B006NTJT4U EBOK

by Jackson, Julian

  Planning for the future also occurred outside France. As early as December 1941, de Gaulle set up four commissions in London to study post-war reforms. After the move to Algiers, committees were set up to examine reforms in four areas: the Empire, the constitution, education, and the economy.49 No single view about reform emerged from these discussions. The CFLN represented an increasingly wide spectrum of opinion as de Gaulle broadened its base. In November 1943, he brought in historic Resistance leaders who had arrived from France (Frenay, d’Astier, Menthon), former Third Republic politicians who had rallied to de Gaulle (Pierre Mendès France, Henri Queuille, André Philip), and veterans of the Free French (Catroux, Diethelm, Pleven, Tixier).

  The two policy areas most intensely discussed were the economy and constitutional reform. On the economy, there were several broadly shared assumptions—hostility to the bourgeoisie which had supposedly let France down in 1940, rejection of laissez-faire capitalism and support for dirigisme, repudiation of the allegedly Malthusian attitudes of the pre-war period and an embrace of modernization—but there was little agreement on details. The main conflict centred upon the degree of dirigisme. The difference between the more and less dirigiste positions did not run between the Resistance and the Free French. In November 1943, René Courtin of the CGE produced an economic policy document which most Resistance leaders considered to be too laissez-faire. Within the Free French, most points of view were represented. A Free French commission, chaired by the civil servant Hervé Alphand, had in 1942 produced a report which pleased neither the Socialists and the Resistance, nor the more laissez-faire camp, represented in London by the businessman Étienne Hirsch. After the move to Algiers, the balance within the CFLN swung towards the left. Pierre Mendès France, who was given the economic portfolio, was an ardent advocate of planning. But no decisions were taken, and the case remained to be fought out in the post-Liberation government.50

  On constitutional reform, the CNR Charter demanded a democratic system combining efficiency with ‘effective accountability before the representatives of the people’. This answered none of the difficult questions, and the constitution was something about which everyone had an opinion. When Sartre tried setting up an abortive resistance group in 1941, the first thing he did was to draft a new constitution—which has not survived. The first cahiers of OCM (June 1942) and Défense de la France (March 1943) were devoted to the constitution. In January 1944, the CFLN set up a committee to co-ordinate all the proposals that were proliferating on this subject. It was said, with some exaggeration, that there were almost as many constitutional projects as resisters.51 A recent study has reprinted nineteen separate constitutional projects.52

  The central problem was how to avoid the weakness of the Third Republic without falling into the authoritarianism of Vichy. Was it possible satisfactorily to reconcile liberty and authority? In constitutional terms, this revolved around the difference between a presidential and a parliamentary republic. Advocates of a more presidential system looked to ways of widening the franchise of presidential elections or allowing the President to dissolve parliament as Tardieu advocated in the 1930s. Those who rejected presidentialism argued that the Third Republic’s weakness resided in the lack of parliamentary majorities. The solution lay in encouraging the emergence of two or three organized parties on the British model. OCM and Défense de France were the firmest supporters of some form of presidentialism, and the Socialists of reformed parliamentarianism. In between, lay the detailed CGE blueprint (September 1943) which was seen as ‘timid’ by OCM and as too presidential by the Socialists.53

  De Gaulle expressed no detailed public views about post-Liberation reforms. From the summer of 1943, his main rival was no longer Giraud but the Communists, and his speeches stopped talking about revolution.54 De Gaulle was always pragmatic about details. On economic matters, his immediate priority was not to adjudicate between the finer points of liberalism or planning, but to ensure that the French people were fed after liberation. For this purpose, he sent Monnet to Washington to co-ordinate relief programmes with the Americans. On constitutional matters, de Gaulle committed himself in no way. His view was probably that no amount of planning would matter if the CFLN did not immediately impose its authority on liberated France. The most urgent objective was not to produce ever more finely tuned constitutions, but to ensure that there was no administrative void after Vichy had gone.

  Building a Clandestine State

  In the summer of 1943, the CFLN started the process of selecting the prefects who would take over from Vichy. It also devised two new organizational structures for the Liberation: the commissaires de la République and the Departmental Liberation Committees (CDL). The eighteen commissaires were to be ‘super-prefects’—like Vichy’s regional prefects—who would maintain order until central authority had been restored. The CDLs, containing members of Resistance movements and political parties, were to organize formal representation of the Resistance in each département at the Liberation. Since the Resistance was likely to be a significant local presence, it had to be brought into the process of re-establishing order. In July 1943, Émile Laffon was sent from London to supervise the selection of commissaires and prefects, and a month later Francis-Louis Closon to do the same for the CDLs.

