This chapter revisits the arguments of the book concerning France’s experience of the Second World War – the debate over the Fall of France in 1940 that swings between “Decadence” and revisionist “Contingency,” and systemic collapse or “military misfortune.” The period after 1940 saw France struggle to recover its power and influence through two opposing strategies – Vichy through collaboration with Germany, whereas de Gaulle sided with the Allies. While de Gaulle proved the more strategically insightful, his struggle was, unfortunately, inhibited by diminutive numbers, which, to Eisenhower’s ire, contributed to a faltering French military performance in 1944–1945, emphasizing the fact that 1940 had reduced France to the status of a courtesy power in Allied eyes. Furthermore, like many leaders of France’s internal resistance, Franklin Roosevelt remained deeply skeptical of de Gaulle’s democratic intentions. Upon Liberation, de Gaulle maneuvered to restore the French state not only against the Americans, who refused to recognize the Gouvernement provisoire de la République française, but also against the chaos caused by resistance “feudals” with their own political agendas. Nor did l’amalgame of 1944 repair severely damaged French civil–military relations. The “resistance myth” underpinned France’s liberation narrative, one embraced by multiple actors led by de Gaulle, whose purpose was to minimize the pivotal role of the Allies and Africans in France’s liberation, exclude 1940, POWs, and Vichy collaboration from France’s wartime memory, and mask the fact that the “post-war” era found France in a weak position to reassert power over an empire where wartime mobilization had transformed mentalities, as the aftershock of wars of imperial independence was to prove. The mild punishments and blanket amnesties issued for wartime collaboration, the onset of the Cold War, which allowed former Vichy supporters to evoke a “lost cause” anti-communist “shield of France” alibi for their murderous conduct, and refusal to accept France’s role in the Shoah combined to undermine Gaullist promises of “renewal.” In fact, the post-war Fourth Republic resembled in essentials its pre-war predecessor.

This chapter explores the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Increasingly, Provisional Government head Charles de Gaulle and the French Communist Party, for a time maintaining a veneer of Resistance unity, found themselves in a struggle over the complexion of postwar France. The perception of a communist threat, for many in the French government and their American allies, became pressing as new variables complicated relations and intensified the feeling of crisis. The PCF’s growing strength and popularity in domestic politics, and deteriorating relations with the Soviets, brought the threat to the forefront and shaped French domestic and foreign affairs. Some French factions continued to warn of communist subversion and intrigue through their exchanges with US diplomats and American intelligence. Gaullists sought out contact with U.S. intelligence officers to counter the weakness narrative and prove their anti-communist bona fides. For their part, OSS and (subsequently) State Department intelligence analysts argued that many in France viewed the PCF as a legitimate political party and that there were genuine working class grievances that should be addressed. These contacts—informal and formal—acted as powerful constraints on American policy and explain in sharper relief how the United States was drawn into French affairs.

This chapter details the cracks in the consensus that began to emerge as tension boiled over in France with the expulsion of the PCF from the governing coalition and the communist-directed strikes that paralyzed the nation at the end of the year. Italian, Spanish and French intelligence, US embassy officials in Paris, U.S. military intelligence, and Central Intelligence Group current intelligence reports kept up the drumbeat, warning of growing anti-Americanism, communist power grabs and the PCF’s role in a larger, global communist conspiracy. Their analysis formed the core of the intelligence sent to President Truman and his senior advisors. However darkly uniform the analysis of the preceding year had been, some French officials, experts in the Office of Intelligence and Research (OIR) and a few mid-level analysts in the CIA expressed growing concern about the type and quality of intelligence. OIR analysts who complained that some CIA officials failed to account for French agency raised one of the most serious shortcomings of American analysis. Beyond their entreaties for American aid, French sources also played a role in the development of U.S. interference in France and its pro-colonial turn.