Gaston Gallimard arrived. Simone de Beauvoir went into his office, but found André Malraux and Roger Martin du Gard there too. Embarrassed at encountering a political enemy, she found herself obliged to shake Malraux’s hand. Then she had to listen to Gallimard’s explanation of Genet’s lost manuscript before she could escape. Back in her own office, she was buttonholed by an aspiring young novelist who had brought her his typescript to read. He naïvely asked if Sartre would vote for him on the jury of the Prix de la Pléiade. She then had a brief chat with Michel Leiris, and took the novelist Nathalie Sarraute’s manuscript to Jean Paulhan. He showed her a little painting by Wols – a painter whom Sartre greatly admired also – which he had just bought. Finally, at seven o’clock she left the office and went to meet Raymond Queneau at the bar of the Hotel Pont-Royal.
This day was easy in comparison to some, and no doubt Castor rather welcomed the manic activity around her. It must have helped her forget her fears at this time that Nathalie Sarraute was trying to take her place as Sartre’s intellectual companion.
On 12 May there was a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the victory of the year before. Félix Gouin ‘made a good speech,’ Duff Cooper recorded, ‘but he looks terribly insignificant on such occasions. His generous reference to de Gaulle was loudly cheered.’ De Gaulle, however, had refused Gouin’s invitation to attend. Instead he had gone to the Vendée to pay homage at Clemenceau’s tomb on the same day, the day commemorating Joan of Arc.
A few days before, Claude Mauriac had asked the General if he would make a speech during this visit. ‘I will perhaps say a few words, yes,’ he had said, ‘but we must not tell anyone.’ This was disingenuous. Claude Guy, his ADC, was already organizing a reception for journalists.
The speech over Clemenceau’s grave was to be the forerunner of several which, although ostensibly commemorating a particular event or anniversary, had a definite political purpose. De Gaulle had seen that his prestige was rising again and was preparing the ground for the foundation of a full Gaullist political movement. André Malraux told Louise de Vilmorin that the General ‘will be President of the Republic in September and that he, Malraux, will be Minister of the Interior’.
The crowd awaiting de Gaulle at Clemenceau’s tomb was large. Claude Mauriac felt uneasy at the cries of ‘De Gaulle au pouvoir!’ and was embarrassed by the event’s faintly fascist aspect. The supposedly modest visit was well attended by the French and international press, who were briefed by one of de Gaulle’s staff.
There is no doubt that the Communists were chastened by the results of the May referendum. The setback had been doubly embarrassing for the party leadership, since Molotov was in Paris at the time for a meeting of foreign ministers.
In 1946, most Western intelligence agencies had very little information on Communist objectives. In Paris, a number of attempts were made to penetrate the inner circles of the French Communist Party. The only successful operation at the time seems to have been that of the former Resistance leader Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. Although Kim Philby had rejected her material, it would appear that she had better luck in placing it with the Americans.
The first summary from US military intelligence covered a politburo meeting on 16 May, chaired by Marcel Cachin. They discussed Molotov’s setback at the Big Four conference in Paris with dismay. James Byrnes, the American Secretary of State, and Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, had surprised the Soviet delegation with their firmness.
Then Thorez, chastened by the failure of the referendum vote on 5 May, expressed his pessimism about the outcome of the 2 June elections. The French Communist Party might have to decide whether to go into opposition or stay in the government. He feared ‘intensive anti-Communist activity in France’. He was furious with Blum for opposing the Communist plan to ‘liquidate the French Socialist Party through fusion or other means’. If the chance of taking over the Socialists definitely disappeared, Thorez told the politburo, then they should ‘seriously reflect before taking any violent action’. Soviet diplomacy needed peace and was not willing to take undue chances.
Another piece of intelligence passed on to the Americans said that Molotov was ‘deeply chagrined’ by the outcome of the referendum and had strongly warned the leadership of the French Communist Party against attacking Léon Blumand the Socialists. Such actions could only force them into an alliance with other parties of the centre-left and ‘push them closer to the British Labour Government. This in turn might result in a Franco-British pact which would form the basis of a Western bloc.’