  The problem was to define the relationship between the CDLs, on the one hand, and the commissaires and prefects, on the other. The CNR wanted the CDLs to exercise real power; it proposed that the prefects be responsible to them. But the CFLN, worried that the CDLs might become like local soviets, wanted to restrict them to a consultative role. The compromise reached in March 1944 gave the CDLs the authority to prepare the liberation uprisings—they were described as the ‘soul of the département which under their leadership struggles for its liberation’—but required them to accept the authority of the commissaire once liberation had occurred.55

  These arrangements left much room for conflict. A lot would depend on the skill of the prefects and commissaires. According to what criteria should they be chosen? What should be done about able administrators who had compromised themselves with Vichy? Had the Resistance generated new elites to replace them? In deference to resistance susceptibilities, Laffon made his choices in collaboration with a nominations subcommittee (Comité des Désignations) of the CNR, chaired by Debré of the CGE, and staffed by members of the Resistance movements. In September, he took a preliminary list of nominations back to Algiers. They were largely approved by the CFLN, and he returned with decrees naming one hundred prefects and ten commissaires. But the Southern movements complained that the Resistance was insufficiently represented, and the negotiations dragged on into 1944. By March, all but fifteen prefects had been chosen, but there were still four commissaires to find on the eve of liberation. All the designated commissaires had administrative or political experience: there were eight members of the liberal professions, six former civil servants, three former parliamentarians. Although this was hardly the elite formed in the Maquis of which Franc-Tireur had dreamed, most of the appointees had genuine links to the Resistance: the competing claims of political virtue and administrative competence were satisfactorily met.56

  Like Laffon, Closon, whose job it was to select the members of the CDLs, worked in co-operation with a subcommittee of the CNR. Each CDL was to have about ten members, but it was decided that there would also be a smaller ‘active core’ (noyau actif) to prepare the insurrection which was planned for the liberation. The noyau actif would comprise only members of the movements, to reassure Resistance leaders who feared that the CDLs might fall into the hands of politicians.57 Especially in the South, where the Resistance was more politicized, there was tough bargaining over the composition of the CDLs. One point of contention was the number of places allocated to the political parties. Another problem was the attitude of the Communists. Initially they showed limited interest in the CDLs since these contradicted the Communist desire that the situation at the liberation should be as fluid as possible.
Then the Communists decided that the CDLs offered them a way of consolidating their power locally. Where possible, they tried to get their Committees of Fighting France recognized as CDLs. This succeeded in a few cases, like the Isère, where they secured three out of five places on the noyau actif. But generally, in the South, the MUR tended to prevail, partly because it was accorded places for each of its three component movements, and partly because, however dynamic the Communists were becoming, their institutional presence lagged behind those movements which had been around longer.58

  The Communists did score a major success in September 1943, by setting up a Parisian Liberation Committee (CPL), a kind of CDL for the capital. Of the eighteen members, which included the main Northern movements, like Défense de France, OCM, Libération-Nord, CDLR, and CDLL, seven were Communists or members of Communist front organizations. Closon reluctantly accepted this fait accompli: ‘we cannot hope to get the help of the Communists if we eliminate them from the Paris scene. We know the methods of our comrades, and realise that it is better to give them an official position than allow them to create organisations in the shadows to spread disorder.’59

  As well as preparing the transfer of power at local level, the CFLN also set about organizing a team to take over central government in the period between liberation and the arrival of de Gaulle. This was to be the task of so-called provisional secretary-generals who were in effect to act as a pre-provisional government. The CGE drew up a list of nominations mostly drawn from its own ranks, and this excited the ire of the CNR which had not been consulted. In the end, most of the CGE’s original choices were accepted, but the CNR gained an important concession when it obtained the right to appoint a ministerial commission to advise the secretary-generals.60

  Closon and Laffon played an important role in this period, in co-operation with Bingen, Serreulles, and the CGE. This was the period when de Gaulle’s delegates, operating with little guidance from Algiers, were thrown on to their own resources. Although no individual had acquired authority comparable to Moulin’s, the Delegation as a whole was assuming the appearance of a provisional government in waiting. What it now required was a more formal recognition of its importance by de Gaulle after months of neglect. This finally occurred on 10 March 1944 when de Gaulle appointed Alexandre Parodi as his single Delegate to France. Parodi’s appointment was accompanied by detailed instructions formalizing the hierarchy among de Gaulle’s representatives in France. At the apex was Parodi himself, the Delegate-General, with two seconds-in-command, Teitgen and Lacoste (both, like him, members of the CGE), and a number of deputies with specific duties, including Laffon and Closon. In each zone, there was also a deputy delegate: Bingen for the South and Roland Pré for the North.61

