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PARTISAN REVIEW
tion which excluded traditional conservatism but did not completely ex–
clude totalitarian tendencies. The ideology of the "single national and
social party" remains quite strong among men of the right and the left
and even among some Communists. The ranks of the Resistance were
composed of young men who did not want to
be
deported to Germany,
of men who were compromised and feared the fate of hostages; in short,
of men who felt more secure in the woods-the Maquis-than in cities
and villages. They were defending their elementary right to live. They
compromised those who backed them through family ties, through
generosity or duty. With the help of de Gaullist officers and of the
clandestine Communist machine which had its own financial and arma–
ment resources, they became an organized army as soon as it was felt
that Nazism was doomed.
Gaullism, whose birth I witnessed in Vichy France, was at first only
a confused idealism based on the pleasant knowledge that someone, in
London or elsewhere, was not surrendering, was continuing the fight,
· ..vas being supported. But it soon became a vast national conspiracy.
According to official declaration of the Communist Party, the organiza–
tion of Communist resistance began a month before the Nazis attacked
the Soviet Union, evidently under direct orders received from Moscow.
Most probably, the difficult Balkan situation then forced the Soviet Union
to consider necessary the creation of an opposition movement within the
Nazi-occupied countries. As soon as the German armies crossed the
borders into Russia, the Communists formed their first bands of par–
tisans and guerrillas. Later, they constituted the Gaullist "National
Front" which never managed to obtain leadership among the clandestine
Gauilist movements. Their strength, however, resided in their coherent
organization, in the loyalty of many workers and intellectuals, in the
Russian victories and in the old revolutionary myth. In addition, anti–
Bolshevism played into their hands with its bloodshed.
While the Socialist Party was splitting into pro-Nazi advocates of
surrender (Spinasse, Chassaigne, Zoretti and others), into a trend to–
wards resigned adaptation (Paul Faure) , and into a trend towards
underground resistance (Max Dormoy) , the Communist Party turned
without a split, from a policy of well-meaning neutrality towards Nazism
(with some propaganda against the plutocratic democracies), to cold
hostility and finally to open warfare against Nazism. All this took place
in spite of lack of popularity, imprisonments, intrigues and firing squads.
The importance of
this,
fact must be stressed to indicate how this total–
itarian party, thanks to its psychology and organizational methods, brings
a new element into history.
At the time of France's liberation, the Communist Party disposed of
powerful troops in the heart of the Resistance movement. The So–
cialists, however, had armed militias only in Northern France; elsewhere
in the country, they had joined various organizations which were often