At a further politburo meeting on 20 May, the arguments about seizing power intensified. Laurent Casanova said that armed action must be considered in the near future. If the Communists failed at the forthcoming elections, the new government would purge every part of the administration. This would be ‘the worst catastrophe that could befall the Communist Party in France’. If they were obliged to attempt an armed uprising, he warned that they could not count on any support from Moscow for ‘at least thirty days’. On balance, he felt that ‘it would be a grave error to withdraw from government and pass to opposition’.
These reports certainly sound plausible on the basis of other evidence, particularly contemporary documents of the International Section in the Kremlin. The French Communist Party was not receiving detailed instructions at that time.
For the elections at the beginning of June, the Communists adopted a low-key approach, relying more on whispering campaigns in cafés and queues than on strident propaganda. This did not, however, stop the French Communist Party from claiming that 340,000 tons of Russian grain had left Black Sea ports en route to France, with a balance of 160,000 tons to come. The United States Embassy was furious: no mention had been made of the 7 million tons of supplies delivered by the Americans since March 1945.
When the results were announced on 3 June, the Communists found that they had not done nearly as badly as they had feared. It was the turn of the Socialists to be disappointed, mainly as a result of their unwise policy over the referendum. They lost most of those non-Socialists who had voted for them to keep the Communists out. These tactical voters switched their support to the Christian Democrat MRP, which, to the Communists’ irritation, now replaced them as the ‘premier parti de France’. The Communists at first strongly opposed the idea of serving in a government led by Georges Bidault, and attempted to resurrect another Gouin administration, but the Socialists preferred to leave the responsibility of dealing with a virtually bankrupt economy to others. The Communists, finding that their refusal to serve with Bidault would bring tripartisme to an end, rapidly compromised, and de Gaulle’s oft-humiliated Foreign Minister finally achieved his ambition of becoming head of government.
*
The most important development following the elections was General de Gaulle’s return to the political stage. De Gaulle’s prestige had greatly increased in the last two months of uncertainty; and the news that he had refused Gouin’s invitation to celebrate the anniversary of his own 18 June appeal from London, coupled with his plan to speak at Bayeux two days earlier, caused great interest.
The speech at Bayeux, the American ambassador reported, ‘struck a more responsive chord throughout the country than its reception by the phlegmatic Norman audience indicated’. The meeting took place in heavy rain, with General de Gaulle bareheaded and in a uniform without decorations. He warned the French against their unfortunate inclination to divide into parties; but the event gave a strong impression of a military movement with the uniformed presence in de Gaulle’s entourage of Admiral Thierry d’Argenlieu, General Juin and General Koenig, as well as Malraux, Palewski and Soustelle.
The speech was important. De Gaulle put forward his idea of what the Constitution of the French Republic should be. It was, in many ways, the blueprint for the Fifth Republic, which he finally established after his return to power in 1958.
De Gaulle remained suspect in the eyes of many potential followers, par
ticularly those who had supported Marshal Pétain, because he had made deals with the Communist devil during the war and had gone to Moscow to sign a pact with Stalin. These suspicions were soothed a year later, when the General took up an openly anti-Communist position. De Gaulle, despite his dislike of two superpower blocs, helped to bring French politics into the frame of the Cold War.
21
The Diplomatic Battleground
For the second time in thirty years, Paris found itself hosting a modern Congress of Vienna. First came the meeting of foreign ministers of the Big Four in May 1946, to be followed by the sixteen-nation peace conference, which continued in bursts from August until mid-October.
The Quai d’Orsay and the embassies were very busy. Jacques Dumaine, the chef de protocole, was continually going out to Le Bourget or Orly to meet distinguished visitors. He summed up the diplomatic contest at that time in terms of a poker game: ‘We do not know if Stalin is playing poker with good cards and unlimited funds; but we can only realize that his American opponents are standing and that the British cannot double their stakes.’ His wife was about to have a baby and he worried about what life held in store for their child with a future ‘full of foreboding’.