  The 10 March instructions also clarified the military organization of the Resistance, which had undergone several changes since the summer of 1943. The disruption which followed the arrests of Moulin and Delestraint had demonstrated the dangers of excessive centralization and BCRA had devised a more decentralized system which would allow the regions to function autonomously, even if cut off from the centre. Each military region was allocated a ‘Regional Military Delegate’ (DMR) whose role was to liaise directly with London. The only central co-ordination was provided by two zonal military delegates (DMZs), one for the North and one for the South. The DMRs, who were parachuted into France from September, had no hierarchical authority over regional AS commanders. But their possession of radio contact with London, and their responsibility for distributing material, gave them considerable power.62

  The only problem with this system, as Brossolette noted in the autumn of 1943, was that some regions, especially in the North, had barely begun building a command structure for the AS. It was impossible to decentralize power which had never existed in the first place.63 It was therefore decided to reintroduce some degree of centralization, especially since all the military forces of the Resistance were now to be incorporated into a single FFI with a central general staff. The 10 March instructions created the post of National Military Delegate (DMN), crowning the hierarchy of zonal delegates and DMRs. The role of the DMN was to liaise between London/Algiers and the FFI general staff in France. This post was given to Jacques Chaban-Delmas, making him the military equivalent to Parodi, although ultimately subordinate to him since Parodi was representative of the civil authority of the CFLN. It was also necessary to establish unambiguously who commanded the military forces of the Resistance. This had been a grey area since the death of Delestraint. In February 1944, the Resistance had set up a Military Action Committee—eventually known as COMAC—to oversee the creation of the FFI. Although COMAC was an emanation of the Resistance movements, it had been encouraged by the Delegation on the grounds that it would speed up the military integration of the Resistance. But de Gaulle wanted to ensure that the Resistance did not use COMAC to claim a military authority which he insisted should rest with the CFLN: this had been the major bone of contention between Moulin and Frenay. On 10 March, de Gaulle therefore underlined that COMAC did not have right of command over the FFI; its role was only one of inspection and co-ordination. On 4 April, he appointed General Koenig as overall commander of the FFI from London. Thus the structure of the clandestine State and its secret army was organized as shown in Fig. 1.

  Neat diagrams, however, fail to capture the constantly shifting dynamics of the Resistance. For a start, the steady haemorrhage of Resistance leaders always threatened to disrupt these painfully constructed hierarchies. After Bingen’s death in May, it took time for Parodi to find a successor who could win the trust of the MLN leaders. In the Resistance, authority had to be earned: the personality of individuals was more important than the labels they wore.64 The potential for conflict went deeper than personalities. It revolved around the thorny problem of the relationship between the Resistance and de Gaulle. The compromise between the CNR and the CFLN on the powers of the CDLs left much scope for interpretation. The CNR announced in April 1944 that CDLs had the right to appoint provisional municipal councils at the Liberation.65 This was certainly a breach of the agreement that had been reached, and conflicted with a CFLN ordinance of 21 April 1944 on the organization of local power after liberation. This document curtailed the powers of the CDLs by requiring them to reinstate the municipalities which had existed in 1939, purged of their collaborating elements. De Gaulle wanted no repetition of the Corsican situation.66

  Fig. 1 The Organization of the Resistance and Free French at the end of 1943

  Thus the parallel set of structures which had been created for the liberation —CDLs and commissaires, secretary-generals and ministerial commissions, COMAC and DMN—left many questions unresolved. The heart of the problem was the relationship between those bodies representing the CFLN, the embryonic government of the future, and those representing the Resistance. Was the CNR simply a representative of the Resistance in France—standing in the same relationship to the Delegation as the Algiers Consultative Assembly to the CFLN—or did it have executive powers of its own? Was it like a pre-provisional government or a pre-provisional legislature? In practice, the CNR and the Delegation worked together fairly harmoniously, but the CNR and its dependencies offered an alternative power base, and an alternative source of legitimacy, in any rivalry with the CFLN. Many people feared that the Communists intended to make full use of these possibilities.

  Part V

  Liberation and After

  Introduction to Part V

  At the end of February 1944 Walter Stucki, the Swiss Minister at Vichy, reported on a meeting with Laval:

  He tried first to prove to me that Germany could never lose the war. According to him the fall back in the East was intended to lengthen and weaken the Russian lines of communication. In the summer a powerful German counter-offensive would result in the annihilation of Russia … There was no question of a breach of the Atlantic Wall. I repeated this conversation to one of his close collaborators who said to me: ‘what do you expect! Laval h
as played banco and he knows he has lost. But he wants neither to believe nor admit it.’1