De Gaulle’s original call for resistance had attracted only a handful of French citizens who happened to be in Britain at the time. But, as the British continued to fight, a trickle of volunteers from France began to find its way to his headquarters in London. De Gaulle promptly established an organization called Free France and in 1941 capped it with a body called the French National Committee (Comité National Français), for which he boldly claimed the status of a legal government-in-exile. During the next three years, first in London and then (after 1943) in Algiers, he insisted on his right to speak for France and on France’s right to be heard as a Great Power in the councils of the Allies. His demands and his manner irked Churchill and Roosevelt and caused persistent tension. The U.S. government unsuccessfully attempted in 1942 to sidetrack him in favour of Henri Giraud" class="md-crosslink">General Henri Giraud, who immediately after the Allied landings in North Africa was brought out of France to command the French armies in liberated North Africa and to assume a political role as well. De Gaulle arrived in Algiers in May 1943 and joined Giraud as copresident of a new French Committee of National Liberation. By the end of the year he had outmaneuvered Giraud and emerged as the unchallenged spokesman for French resisters everywhere. Even the Communists in 1943 grudgingly accepted his leadership. Liberation
When the Allied forces landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the armed underground units had grown large enough to play a prominent role in the battles that followed—harassing the German forces and sabotaging railways and bridges. As the Germans gradually fell back, local Resistance organizations took over town halls and prefectures from Vichy incumbents. De Gaulle’s provisional government immediately sent its own delegates into the liberated areas to ensure an orderly transfer of power. On August 19 Resistance forces in Paris launched an insurrection against the German occupiers, and on August 25 Free French units under General Jacques Leclerc entered the city. De Gaulle himself arrived later that day, and on the next he headed a triumphal parade down the Champs-Élysées. Most high-ranking Vichy officials (including Pétain and Laval) had moved eastward with the Germans; at the castle of Sigmaringen in Germany they adopted the posture of a government-in-exile.
De Gaulle’s provisional government, formally recognized in October 1944 by the U.S., British, and Soviet governments, enjoyed unchallenged authority in liberated France. But the country had been stripped of raw materials and food by the Germans; the transportation system was severely disrupted by air bombardment and sabotage; 2.5 million French prisoners of war, conscripted workers, and deportees were still in German camps; and the task of liquidating the Vichy heritage threatened to cause grave domestic stress. An informal and spontaneous purge of Vichy officials or supporters had already begun in the summer of 1944; summary executions by Resistance bands appear to have exceeded 10,000.
A more systematic retribution followed. Special courts set up to try citizens accused of collaboration heard 125,000 cases during the next two years. Some 50,000 offenders were punished by “national degradation” (loss of civic rights for a period of years), almost 40,000 received prison terms, and between 700 and 800 were executed. The Fourth Republic
Shortly after his return to Paris, de Gaulle announced that the citizens of France would determine their future governmental system as soon as the absent prisoners and deportees could be repatriated. That process was largely completed by midsummer 1945, soon after Germany’s defeat, whereupon de Gaulle scheduled a combined referendum and election for October. Women, for the first time in French history, were granted suffrage. By an overwhelming majority (96 percent of the votes cast), the nation rejected a return to the prewar regime. The mood of the liberation era was marked by a thirst for renovation and for change.
New men of the Resistance movement dominated the constituent assembly, and the centre of gravity was heavily to the left: three-fourths of the deputies were Communists, Socialists, or Christian Democrats who had adhered to the new party of the Catholic left—the Popular Republican Movement (Mouvement Républicain Populaire). Constitution of the Fourth Republic
It soon became clear that the apparent unity forged in the Resistance was superficial and that the new political elite was sharply divided over the form of the new republic. Some urged the need for greater stability through a strong executive; others, notably the Communists, favoured concentrating power in a one-house legislature subject to grassroots control by the voters. De Gaulle remained aloof from this controversy, though it was obvious that he favoured a strong presidency. In January 1946 de Gaulle suddenly resigned his post as provisional president, apparently expecting that a wave of public support would bring him back to power with a mandate to impose his constitutional ideas. Instead, the public was stunned and confused, and it failed to react. The assembly promptly chose the Socialist Félix Gouin to replace him, and the embittered de Gaulle retired to his country estate.
The assembly’s constitutional draft, submitted to a popular referendum in May 1946, was rejected by the voters. A new assembly was quickly elected to prepare a revised draft, which in October was narrowly approved by the voters. De Gaulle actively intervened in the campaign for the second referendum, denouncing the proposed system as unworkable and urging the need for a stronger executive. His ideas anticipated the system that later was to be embodied in the constitution of the Fifth Republic (1958). Political and social changes
The structure of the Fourth Republic seemed remarkably like that of the Third; in actual operation it seemed even more familiar. The lower house of parliament (now renamed the National Assembly) was once more the locus of power; shaky coalition cabinets again succeeded one another at brief intervals, and the lack of a clear-cut majority in the country or in parliament hampered vigorous or coherent action. Many politicians from the prewar period turned up once again in cabinet posts.
Yet outside the realm of political structure and parliamentary gamesmanship there were real and fundamental changes. The long sequence of crises that had shaken the nation since 1930 had left a deep imprint on French attitudes. There was much less public complacency; both the routines and the values of the French people had been shaken up and subjected to challenge by a generation of upheaval. Many of the new men who had emerged from the Resistance movement into political life, business posts, or the state bureaucracy retained a strong urge toward renovation as well as to a reassertion of France’s lost greatness.
This altered mood helps to explain the economic growth that marked the later years of the Fourth Republic. The painful convalescence from the ravages of war was speeded by massive aid from the United States and by the gentle persuasion (and ample credits) of Jean Monnet’s Planning Commissariat (Commissariat Général du Plan), adopted in 1947. A burst of industrial expansion in most branches of the economy began in the mid-1950s, unmatched in any decade of French history since the 1850s. The rate of growth for a time rivaled that of Germany and exceeded that of most other European countries. The only serious flaw in the boom was a nagging inflationary trend that weakened the franc. Short-lived coalition cabinets were incapable of taking the painful measures needed to check this trend. Colonial independence movements
A less fortunate aspect of the national urge to reassert France’s stature in the world was the Fourth Republic’s costly effort to hold the colonial empire. France’s colonies had provided de Gaulle with his first important base of support as leader of Free France, and, as the war continued, they had furnished valuable resources and manpower. The colonial peoples, therefore, now felt justified in demanding a new relationship with France, and French leaders recognized the need to grant concessions. But most of these leaders, including de Gaulle, were not prepared to permit any infringement on French sovereignty, either immediately or in the foreseeable future. For a nation seeking to rebuild its self-respect, the prospect of a loss of empire seemed unacceptable; most of the French, moreover, were convinced that the native peoples overseas lacked the necessary training for self-government and that a relaxation of the French grip would merely open the way to domination by another imperial power. The constitution of 1946 therefore introduced only mild reforms: the empire was renamed the French Union, within which the colonial peoples would enjoy a narrowly limited local autonomy plus some representation in the French parliament.