On 24 April, Dumaine was at Orly to greet James Byrnes, the Secretary of State, with the American delegation, which included Senator Tom Connally and Senator Vandenberg. ‘After twenty-four hours on the aeroplane they still managed to look their normal, cheerful, well-shaven selves, while their wives appeared as fresh as ever with their orchids.’ That afternoon, Dumaine had to wait at Le Bourget for Molotov, who arrived ‘looking neat and scrubbed like a country doctor. His expression is hesitant and relatively gentle, but his actions are distrustful and forbidding.’
Ernest Bevin arrived the following morning and the first meeting of the Four took place late that afternoon in the Palais du Luxembourg, now almost entirely repaired.
The conference opened far more smoothly than most people had expected, but after a week or so became bogged down in the usual fashion. Some issues were more interesting, such as what to do with the former Italian colonies, including Libya and Cyrenaica. Bevin wanted to give them complete independence, but the French were alarmed at the effect that this might have on their own North African colonies. Molotov then retreated from an agreement he had made on Italy the previous September and Byrnes became very angry. As it was the 1 May public holiday, Bevin, acting as chairman, insisted on a break. ‘The next item,’ he announced, ‘is a half-holiday which will be passed unanimously.’
The break did little to unblock the accumulating log-jam of differences. ‘Agreement was reached on one subject,’ the British ambassador recorded testily the next day, ‘the future of the Pelagosa and Pianosa islands, which contain one lighthouse and no inhabitants.’ Duff Cooper was in a bad mood because his new love, Gloria Rubio, had just had to fly to New York at short notice. It was also almost impossible to remain awake after heavy official lunches. Bevin, who had noticed Duff Cooper drop off to sleep, said, ‘Tell Duff I’ll call him if anything happens’, then added to those around him, ‘He’s the most sensible man in the room. It’s all a waste of time.’
The real nightmare of such conferences were the huge banquets, such as the one given for the delegates at the Sorbonne. The place-à-table always seemed to ensure that large numbers of people had neighbours with whom they shared no common language. Madame Bidault had to talk to Molotov through an interpreter sitting behind them. ‘I had Mme Duhamel on my left,’ wrote Duff Cooper, ‘who is always very nice and pleasant to talk to. She had Guroff, the Russian ambassador in London, the other side of her, who knows a little English but no French and with whom she couldn’t exchange a word… Mrs Bevin, opposite me, was between Dr Roussy, president of the Sorbonne, and Thorez, neither of whom could say a word that she could understand.’
As well as the official round there was also a semi-official round, prompted partly by the large number of newspaper proprietors and editors attracted to Paris. Some wielded enormous influence, often without the knowledge to use it well. Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine, was a shy man, ill at ease and sentimental. ‘Luce is a queer duck,’ wrote David Bruce on a subsequent occasion. ‘He gives the impression that he soaks up what one is saying without becoming mentally wetted by it. His youthful missionary background and his later enormous influence and affluence, combined with other factors, have complicated his personality. He appears driven by ambition and fanaticism to extremes of judgement.’ Henry Luce came round to the British Embassy, where he met Louise de Vilmorin and promptly fell ‘madly in love with her’. Duff Cooper was very amused, but he had more sympathy for Henry Luce than for Luce’s wife, Clare. Caffery had brought her over to the British Embassy after dinner in the first winter after the Liberation. ‘She is as pretty as ever,’ he wrote then, ‘and as self-satisfied, as tiresome, and as foolish.’ He had much more time for Mrs Ogden Reid, wife of the proprietor of the New York Herald Tribune and the real controller of the newspaper. ‘Mrs O.R. is a very sensible and well-balanced woman. She is what America has best to offer at the present time – and that is very good. Her husband is a drunken jackass and brays like one.’
At the conference table, self-fulfilling suspicions were developing rapidly on both sides. Whenever the Americans stood up to Stalin over breaches of the Yalta agreement, he feared their confidence was based on a secret plan to use the atom bomb. He ignored the massive demobilization of their forces across the world.
