killed. Regularly constituted law courts passed
7,037 sentences of death, but most received the
presidential pardon and only 767 executions were
actually carried out. Of the just over 167,000
tried, almost half were acquitted and 27,000
received jail sentences. So the prisons were filled
with collaborators. Even so, not all the French
citizens who saw in Vichy a legitimate government
which they actively supported could be tried. After
1950, less than 5,000 remained in prison. The tri-
als ceased. They had been intended to cleanse
France from the Vichy taint. In fact, the only prac-
tical policy was to draw a veil over the Vichy years,
to conciliate and to unite the nation. It was left to
a few ardent individuals to continue to the present
day to uncover those responsible for Vichy crimes,
much to the embarrassment of some of the older
generation of Frenchmen. Somehow sleeping
dogs will not lie; the whole war generation will
have to pass away first.
The provisional government after liberation
was faced with daunting problems of restoring the
dislocated and shattered French economy. There
were grave shortages of food and fuel. The infra-
structure of transport, bridges and railways had to
be rebuilt. State intervention and the takeover of
ailing industries were seen as necessary to enable
the nation to recover rather than as policies in
conformity with socialist ideology. The provi-
sional government in 1945 responded to the
demands of the resistance and nationalised the big
banks, insurance, gas, electricity and coal as well
as companies which, like Renault, had collabor-
ated with the Germans. This created the large
state sector of industry that has been characteris-
tic of post-war France. Joint committees were set
up in firms employing more than fifty workers to
give employees a role and a stake in the success
of the company. But hopes for ‘industrial democ-
racy’ were unfulfilled, because employers contin-
ued to take the critical financial decisions.
Employees did, however, gain from the increase
of family benefits and the introduction of com-
pulsory insurance. But this did little to relieve the
grim economic situation. Workers’ standards of
living were under constant pressure from infla-
tion. During the Vichy years (1940–4) retail
prices had risen more than three times but hourly
wages had only doubled. At the end of the war,
with too much paper money chasing too few
goods, prices shot up. There was much industrial
unrest, made politically more dangerous because
the largest union, the Confédération Générale du
Travail (CGT), was controlled by the Communist
Party. De Gaulle rejected the restrictive monetary
policy necessary to reduce the flood of paper
money held by the population and so defeat infla-
tion and restore the value of the currency.
Instead, to maintain his popularity, he decreed
salary increases and simply postponed tackling
France’s economic problems.
Nevertheless, de Gaulle’s greatest achievement
must be recognised. He stopped France from
sliding into a civil war between the active sup-
porters of Vichy, including the police and militia
on the one side, and the resistance on the other.
Amid the chaos he used his enormous prestige as
the embodiment of France to impose a cen-
tralised, unified state on the warring factions.
De Gaulle knew that, once the emergency was
past and the war was over, the provisional gov-
ernment would need to be transformed into a
democratically elected one, and the provisional
state into a stable republic. Following a national
referendum held in October 1945, the French
people voted overwhelmingly for a new constitu-
tion to be framed and for a constituent assembly
to be elected and given the task of drafting the
constitution. In the unique post-war circum-
stances the left gained more seats in the Assembly
than its usual electoral strength warranted, given
that half the electorate tended to be conservative:
the communists benefited most with 160 seats,
and the socialists won 142. The new progressive
Catholic Party, the MRP, also did surprisingly
well, gaining 152 seats. The socialists and com-
munists thus achieved an absolute majority in the
Assembly of 586 deputies.
A deep rift soon opened up between de Gaulle
and the majority in the Assembly on the question
of the future constitution. De Gaulle was clear
about the essentials: France must not relapse into
the political instability of the Third Republic. He
therefore insisted on a strong executive headed by
the president, and on an assembly that would
have a share in government but should not be