1At the conclusion of the Second World War, the Soviet Union was held in high regard and enjoyed a great deal of sympathy from French, and indeed international, public opinion. While some political and military leaders had shared this idealised view of communism, the pressure of events, both at home and abroad, quickly lead them to see the situation very differently. Thus, the idea emerged that the Soviet Union represented a potential threat, all the more dangerous since it had at its disposal a proxy within national borders in the shape of the Communist Party, loyal to Moscow, whose cadres and militants were acting as a “fifth column” for the Kremlin. In this sense, the new enemy was quickly seen to be working actively as a non-conventional and particularly pernicious agent for subversion, aiming no longer to conquer a geographical space but the spirit of the population.

2It is in this very particular context that, at the end of the forties and beginning of the fifties, measures were taken to protect public opinion from these intentions, while an ideological riposte was organised that was sufficiently forceful and influential to counter the Marxist-Leninist propaganda that was proving to be particularly effective.

A unique national situation

3Since Liberation, France was working in a very specific political environment where the Communist Party had become a player — perhaps The Player – holding the centre stage of public life. After the failure of the attempted national insurrection, launched by the communists on 7 June 1944, which aimed at mobilising the population and creating a “revolutionary climate”, the pcf abandoned its offensive strategy to seize power. From then on, it did not hesitate in supporting the provisional government of General De Gaulle, in accordance with the political line laid down by Stalin in the autumn of 1944.

4On the 9th of September, two communists became members of the government, one of whom, Charles Tillon, was appointed Air Minister. The Air Force thus became the first of the three armies to find itself under the almost total control of one of the most emblematic figures of the Party. From this time on, the air commanders, first and foremost general Martial Valin, general chief of staff, had the impression, which quickly became a conviction, that the Minister and his colleagues were acting primarily for the benefit of their party, and by extension, the Soviet Union. Various memoranda in the autumn of 1945 bear witness to an attempt to create cells amongst the civilian and military personnel of the aeronautical factories, when they were not working to arrange the recruitment of new communist militants at these workplaces. Furthermore, fear grew at the sight of former ‘snipers and partisans’(ftp) controlling the bases and thus able to prepare the platforms necessary for the landing of aircraft from the Soviet Union.

5While the departure of Tillon at the end of November 1945 was a relief for the military hierarchy, it was nevertheless true that the entry into the government of four new members of the pcf, to posts in economic and social areas, ensured the continuation of this phase of uncertainty that seemed to have become a feature of French political life. At the same time, the Party was deploying all its agitation and propaganda skills to ensure that it monopolised the heritage of the Resistance, becoming the “Party of the 75,000 executed”, martyrs whose memory was honoured in great commemorative marches. At the general elections of the 10th of November 1946, it became the foremost political party with 28.8 % of votes cast and the highest representation in the National Assembly (one hundred and fifty seven seats).

6Paul Ramadier, elected president of the Council of Ministers in January 1947, put the communist François Billoux in charge of the Ministry of Defence which, although the three Army Ministers from the other three political components of the government coalition provided some control, offered the Party new and promising perspectives. A project to reorganise national defence was thus conceived by Billoux, based on the creation of peacetime “local security forces based in worksites, factories, villages and districts”. This project of an “armed nation”, with clearly audible echoes of the early days of the Red Army, was quickly seen by the chief of staff as a new stage in the attempt by the Communist Party to use the military structure for its own ends, where the army would find itself neutralised in the event of domestic disturbances, thus losing all usefulness as part of the State apparatus.

7While the removal of the communists from the Ramadier government on the 4th of May 1947 marked the end of the national army project, the military’s direct experience, since 1944, of the presence of pcf members at the head of ministries running national defence certainly helped to generate a fear of communist subversion. This was no longer regarded as merely a feeling, a possibility, but a given and concrete fact that henceforth would need to be taken into consideration. There is no doubt that this experience was a determining factor for a number of civil and military deciders in their appreciation and interpretation of the subsequent evolution of the national and international situation. The development of the Cold War is thus widely seen and commented by analysts of the years 1948-1950 in terms of the experience of the years 1944 to 1947.

