Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [56]
Even before this, the government’s greatest concern remained the food supply. White bread had appeared just after the Liberation, thanks to flour provided by the Americans, then disappeared again as soon as the provisional government was left to its own resources. Shortages became so acute that people were saying they had been better off under the Germans. Such complaints overlooked the fact that the transport system had been destroyed in the fighting. Several main lines were impassable for many weeks after the Liberation; and after the Germans had withdrawn, taking most vehicles with them, road transport depended on a very limited number of charcoal-burning gazogène trucks. The fundamental problem, according to the Sûreté Nationale, lay with peasant farmers resisting la Collecte, the compulsory purchase of food-stuffs at fixed prices. The reactionary peasantry of the Vendée was apparently the worst. In October 1944, no more than four tons of butter in the whole département were handed over. During the same month, the Pas de Calais, with only a few more dairy cattle, produced 355 tons for the official market.
Money in these times seemed to have no politics. The Duc de Mouchy was mayor of Mouchy-le-Chastel in the Oise, a village whose peasant farmers mainly voted Communist. He was liked and trusted, to the point that one old farmer asked him to buy a diamond ring for his daughter the next time he was in Paris. The duke bought a ring as requested. But when he returned with it, the farmer promptly said that it was not nearly big enough. So the following week the duke went to Chaumet, the jewellers in the Place Vendôme, with 350,000 of the farmer’s francs in a paper bag, and bought a huge ring. This time the farmer was delighted, reassuring the duke that he still had 7 million francs tucked away in his cupboard.
François Mauriac wrote that the government’s efforts against the black market resembled those of ‘the child St Augustine saw on a beach who wanted to empty the sea with a shell’. Paul Ramadier, the Minister of Supply, demanded that the Sûreté Nationale initiate ‘la plus active répression’. Ramadier bore the brunt of the government’s unpopularity for the lack of food. He was soon known as ‘Ramadan’ and the daily rations as ‘Ramadiète’. His ministry became the target for demonstrations by committees of housewives, usually organized by the Communists. At the Hôtel de Ville, 4,000 women chanted, ‘Milk for our little ones!’ And at a mass meeting at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the crowd yelled, ‘A mort!’ every time Ramadier’s name was mentioned.
The Prefect of Police received orders to crack down. In the second week of March checkpoints were put up on all roads leading into the city, an operation that was quickly dubbed ‘the Siege of Paris’. But the first priority was to cut the traffic in provisions, brought in by ‘suitcase-carriers’, who purchased food directly and illegally from Norman farmers. Ripening Camembert, twenty to a suitcase, and the blood from joints of freshly slaughtered animals dripping from the luggage racks made such a sickly and overpowering smell in trains that even the normal French obsession about draughts was overcome and the carriage windows left open.
Over two days, Luizet mounted a large-scale operation with his police at the Gare de Montparnasse to search the suitcases of all travellers returning from the rich agricultural regions of north-western France. But the travellers were so angry that a virtual riot developed. ‘In the circumstances,’ Luizet reported to the Minister of the Interior, ‘I felt obliged to give the order to my men to stop this sort of control operation.’
While the day-to-day struggle for food continued in the towns and cities, France’s task of reconstruction was overwhelming for a bankrupt economy and was kept afloat only by heavy American aid and loans. Factories