was indirectly but unambiguously dependent upon French agreement on a strategy for the latter. But thirdly, and decisively, French politicians and the French national mood shifted definitively in the second half of 1947. Soviet rejection of Marshall Aid and the advent of the Cominform (to be discussed in the next chapter) transformed the powerful French Communist Party from an awkward coalition partner in government to the unrestrained critic of all French policies at home and abroad: so much so that through the latter part of 1947 and most of 1948 France seemed to many to be heading into
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