war years and they brought with them many of the policies and men of the Popular Front era. The existing parties of the Left had gained immensely by their engagement in the wartime resistance: especially in France, where the Communists’ succeeded in converting their (sometimes exaggerated) wartime exploits into political capital and convinced even dispassionate observers of their unique moral standing—‘the great heroes of the Resistance’ as Janet Flanner described them in December 1944. It is thus not especially odd that the reform programs of post-war European governments echoed and
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