8A major turning point for French politics, the end of the communist involvement in government, corresponded very closely to the moment when East/West relations underwent quite a noticeable deterioration, marked by several important events: on the 12th of March the American President Truman presented his Containment doctrine, and on the 5th of June the Secretary of State George Marshall offered the whole of Europe a plan of economic reconstruction. As for the Soviet side, it was in September 1947 that the Zhdanov report outlined the new anti-imperialist line that all the communist parties were asked to follow.

9From October 1947, Thorez took up the denunciation of American imperialism, criticism of its allies, the struggle for national independence, for peace and the defence of the socialist camp. From then on, the pcf adopted a resolutely offensive attitude translated particularly by a commitment to social battles. And so, large strikes in November and December 1947 provoked a reaction of exceptional brutality: the army was called in and did not hesitate in its deployment of military style operations against the strikers. There is no doubt that the French political and military leadership approached the situation as that of an essentially subversive and insurrectional character. Moreover, these events, repeated in the autumn of the following year, reinforced the conviction of the military of the imminence of a “Paris coup”, in response to the Prague affair. A link was thus clearly made between the external threat, represented by the Soviet Union and its possible “agents transported by aircraft”, and the internal threat to be seen at work in these “insurrectional” events.

10In parallel with these social problems, the pcf was quick to mobilise its propaganda techniques (leaflets, posters, distribution of newspapers and articles, meetings, demonstrations, strikes, petitions, etc.) to orchestrate a veritable “psychological” campaign that became more and more virulent and which was directed, from early 1949, towards a number of themes: anti-imperialism, the defence of national independence, the struggle for peace and defence of the socialist camp. Similarly, the sabotage that it was organising against the manufacture, transportation and loading of war equipment intended for Indochina escalated in the winter of 1949-50 and gave rise to several sometimes very violent incidents. Thus, this period at the end of the 1940s was characterised by a crystallization of a particular message from the military whereby the communist threat, which was not only represented by the Soviet Union but also by Mao’s China, was generally presented as being omnipresent and polymorphous, when not going as far as proclaiming that the “Third World War” had already started.

The government’s “psychological” counter-offensive

11In the face of these multiple offensives, the French political leaders were slow to formulate appropriate responses. In this respect it would seem that the signing of the Atlantic Treaty, on the 4th of April 1949, helped to accelerate matters, with the Americans encouraging the French government to initiate a vigorous anti-communist propaganda campaign. René Pleven, Minister for National Defence between October 1949 and June 1950, then president of the Council of Ministers from July 1950 to February 1951, was clearly the first leader to put a number of measures in place that were intended to confront the “subversive peril”. It was moreover during this period that the expression “psychological action” was coined, replacing the term “propaganda” with its negative connotations. Although it was at first restricted to the military, this ministerial initiative, once launched, was intended to go rapidly beyond this perimeter to be extended to the whole of the nation.

12So Pleven decided, on 6th February 1950, to create, at the same level as his cabinet, an inter-army acpo (“action politique”) bureau, specialising in psychological protection, with the objective of centralising all information about communist attacks against the army and to react immediately, both in terms of proceedings against the press and the bringing of charges, and also counter-propaganda (leaflets, posters, rebuttals, etc.) The Minister felt that “the communist papers […] should at the moment be considered as a fifth column, […] systematic propaganda, false news [being] one of the methods the most frequently used by the communist party to create a psychosis hostile to national defence”.

13A very precisely targeted activity began, a systematic and daily examination of the local press by the commanders in the regions and the maritime prefects, who were to transmit as quickly as possible any tendentious articles to the acpo bureau, for the latter to lodge legal complaints for defamation or attacks on the army. This measure, as an immediate reaction to communist activity, was seen as an effective alternative to counter-propaganda, thought to be too clumsy. Moreover, specialist officers, called “acpo officers”, were designated in all the military, maritime and aerial regions for the organisation of information meetings “with the aim of explaining to officers of all ranks, as well as non-commissioned officers, the aims of the communist party in France, which was attempting to disarm the country, materially and morally, and to cause a dislocation of the French Union”.

