TLIAW All the Premier's men

Prologue


Secretariat_clandestin_PCF_1943.jpg



Extract from "The end of the Second World War and the birth of modern France"

The meeting of the PCF secretariat in Longjumeau in 1944 was a key turning point in the history of both the communist party and of France as a whole. Frachon, Lecoeur, Duclos and Tillon were present and met for most of the 26th of September. No detailed notes of the meeting have been found but secondary reports attest to the meeting being about one major thing, how to hand the national council of the resistance in the wake of current military and political changes.

News had been slowly dripping through France of the German defeats on the eastern front, with the borders of Europe soon to be breached, it was obvious that soviet victory against Germany would take place relatively soon and place the PCF in a most advantageous position. It was also obvious to the attendants of the meeting that the other members of the National Resistance Council were no longer reliable allies as they would seek any method possible to preserve their bourgeois interests in the post war world, especially when presented with a powerful communist movement that had been building since before the war even started.

The division within the PCF was between those on the one hand who proposed a continued united front which would allow post war elections. A PCF landslide would legitimise communism in France and create a bloodless revolution due to the "unique circumstances" that were present in France and the high popularity that the communist party enjoyed. On the other hand were those who demanded an immediate transition to a dictatorship of the proletariat through violent revolution after national liberation had been achieved.

By the end of the Longjumeau conference some key new policies had been agreed to;

  • Intelligence gathering should not only be directed at Vichy collaborators but also free French representatives and resistance groups unaligned with the communist party.

  • Intelligence sharing with and integration of communist partisans into non communist partisan groups should be halted immediately.

  • Plans for a general uprising against fascism should be assembled making the assumption that within a few years the soviets will have beaten Germany into submission.

These policies would prove to be vital when two years later, Marshal Zhukov's tanks crossed the Rhine.
 
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