Beevor Antony - Paris after the Liberation, 1944-1949

PENGUIN BOOKS

PARIS AFTER THE LIBERATION

There is hardly any aspect of French life during that period which
the authors do 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 Beevors Crete and Artemis Coopers Cairo, the
excellence of their joint Paris After the Liberation should have come as
no surprise. De Gaulles race for Paris makes one hold ones 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. 1 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 2 million copies, with both books translated into twenty-four foreign languages. Crete, Stalingrad and Berlin are also all published by Penguin.

Artemis Coopers work includes Cairo in the War 19391945 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 Duff and Diana Cooper and Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper. Her grandfather, Duff Cooper, was the first 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 lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. They are married and have two children.

AFTER THE LIBERATION
19441949

Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper

REVISED EDITION

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Hamish Hamilton 1994
First published in Penguin Books 1995
Revised edition published in 2004
This edition published 2007
1

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 publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that
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To our parents

A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES

LTAT, CEST DE GAULLE

INTO THE COLD WAR

THE NEW NORMALITY

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 off 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 Anglo-Saxon allies. To judge by the transatlantic rows which continually reignite, this is clearly a recurring fever, to use Jean Monnets 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 finds in our increasingly fragmented world that many people, terrified of drowning in anonymity, seize hold of tribal or national banners even more firmly. And the idealistic notion that international organizations can rise above national interests and intrigue has also proved to be a complete delusion.