France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (46 page)

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Authors: William I. Hitchcock

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BOOK: France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954
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Page 212
of Wall's book more accurately characterizes the author's concerns:
L'influence américaine sur la politique françàise
.
5. Milward,
The Reconstruction of Western Europe,
esp. chaps. 13; and Hogan,
The Marshall Plan
. For further elucidation, see Milward's review of Hogan's book, "Was the Marshall Plan Necessary?" An earlier attempt to link the American New Deal experience to European postwar economic policies is the 1977 essay by Maier, "The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II."
6. Lundestad,
The American "Empire" and Other Studies of U.S. Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective,
37. This monograph substantially elaborates his earlier article, "Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 19451952." Lundestad's ideas have been echoed in Gaddis,
The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War,
esp. chaps. 2 and 3.
7. Maier, "The Making of 'Pax Americana': Formative Moments of United States Ascendancy." See also his essay, "Alliance and Autonomy: European Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives in the Truman Years."
8. See esp. Milward,
The European Rescue of the Nation-State,
145, 31834. Also Milward et al.,
The Frontier of National Sovereignty,
132, 182201; Lynch, "Resolving the Paradox of the Monnet Plan," and "Restoring France: The Road to Integration"; the essays in Schwabe,
Die Anfänge des Schuman-Plans;
Kusters,
Die Gründung der europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft;
and Gillingham,
Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe
. For the earlier literature, see especially Haas,
The Uniting of Europe,
and Mayne,
The Recovery of Europe
.
Chapter One
1. De Beauvoir,
Force of Circumstance,
71. For a similar sense of anxiety about the future, see Camus,
Between Hell and Reason
.
2. This concept of a return to legitimacy explains de Gaulle's remark to the president of the CNR, Georges Bidault, when the latter asked de Gaulle to proclaim the Republic from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville: "The Republic has never ceased to exist. Free France, Fighting France, and the French Committee of National Liberation have each in turn embodied it. Vichy was always null and void and remains so. I myself am president of the government of the Republic. Why should I proclaim it?" (de Gaulle,
Mémoires de guerre,
2:.308). Tesson, in
De Gaulle premier: La Revolution manquée,
claims that "these few words sounded the knell of the Revolution" (39).
3. De Gaulle,
Mémoires de guerre,
3: 405, 342. Since the seminal colloquium on the liberation, organized by the Comité d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale in 1974,
La Libération de la France: Actes du colloque internationale,
historians have taken a more nuanced view of the contentious issue of "revolution" versus "restoration," largely agreeing that the hopes of the resistance for a dramatic departure from French political norms were bound to be dashed because of the constraints  political, economic, cultural  that inhibited the forces of change. See René Rémond's contribution in particular, "Les problèmes politiques au lendemain de la Libération." Levy has discussed the historiography of the issue in
La Libération: Remise en ordre ou révolution?
See also the discussion in Bloch-Lainé
 
Page 213
and Bouvier,
La France restaurée,
19441954, 5471; both authors, intimately involved in this period, downplay the real potential of any revolution, not least because of a lack of coherent ideas on the part of those who sought one. For an excellent evocation of the zeal of the postliberation resistance, see Novick,
The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France
.
4. Hervé,
La Libération trahie
. Two works by active
résistants
that reveal the disappointments of the liberation are Bourdet,
L'aventure incertaine: De la Résistance à la restauration,
and Frenay,
La nuit finira
.
5. See the astute analysis on the question of continuity by Hoffmann, "The Effects of World War II on French Society and Politics." Hoffmann sees the entire 193444 period as a continuum of shocks to the established political system. He expanded these ideas in "Paradoxes of the French Political Community."
6. The classic, and much disparaged, statement of the "clean slate" view is Robert Aron,
Histoire de la Libération de la France,
which sees an apolitical de Gaulle steering the nation away from catastrophe  namely, a Communist takeover  and uniting France in the task of reconstruction and reconciliation. The French experience in this regard contrasted sharply with the British, where Labour, with a clear mandate and program for change, could move rapidly in reforming the political and social structure of the nation. See Morgan,
Labour in Power,
esp. 144. On the continuity of ideas between the Popular Front and the liberation period, see Jackson,
The Popular Front ri France,
28890.
7. De Gaulle,
Discours et messages: 19401946,
September 12, 1944, 44355; and March 2, 1945, 526. See also his speeches of November 9, 1944, 47174, and December 31, 1944, 49194.
8. The papers of the Christian Democratic Party, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP), contain addresses for thirty-seven political parties and resistance organizations with offices in Paris in 1945 (
Dossier de formation politique,
MRP papers, AN, 350 AP, box I).
9. This program was published as
Les jours heureux
by the CNR, and has been reprinted in Andrieu,
Le programme commun de la Résistance: Des idées dans la guerre,
16875. On postwar planning within the resistance, see Shennan,
Rethinking France;
Kuisel,
Capitalism and the State in Modernm France,
15786; and de Bellescize,
Les neufs sages de la Résistance,
esp. 16588. On the politics of the resistance, see Azéma,
From Munich to the Liberation,
18290. Bourdet discusses the growing sensitivities of non-Communist
résistants
in "La politique intérieure de la Résistance." See also Jean-Jacques Becker,
Le Parti Communiste veut-il prendre le pouvoir?,
130.
10. Becker sees the
attentiste
stance of the PCF as dictated entirely by international considerations (
Parti Communiste,
15859, 198). See also Andrieu,
Programme,
102; and Footitt and Simmonds,
France: 19431945,
18799. For a clever contemporary account of PCF thinking, and the political scene generally after the liberation, see Luethy,
France against Herself,
95169.
11. De Gaulle,
Mémoires de guerre,
3: 3067, 106.
12. Fauvet,
Histoire du Parti Communiste Français,
34565. On PCF strategy in this period generally, Robrieux is exhaustive:
Histoire intérieure du Parti Communiste,
2: 8797. On the Socialists, see Graham,
The French Socialists and-Tripar
-

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