Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [161]
‘The strikes were called,’ Moch wrote in a debriefing paper for the prefects, ‘because the economic situation gave the working class real grievances. * The Communist Party showed great cleverness in exploiting these legitimate grievances to set in motion an overall movement which had a definite political and international character, and one of whose main objectives was that of discouraging American aid to Europe.’
The US Embassy became extremely perturbed at the determination of the Communist union leaders. The way that the strikers broke machinery in factories, to make sure that scab labour could not be brought in, indicated a determination to sabotage the economy before the Marshall Plan could take effect. James Bonbright, Douglas MacArthur Jnr and Ridgway Knight begged Caffery to help finance Force Ouvrière, a non-Communist breakaway from the CGT; but Caffery refused to contemplate such intervention in France’s internal affairs. In fact, funding was found elsewhere and passed through the American trades union movement.
The atmosphere of violence grew more oppressive. Henri Noguères, editor of the Socialist Party newspaper Le Populaire, received a warning from Moch that the Communists might attempt a commando raid on the newspaper. Knowing that the police were too short-staffed in Paris to offer permanent protection, Moch sent round two containers of weapons from the Ministry of the Interior so that the staff of the paper could defend the building themselves. Leading figures in de Gaulle’s Rassemblement also felt in danger from surprise attack. ‘The Colonel sleeps with a great gun by his bed,’ wrote Nancy Mitford to her mother, ‘far more frightening than anything, as you can imagine he has no idea about guns!’
By a curious stroke of fate, a prominent figure associated with de Gaulle was killed in an accident a few days later. On 28 November, a dark foggy day on which snow fell in Paris, news arrived in the evening that General Leclerc, the city’s liberator three years before, had died in an air crash aged only forty-four. A rumour rapidly circulated that somebody had put sugar in the petrol. Some compared his death to that of General Sikorski. ‘The whole population of Paris,’ wrote Nancy Mitford, in a sweeping generalization, ‘is certain it was sabotage and it’s done the Communists a lot of harm.’ She was, no doubt, repeating the Colonel’s firm belief.
Palewski, whose brother-in-law was also killed in the crash, had dined with Leclerc a week before his death. He claimed that Leclerc had said that evening, ‘We are all in danger now.’ Rumours, almost certainly beginning in the wilder fringes of the Rassemblement, spread that Leclerc had even urged de Gaulle to seize power. The fact that L’Humanité devoted only a couple of lines to the announcement of Leclerc’s death somehow seemed to confirm Gaullist suspicions that the Communists had been responsible.
At the same time as Leclerc’s death, public order operations took on an increasingly military aspect. The Ministry of the Interior was in constant contact with the Ministry of War, exchanging information and discussing options. French troops in the north were strengthened to stop Belgian Communists slipping across the border to sabotage the mines and prevent them from reopening. But even the army did not have enough men for the tasks allotted. Altogether 102,000 reservists from the classes of 1946 and 1947 had been recalled from the middle of November. In addition, the French army had reformed the Senegalese troops guarding German prisoners of war into a further nine battalions ready for deployment. But even these reinforcements were not considered sufficient; the government announced on 30 November that it was recalling another 80,000 reservists from the class of 1943.
In Paris, there had been comparatively few disorders. A minor insurrection took place in the 18th arrondissement when