Antony beevor artemis cooper paris after the liberation 19 949 (v5 0)

PENGUIN BOOKS PARIS AFTER THE LIBERATION ‘There is hardly any aspect of French life during that period which the authors not explore, always with compelling liveliness and omnivorous zeal I shall return gratefully to it again and again’ Alistair Horne, European ‘This book, like the city it discusses, oscillates satisfyingly between blunt history and roistering gossip’ Frank Delaney, Sunday Express ‘After Antony Beevor’s Crete and Artemis Cooper’s Cairo, the excellence of their joint Paris After the Liberation should have come as no surprise De Gaulle’s race for Paris makes one hold one’s breath; then the skein brilliantly unravels Every shade of collaboration is traced and – brand-new – the details of Russian control of the French Communist Party’ Patrick Leigh Fermor, Spectator ‘An entrancing read’ Richard Lamb, Spectator ‘A beautifully written book about a vast tapestry of military, political and social upheaval, remarkably well researched, wise, balanced, very funny at times… I was a witness to events in Paris in the first desperate, glorious, mad weeks, and this is just how it was’ Dirk Bogarde ‘A perceptive portrait of Paris in its heyday’ J G Ballard, The Times ‘This valuable newbook… a true vade mecum of an era’ Paul Ryan, Irish Times ‘This is a wondrous account that thoroughly matches the brilliance of its subject’ Boston Globe ‘A splendid chronicle of the political, social and cultural forces that were unleashed by the war and that played themselves out in Paris in an acrimonious battle for the future of France’ Philadelphia Enquirer ‘Fascinating’ Alan Massie, Daily Telegraph ‘In the 1940s, France went to war with herself yet again, and the tale, told with relish by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper in this fascinating book, is calculated to stir mixed feelings in the devoutest Francophile’ David Coward, New York Times ‘A rich, grim but often funny and always marvellously intelligent venture into the French past as well as our own’ S J Hamrick, Chicago Tribune ‘A thoroughly professional job in reconstructing the sensations of Paris in the years after the liberation of 1944, skilfully balancing historical narrative with social analysis, and tempering the appalling with the absurd’ Jan Morris, Independent ABOUT THE AUTHORS Antony Beevor wrote his first novel when he lived in Paris for two years His works of non-fiction include The Spanish Civil War, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, which received the 1993 Runciman Award, Stalingrad, a No bestseller which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson History Prize and the Hawthornden Prize in 1999, and its companion volume, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 Stalingrad and Berlin between them have sold well over million copies, with both books translated into twenty-four foreign languages Crete, Stalingrad and Berlin are also all published by Penguin Artemis Cooper’s work includes Cairo in the War 1939–1945 and Writing at the Kitchen Table, the authorized biography of Elizabeth David, both of which are published by Penguin She has also edited two collections of letters: A Durable Fire: The Letters of Du grandfather, Du and Diana Cooper and Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper Her Cooper, was the rst post-war British ambassador to Paris, and his private diaries and papers provide one of the unpublished sources for this book Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper were both appointed Chevaliers de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government They are married and have two children AFTER THE LIBERATION 1944–1949 Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper REVISED EDITION PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC 2R ORL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, NewYork, NewYork 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M 4P 2Y (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, NewDelhi –110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC 2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published by Hamish Hamilton 1994 First published in Penguin Books 1995 Revised edition published in 2004 This edition published 2007 Copyright © Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, 1994, 2004 All rights reserved The moral right of the authors has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser To our parents Contents PREFACE PART ONE A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES The Marshal and the General The Paths of Collaboration and Resistance The Resistance of the Interior and the Men of London The Race for Paris Liberated Paris The Passage of Exiles War Tourists and Ritzkrieg The Épuration Sauvage PART TWO L’ÉTAT, C’EST DE GAULLE Provisional Government 10 Corps Diplomatique 11 Liberators and Liberated 12 Writers and Artists in the Line of Fire 13 The Return of Exiles 14 The Great Trials 15 Hunger for the New 16 After the Deluge 17 Communists in Government 18 The Abdication of Charles XI PART THREE INTO THE COLD WAR 19 The Shadow-Theatre: Plots and Counter-Plots 20 Politics and Letters 21 The Diplomatic Battleground 22 The Fashionable World 23 A Tale of Two Cities 24 Fighting Back against the Communists 25 The 26 The 27 The 28 The 29 The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Republic at Bay Great Boom of Saint-Germain-des-Prés Curious Triangle Treason of the Intellectuals PART FOUR THE NEW NORMALITY 30 Americans in Paris 31 The Tourist Invasion 32 Paris sera toujours Paris 33 Recurring Fevers REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INDEX Preface Few countries love their liberators once the cheering dies away They have to face the depressing reality of rebuilding their nation and their political system virtually from scratch Meanwhile, black-marketeers and gangsters thrive on the chaotic interregnum which we now call ‘regime change’ This reinforces the sense of collective shame, just when people want to forget the humiliation of having had to survive by moral cowardice, whether under a dictatorship or under enemy occupation So liberation creates the most awkward debt of all It can never be paid o in a satisfactory way Pride is a very prickly flower So too is nationalism, as this post-Liberation period in France shows only too well Nobody was more prickly than General de Gaulle at the idea of slights from his AngloSaxon allies To judge by the transatlantic rows which continually reignite, this is clearly a ‘recurring fever’, to use Jean Monnet’s phrase Yet in the post-war world, we were led to believe that the need for national identities would wither away The Cold War suppressed most national problems within its international straitjacket Then other developments, whether the United Nations, the European Union or even the contentious process of globalization, pointed to a further fading of national consciousness But if anything, one nds in our increasingly fragmented world that many people, terri ed of drowning in anonymity, seize hold of tribal or national banners even more rmly And the idealistic notion that international organizations can rise above national interests and intrigue has also proved to be a complete delusion One could well argue in the light of recent events that the Franco-American relationship had never really recovered from 1944 One might also say that the liberators were rather too thick-skinned, while the French were too thin-skinned; that American businessmen wanted to leap in to exploit the market, while the French wanted to revive their own battered industry; that the GIs, ‘ardent and enterprising’ in their attempts to fraternize with local girls, simply created resentment and jealousy, especially since Frenchmen had no cigarettes or stockings to o er The clash of the free market with the moral rationing of war socialism was bound to provoke deep discontent, whether in matters of love or of food Frenchmen, and above all Frenchwomen, did not really blame the great lm star Arletty for having a lover in the Luftwa e But they could not forgive her for staying with him in the Ritz, which meant that she had enjoyed access to the best food available when the rest of them went short Hunger was indeed as powerful a motive for jealousy as unrequited love The German writer Ernst Junger, serving in Paris as a Wehrmacht o cer, had observed in the Tour d’Argent restaurant that food was indeed power The Occupation was a time of genuine su ering for almost all the French, and it is wrong for those who never experienced it to make sweeping moral judgements in retrospect Nevertheless, the di culties, both moral and physical, were such that many myths sprang up afterwards, and they certainly need to be examined General de Gaulle himself instinctively realized the need when he made perhaps the most emotional speech ... are married and have two children AFTER THE LIBERATION 194 4 194 9 Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper REVISED EDITION PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd,... Ville in Paris on 25 August 194 4, the day of its Liberation: Paris! Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated! Liberated by herself, liberated by her people, with the help... Copyright © Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, 199 4, 2004 All rights reserved The moral right of the authors has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the