At the same time, the Americans underestimated Stalin’s paranoia and therefore misjudged his obsession with establishing a protective cordon sanitaire round the Soviet Union. They assumed that his moves towards controlling those countries of Central Europe and the Balkans occupied by the Red Army were motivated entirely by ideological imperialism. His refusal on 1 March to withdraw troops from northern Iran, within striking distance of the oilfields, was defensive in the context of his paranoid mentality.
Five days after the 1 March deadline, Churchill made his ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri. The reaction of the American press and public was unfavourable at the time. Truman refused to be drawn into the ensuing debate, though he and senior officials in the United States government were already starting to think along similar lines. They had been strongly influenced by George Kennan, the Kremlinologist at their Moscow Embassy. He had sent a long telegram analysing the Soviet threat, which was a prelude to the policy of containment which he elaborated the following year.
In Paris the Turkish ambassador, a shrewd observer, said that the Russian failure to evacuate Persia as agreed ‘was an irretrievable mistake because it resulted in the Americans developing a foreign policy’. It may not have actually developed the policy, but it certainly concentrated minds upon it. This would lead to the so-called Truman Doctrine in the spring of 1947, when America took over responsibility for the defence of Greece and Turkey on the collapse of British power in the region.
There are much stronger grounds for tracing the development of the Cold War to Germany, which, even in its ruined and occupied state, remained the focus of Stalin’s nightmares. George Kennan acknowledged that Russia’s fears were understandable, in view of her terrible history of invasion by Mongol, Pole, Swede and French, as well as the two waves of German occupation within the last thirty years.
Duff Cooper, who sympathized with the French fear of Germany – which was inevitably similar to that of the Soviet Union – was alarmed to hear in late May that the British chiefs of staff wanted ‘a strong Germany to fight Russia’. Two years before, when still in Algiers, he had submitted a plan for a European bloc based on Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. He had vigorously pushed the idea; but Anthony Eden, terrified of upsetting Stalin, had opposed it. Cooper argued that at the end of the war the Russians would not be afraid of a Western European bloc. What terrified Stalin was the idea of a Western bloc dominated by the Americans and linked to a reconstructed Germany.
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nbsp; The French had started to harbour well-grounded suspicions that American and British service chiefs wanted to build up Germany. These hardened in June 1946, following articles by Walter Lippman and a speech by Ernest Bevin. The French were very uneasy about developments in Germany. Renseignements Généraux had recently reported ‘une certaine nervosité’ between Anglo-Saxons and Russians in Berlin.
The Soviet Union kept an even closer watch on developments in the three western zones of Germany. Ponomarev’s department was given a special responsibility for this. One striking point emerges from Ponomarev’s paper to Molotov and Malenkov on the subject: the French Communist Party was of interest at this time only because it might influence events in Germany. The Kremlin complained that despite having eight posts in the government, the French Communist Party ‘has not taken any steps to change the policy of the French occupation authorities’ which ‘protect fascist and reactionary elements’. Clearly the Kremlin failed to appreciate the fact that the French Communists had little control over the French army.
The conference of foreign ministers resumed in mid-June, with James Byrnes in residence at the Meurice and Ernest Bevin at the George V. Almost immediately, the conference was thrown into panic by reports from Washington that the Red Army was going to take over Trieste and then advance westwards across northern Italy towards southern France. Even Bevin felt inclined to believe the story, because Molotov had been in such a strange mood that day. This flutter of nerves coincided with de Gaulle’s speech at Bayeux.
Despite this dramatic start, Molotov’s perpetual stalling slowed proceedings until Bevin and Byrnes developed a guillotine tactic to bring things to a conclusion. Byrnes was to be chairman and he would insist either upon the immediate settlement of each outstanding subject or else its relegation to the peace conference. Despite the scepticism of many, the plan cooked up by Byrnes and Bevin to accelerate business worked and invitations were issued to the sixteen nations who were to convene for the full conference in August.
Paris: After the Liberation 1944-1949 Page 28