France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (48 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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24. There is a growing literature on the subject of France's response to the depression. Above all, see Jackson,
The Politics of Depression in France;
Mouré,
Managing the Franc Poincaré;
and the important work of Sauvy,
Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres
. Also Girault, "The Impact of the Economic Situation on the Foreign Policy of France, 19361939"; Bonin,
Histoire économique de la IVeme République,
1623; Caron,
An Economic History of Modern France,
25866; Kuisel,
Capitalism and the State in Modern France,
9398. For an earlier though still useful interpretation of French business culture, see Landes, "Observations on France: Economy, Society and Polity."
25. Jackson,
Politics of Depression,
chaps. 7 and 8; also Amoyal, "Les origines socialistes et syndicalistes de la planification en France."
26. Shennan,
Rethinking France,
esp. chaps. 10 and 11. For a useful portrait of Vichy planners, see Kuisel, "The Legend of the Vichy Synarchy," and Paxton,
Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order,
21020.
 
Page 215
27. Shennan,
Rethinking France,
4449, 23642, 25886; and Kuisel,
Capitalism and the State,
159.
28. To be sure, there were serious debates about nationalizations. See Andrieu, Le Van, and Prost,
Les nationalisations de la Libération
. But on the whole, there was a consensus about nationalizations that did not extend into bureaucratic and structural reform.
29. Jackson,
Politics of Depression,
4849; Berstein,
Histoire du Parti Radical,
2: 94125.
30. Paxton has calculated that the Vichy government paid some 631 billion francs to the Germans in occupation costs, representing "about 58 percent of the French government's income between 1940 and 1944" (
Vichy France,
144). Milward,
The New Order and the French Economy,
26997, gives slightly different figures.
31. The February report is published in Mendès France,
Oeuvres,
2: 56172. See also Bonin,
Histoire économique,
105, and Kuisel,
Capitalism and the State,
192.
32. Letter to the journalist and economist Georges Boris, an old friend with whom he shared many ideas on economic reform, in Mendès France,
Oeuvres,
2: 49.
33. Set up in April 1944 in Algiers, at Jean Monnet's urging. It was intended to act as a "tribunal of economic conflicts" (
Projet de Note,
April 25, 1944, AN, F60, box 896).
34.
Exposé au conseil des ministère sur le programme du Ministerè de l'Economie nationale,
November 17, 1944, AN, F60, box 423, and in Mendès France,
Oeuvres,
2: 5572.
35. Mendès France,
Oeuvres,
2: broadcasts of November 18, 1944, 75; November 25, 78; December 9, 8182; December 30, 88; February 24, 1945, 103. The "battle for production" was also a similar theme in the language of the Communists: see Frachon,
La bataille de la production
. Compare the similar tone of de Beauvoir who, traveling in collaborationist Spain just after the war, was disgusted at the wealth of available food there, and felt "a furious solidarity with the poverty of France rage inside me" (
Force of Circumstance,
31).
36. For a statement of Pleven's policy, see Ministère de l'Information,
La politique économique du Gouvernement provisoire: Discours de R. Pleven, Ministre de l'Economie nationale,
July 4, 1945.
37. Dumaine,
Quai d'Orsay,
38.
38. Bourdet, speaking for
résistants,
saw Mendès France's defeat as the triumph of unfettered capitalism and the knell of the resistance period, in
L'aventure incertaine,
432. Kuisel, in
Capitalism and the State,
argues that Mendès France was, in "economic, psychological, and moral terms," correct, and thinks that France lost an opportunity (198). Lacouture, in his biography,
Pierre Mendès France,
considered this "a confrontation of two conceptions of the role of the state in the life of the people," and implicitly blames de Gaulle for not having enough foresight to support Mendès France (161). This is the argument of Kramer, "La crise économique de la Libération." Economic historians, such as Caron and Bonin, have been more nuanced, querying the potential for real

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