Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

one internal French policy paper put it, a week after the Liberation of Paris in 1944: ‘If France should have to submit to a third assault during the next generation, it is to be feared that . . . it will succumb forever.’ That was in private. In public, post-war French statesmen and politicians insisted upon their country’s claim to recognition as a member of the victorious Allied coalition, a world power to be accorded equal standing with her peers. This illusion could be sustained, in some degree, because it suited the other powers to pretend it was so. The Soviet Union wanted a tactical ally in the West who shared its suspicion of the ‘Anglo-Americans’; the British wanted a revived France to take its place in the counsels of Europe and relieve Great Britain of continental obligations; even the Americans saw some advantage, though not much, in granting Paris a seat at the top table.