 | alarm the government felt with regard to this strike wave may be gauged by the frequent discussions in the cabinet and among leading ministers concerning reports of Soviet shock troops arriving in France, well armed by Moscow, to overthrow the government. Auriol,
Journal du Septennat,
1: 47981, 48288, 52122, 606.
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| 39. See, for example, Raymond Aron's illuminating discussion of de Gaulle's views during this period in
Memoirs,
18084. For more on de Gaulle's criticism of the government's policy, both domestic and foreign, see the often shocking statements recorded in Mauriac,
The Other de Gaulle,
25077.
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| 40. Speech of October 16, 1947, at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, Paris, in Blum,
L'Oeuvre,
102. The restoration of the right was alarming to some French observers. Simone de Beauvoir bitterly recalled that after October, ''a great many Vichyists had rallied to the RPF and a great many collaborators were getting back up on their perches. . . . A spate of books appeared excusing or justifying the policies of Pétain, a thing which would have been inconceivable two years earlier. . . . When I thought of [the resistance], and told myself that so much grief and misery had been in vain, I was filled with distress. Behind us, that great cadaver, the War, was finally decomposing, and the air was sickening with the stench" (
Force of Circumstance,
16263).
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| 41. Ramadier would prove to be the last Socialist prime minister until Guy Mollet in 1956; the fulcrum of French politics had clearly moved to the right. Ramadier's own thoughts about the fall of his government have been recently published, in Borne and Bouillon, "Reflexions de Paul Ramadier, décembre 1947."
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| 42. A number of excellent accounts of the strikes and their political implications exist. See Desanti,
L'anneé ou le monde a tremblé,
30337; Fonvielle-Alquier,
La grande peur de l'aprés-guerre,
36574, who asserts CIA involvement in the CGT-Force Ouvrière break; Elgey,
République des illusions,
32377; and Moch's own account,
Une si longue vie,
27384. For the debate over PCF motives, see Wall,
French Communism in the Era of Stalin,
5371, and Loth, "Frankreichs Kommunisten und der Beginn des Kalten Krieges." For Caffery's remark, Caffery to State, December 20, 1947,
FRUS, 1947,
3: 819.
|
| 43. Flanner [Genêt],
Paris Journal, 19441955,
79.
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| 44. Executive Commission minutes, December 2 and December 13, 1947, MRP Papers, AN, 350 AP, box 46.
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| 45. See Esposito, "French International Monetary Policies in the 1940S"; Burr, "Marshall Planners and the Politics of Empire"; and Frank, "The French Dilemma: Modernization with Dependence or Independence and Decline." On the stabilization plan initiated by Finance Minister René Mayer in January 1948, see Rioux,
The Fourth Republic,
18485; Bonin,
Histoire économique de la IVeme République,
13743; Caron,
An Economic History of Modern France,
27576; and see the material in René Mayer papers, AN, 363 AP, box 7. There is also a useful assessment of these reforms in the CIA report, "Postwar Industrial Recovery in France," ORE 5348, August 2, 1948, Truman Library, President's Secretary's File, box 255.
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| 46. Ambassador Caffery realized that, "from our point of view, the present French Government or any central coalition which may succeed it will be infi-
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