14As for the action aimed at public opinion in general, this proved to be more complex to initiate, to the extent that it was the responsibility of the head of the government, “who will use for this the means at his disposal, and particularly radio broadcasts”, in liaison with the other ministerial departments. And so, an order on the 1st of April 1950 created a permanent General Secretariat for National Defence (sgpdn), replacing the former Staff for National Defence, with the role of assisting the president of the Council “in his duties of inter-ministerial coordination of measures supporting the implementation of national defence”, and particularly “psychological action”. An order of the president of the Council dated the 3rd of July 1950 detailed, moreover, the organisation of the sgpdn and instituted the mechanism for the delegation of powers, in defence matters, from the President of the Council to the Minister for National Defence and the Armed Forces. A special division of the sgpdn, a department for general information and psychological action, was set up to prepare psychological action around government decisions and directives, whose coordination it was responsible for at the inter-ministerial level.

15René Pleven, invested as president of the Council on the 11th of July 1950, at a time of international agitation as the war in Korea began, gathered the main political leaders of the majority in Matignon on the 7th of September to study “methods for suppressing all anti-national intrigues with the greatest firmness, and in particular the action of foreign communists against the security of the country”. It is in this context that he proposed supporting a joint organisation intended to fight against communist disinformation, a sort of civil equivalent of the acpo bureau. Jean-Paul David, radical member of the Assembly for Seine-et-Oise, was given the responsibility of setting it up, with the aim of thwarting the intrigues of the communists within civil society. The movement thus created in September-October 1950 was given the name Peace and Liberty and presented itself as an” anti-movement for peace”, a response to the Stockholm appeal launched by the communists in the Spring.

16In parallel, a “secret committee” composed of a sub-prefect (in charge of maintaining contact between David and the presidency of the Council) and representatives of the main ministries and government departments (Interior, Foreign Affairs, External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Department—sdece—, etc.) was set up. Jean-Paul David took care to involve, on a temporary basis, a number of people from the press (journalists or translators needing to make ends meet). The financial sources for the movement give an indication of the complexity of the organisation that was created: only Matignon, initially, granted monies from its secret funds, but then enterprises and banks (for “psychological warfare expenses”) gradually started to give financial assistance.

17The methods used by David and his team were very varied, but posters and leaflets predominated as the preferred media for propaganda, as well as a radio broadcast intended to rival the communist broadcast “Ce soir en France” (Tonight in France), transmitted from Prague. Fundamentally, the message of “Peace and Freedom” aimed to be accessible to all, adopting direct, even simplistic, phraseology in which communism was presented as a fatal illness, the worst plague. From denunciation to derision to mockery, all possible styles were used indiscriminately and shamelessly.

18All the decisions adopted during the last three months of 1950 bear witness to the determination of René Pleven and his close colleagues to establish a global and consistent programme of psychological counter-warfare, the careful design of which showed how much thought must have gone into it. For its finalisation, an inter-ministerial committee, comprising a representative of each of the organisations concerned by these questions – the office of the President of the Council, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, National Education, Information, Employment, the State Secretariats for the Armed Forces, the joint staffs of the armed forces and, when necessary, the ministries for the overseas departments and associate states –, was instituted in November 1950 having as objective a national doctrine applicable to psychological action, designed as the cornerstone and intellectual basis on which the institutional superstructure had to stand.

Searching for a doctrine

19The idea was then to identify and promote a common body of principles and rules to reunify the national community in the face of the communist threat and to affirm with greater assurance the specificity of France within the Atlantic context. Faced with the two dominant models of the time, the “American Way of Life” and Marxist-Leninist ideology, the French leaders wanted to establish a distinct national model that would be rooted in the history of the country and in the deepest and broadest influences, as much “African as Greek and Latin”.

