Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [113]
‘Conclusion: The French people in their present desperate and discouraged state resemble to a frightening degree the German people twelve years ago. Another really bad winter and the Allies may find that they have substituted the double cross of Lorraine for the crooked cross of Munich. This would not necessarily be de Gaulle’s personal desire – but events might force his hand. It behoves us to move fast and forcefully.’
President Truman was fortunately not burdened by Roosevelt’s historic dislike of de Gaulle, and on the whole their meetings passed off well. But there was one element in this document with which Truman firmly agreed, and that was the protection of military lines of communication. A year later he was to show that he would be prepared to move troops into France to secure the rear of the American forces in Germany, without informing the French government until the very last moment.
The ‘full and free’ elections for which Roosevelt had originally wanted to wait before recognizing de Gaulle finally took place on Sunday, 21 October 1945. Combined with the elections for a Constituent Assembly was a referendumon the basis for a new Constitution. Only the Radicals wanted to retain the discredited Third Republic. The main question for a Fourth Republic was whether the Assembly should be given supreme powers, as the Communists especially demanded, or restricted powers, as de Gaulle insisted. Sixty-six per cent of the electorate agreed with him that the Assembly’s powers should be restricted, for it was widely held that France’s capitulation in 1940 was due to the weakness of the executive power under the Third Republic.
As for the elections to the Assembly, predictions on the outcome were mixed. Many people expected the middle class to vote Socialist as the best way of keeping out the Communists. But the conservative vote went elsewhere: to the Mouvement Républicain Populaire, headed by Maurice Schumann. Although impeccably liberal and resistant, the Catholic MRP bore out the jibe that it was a ‘Machine à Ramasser les Pétainistes’, because after the collapse of Vichy, no credible right-wing party remained. This deficiency falsified the post-war political spectrum from the start.
The MRP did very well in traditionally conservative areas such as Brittany, Normandy and Alsace, and gathered in the considerable quantity of Pétainists in Paris. These were the first general elections in which women had the right to vote, a fact which undoubtedly benefited the MRP, for, as all the polls showed, women were generally more conservative and pious than men.
The final result gave the Communists 159 seats, the Socialists 146 and the MRP 152. The Communists and Socialists could have formed an absolute majority between them, but in August the Socialist Party conference had rejected the proposals for a merger. The Socialists wisely insisted that a tripartite coalition was the only solution for the country. They could even argue that this was the expression of the charter of the Conseil National de la Résistance, which had been filled with well-meaning generalities about unity and progressisme.
Although all passed off quite smoothly, de Gaulle was disenchanted by the return of the party system. He frankly disliked the mechanics of constitutional government, especially since the size of the support for the Communist Party – 5 million votes representing just over 26 per cent of the total – made it the largest in France. The Communists had more than tripled their vote since 1936. Not surprisingly, they expected an appropriate level of representation in the Council of Ministers.
The opening session of the Constituent Assembly took place on 6 November 1945, in the h