pineau criticized the movements’ tendency to ‘exclude systematically’ all potential competitors.6 This converging advice found a receptive audience in de Gaulle who needed to prove that he, not Giraud, represented French political opinion. On 10 February, de Gaulle wrote to Blum, supporting the idea of a Resistance council. Such a body would, he said, undermine the ‘attempts at division and confusion attempted by some among the Allies [i.e. America] with the assistance of their French clients [i.e. Giraud].’7 Five days later, Moulin arrived back in London, after fourteen months in France. On 21 February he drafted a set of ‘new instructions’ specifying the role and form of the proposed Resistance council. It was to be a single body, encompassing both zones, and comprising representatives of Resistance movements and political parties. The council’s role would be to enunciate general principles, whose execution would fall to a smaller permanent committee comprised exclusively of representatives of the Resistance movements.8
Moulin, Brossolette, and the Movements
Moulin set off for France again on 19 March. His new mission was to set up the Resistance council and get it to declare support for de Gaulle. He was now ‘sole representative of de Gaulle and the National Committee’ for all France where previously he had only had responsibility for the South. In fact he had made one visit to Paris in July 1942, and his former associates Manhès and Meunier were in contact with Northern movements on his behalf, but little coordination had so far occurred in the North. On behalf of BCRA Rémy had made contact with OCM in April 1942, and in May with the FTP, but this link was severed almost immediately afterwards when his network was disrupted by a wave of arrests. Rémy returned to France in October 1942 with instructions to investigate the possibilities of co-ordinating the Resistance’s military forces in the North. Having concluded that OCM was the only organization which counted militarily, he proposed to put one of its leaders, Colonel Touny, in charge. London rejected this solution on the grounds that no single movement should be accorded such a preponderant role. OCM had many enemies: the elitist tone of its publications raised many hackles, and movements like Libération-Nord were suspicious of ‘OCM imperialism’.9
Not only did the Northern movements have little contact with each other, they had no single response to de Gaulle. Although Pineau was the first resister to visit London, when he returned to France enthusiastic about his meeting with the general, his colleagues had given him a ‘glacial’ reception. Their trade-union traditions made them wary of any political allegiances. Not until December 1942 did Libération-Nord rally to London with a series of articles on ‘Our leader de Gaulle’. Défense de la France, which had been Pétainist until November 1942, remained ambivalent about de Gaulle as late as March 1943.10 A lot therefore remained to be done in the North.
Moulin’s task was complicated by the fact that on 26 January, six weeks before he set off on his second mission to France, Brossolette had already been sent to the North as de Gaulle’s representative. It was certainly no coincidence that at this very moment Moulin, who was imminently expected in London, had chosen to send over his aide Manhès. Passy commented: ‘Never before had Moulin signalled his existence…We were amazed to discover that Moulin had entrusted him, since 1942, with organizing action in the North. If Moulin himself had not sent him, we would have taken him for an impostor or agent provocateur.’11 If Passy somewhat exaggerated his surprise in retrospect—Moulin had never hidden the fact that he had contacts in the North even if he had not said much about them12—it was because, as an ally of Brossolette, he suspected that Manhès’s arrival was Moulin’s attempt to stake his own claim to the North. Equally Brossolette’s eagerness to leave for France before Moulin’s return to London suggests he wanted to begin work without Moulin’s interference
. If Brossolette were to fulfil his ambition of playing the same role in the North as Moulin had in the South, he had to act fast.13
On 26 February Passy himself joined Brossolette, and for the next month they enjoyed an almost entirely free hand. Manhès came out to join them, but he was almost immediately arrested. The purpose of their mission, code-named ‘Brumaire-Arquebuse’, was to co-ordinate the Northern movements, and set up a unified military organization like the AS in the South. Given the previous lack of co-ordination between the Northern movements, they achieved a remarkable amount in six weeks. By the start of April, Passy had centralized the gathering of intelligence information in the North, and set up a military co-ordinating committee to begin the process of creating a secret army. The Northern movements, including the FTP, agreed to contribute their forces to it.14
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