20In November 1950 the inaugural meeting of the committee took place which, in the words of the head of the sgpdn, the Prefect Jean Mons, set itself the mission to “awaken the critical spirit of the public, and develop it; preserve civism, look for and find the truth; identify the personality of the country, find a potential that is hidden but that exists, show those of good will that they are not alone; detect the psychological aspiration that only needs to be affirmed”. But, confronted with the difficulty of the task, the committee was unable, between 1951 and 1952, to even sketch out the basis of a national doctrine. The sgpdn had obviously come up against the contradictory interests of the representatives of various ministries that lacked the will to be involved in a project of such scope and that appeared to them to be rather nebulous and too ideological.

21The committee, which in the meantime had developed into an inter-ministerial commission, did manage, in December 1952, to formalise a draft memorandum, but that barely managed to escape the formal framework of pedagogical explanatory papers, on the particular subjects of German integration into western defence, the Atlantic Treaty and the pacts and treaties violated by the Soviet Union since May 1945. Lacking the doctrinal message envisaged initially, the commission now appeared to be set on formulating arguments intended for the press agencies and, through these, the organs of information, mostly regional.

22Generally speaking, the commission was continually caught between two fundamentally opposed approaches; one, argued for by the delegate for National Defence, for the setting up of governmental information tools for the fight against communism and the other, represented by the Foreign Affairs delegate, who felt that the commission should not venture into ideological areas but restrict itself to formulating the key points of a message that was more pedagogical in nature, intended for the general public. In this context the sgpdn had some difficulty in playing the role of arbiter, which it asserted that it had to play, and preferred generally to maintain a position of neutrality that, because it wished not to take sides, never managed to attain the doctrinal level, precisely where the political leadership wanted it to be.

23In the autumn of 1954 the notorious affair of the “leaks”, involving several civil servants, hit the headlines and put several of those working for the permanent general secretariat for national defence in the spotlight, including Mons himself, as well as two of his immediate colleagues, Jean-Louis Turpin, his private secretary, and Roger Labrusse, Head of the Department for National Protection of the sgpdn. The consequences were not slow in coming: in January 1955, following the tumultuous departure of Mons, removed from his post, the inter-ministerial commission for psychological action was officially packed away with mothballs.

24At the end of this study, we could find ourselves wondering about the short and long term consequences of this “psychological” counter-offensive project, originating from a domestic preoccupation that was generally quite close to that which was driving American MacCarthyism. While the French political leaders always avoided the virulence and extremism that were characteristic of the Wisconsin senator, the temptation of generalised repression, starting with a very strict control of the media and the legal apparatus, and perhaps going as far as wishing to influence them in a manner overtly favourable to the authorities, was by no means ever part of, or close to, their intentions. Thus, in January 1952, the Secretary of State for War deplored that “in the cases of judgment by civil tribunals, we are disarmed, given the independence of the magistrates from the government. The government has no means of ensuring that a tribunal will condemn, or any way of sanctioning a scandalous verdict. It can neither condemn a magistrate, nor act on his career. Instead, we must rely on an atmosphere of general firmness.” A significant detail regarding the mood prevailing at the time, a remark written in the margin of a note of January 1952 asks: “What are we waiting for to remove Quand un soldat (when a soldier) by Yves Montand from official radio programmes?

25But what would be gained by such actions? It would seem that communist activism, very virulent in 1950, started to run out of steam the following year, attempting to rise again in Spring 1952 with a demonstration against the visit to Paris of General Ridgeway, but this was the last great act of the pcf during the most paroxysmal phase of the Cold War. So we can certainly see in this erosion a result of the anti-subversive measures taken by French leaders in 1950 to influence opinion.

26Ironically, the unfinished work of the sgpdn on the development of doctrine was finally formalised in the summer of 1962 with the publication of a work of almost 300 pages, Les Valeurs fondamentales du patriotisme français (The fundamental values of French patriotism). But, at this time, the anxieties that had been at the origin of this philosophical reflection no longer had any currency—the decolonisation phase was concluding, the Cold War had given way to “peaceful coexistence”, and General De Gaulle himself was preparing to break the alignment with American policy by leaving the integrated military command of nato. A large number of examples from the book, which was intended to express the essentials of everyday French values, were to be completely forgotten…