H.France in Turmoil: World War I Through World War II

Historians often date the end of the real, as opposed to the chronological, 19th century at 1914, the year Europe exploded into World War I. This was the first total war, in which governments mobilized the full resources of the state and society to achieve victory. World War I led to the success of Bolshevism in Russia and indirectly to the rise of fascism. In France, however, these developments had less immediate impact. To be sure, France suffered from the heavy economic and human costs of the war, which left deep scars on the participants and introduced a level of violence that would have repercussions later. Even so, the continuities in France between 1914 and 1930 were more striking than the changes. After a period of adjustment, the economy rebounded, and the government gradually solved its fiscal problems. Although the war lowered birthrates, these rates had been falling before the war. Diplomatically, France regained territory it had controlled before 1871, but otherwise the war settled little. In the 1920s French diplomats contended with more or less the same nationalist rivalries that had fueled World War I. Politically, the parliamentary system of the Third Republic endured without much striking change, while the French world empire also continued to grow.The 1930s and 1940s were the real turning point in France. The onset of the Depression coupled with the aggressive expansion of Nazi Germany put heavy strains on the Third Republic, and it collapsed after Germany defeated and then occupied France at the beginning of World War II (1939-1945). Under German occupation, the French replaced the Third Republic with a right-wing regime, known as the Vichy government, which effectively abandoned Frances republican traditions. German authorities limited the Vichy governments margin of maneuver, but Vichy still enjoyed broad support in the population until the tide of war turned against Germany. Yet already in 1940 there was an alternative to collaboration with the Germans. Local grassroots resistance movements took shape almost immediately, while General Charles de Gaulle, who was in exile in London, announced that Vichy would not be Frances future. Events proved him right.World War I in France began in 1914, when Germany marched through Belgium, hoping to capture Paris and encircle the French army, most of which was poised on the German border to retake Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans moved faster than the French did and were well on their way to completing their plan when the French recognized the danger. They pulled troops back from the German border and redeployed them to block the German advance on Paris. The Germans were stopped in the first Battle of the Marne in September 1914. If the German plan had succeeded, it would have ended the war in weeks. Instead, a standoff resulted, which defined the nature of fighting for the rest of the war. In that stalemate, Anglo-French and German armies opposed one another for four years in rain-soaked, rat-infested, barbed-wire trenches running for hundreds of kilometers through northeastern France. Both sides tried vainly to puncture the lines of the other and win a decisive victory. They used the full range of new weaponrypoison gas, tanks, machine guns, airplanesonly to be thrown back. Meanwhile, casualties mounted in appalling numbers. The Battle of Verdun resulted in more than 700,000 casualties and lasted most of 1916 but resolved essentially nothing.Such pointless slaughter eroded morale. In 1917 mutinies broke out in the French army, reflecting the defeatism common among those on the left, who had shown pacifist tendencies before 1914. The mutinies were put down by the Radical prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, through a combination of repression and patriotic appeals. In the spring of 1918, the Anglo-French militarynow backed by fresh American troopsfinally went on the offensive and forced Germany to an armistice on November 11, 1918. The war that had lasted more than four years was effectively won in six months.2.Aftermath of the War

World War I did not transform France, but its effects were surely considerable. In a country already stricken by depopulation, 1.4 million men10 percent of the nations active maleswere killed and twice that number wounded. This loss led to further declines in Frances very low birthrate. So deep were the scars that monuments to the war dead were erected in virtually every village and town in France. Material losses were also enormous, especially since the area of the country occupied by Germany during the war produced about half the countrys coal and steel. Fiscally, too, the war was costly. The government, which had not anticipated massive expenditures, met expenses by printing great amounts of paper money and by borrowing. These measures tripled prices, quintupled the national debt, and weakened the franc. The governments only real innovation in dealing with these problems was the introduction of a modest income tax. The war also had social effects other than the demographic ones. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants entered the country to fill the jobs vacated by soldiers. Together with native-born workers, they swelled the ranks of labor unions by an estimated 1 million members. During the war, 450,000 women worked in factories and earned incomes that had formerly been restricted to men, but after the war two-thirds of these women were let go to create jobs for veterans.a.Treaty of Versailles

The difficulties of winning the war were followed by the frustrations of winning the peace. The peace terms were worked out at an international conference held in Versailles during 1919 (see Versailles, Treaty of). The French succeeded in regaining Alsace-Lorraine and in foisting exclusive blame for the war on Germany. On that basis, reparations were imposed on Germany, just as France had been forced to pay reparations after the Battle of Waterloo and the Franco-Prussian War. The exact amount was to be computed by a commission later, but initial estimates were astronomical. Frances chief goal, ensuring its security, proved far more elusive. In the end, France had to renounce hopes for permanent control of the Rhine Valley. Germany agreed to demilitarize the Rhineland, and France won the right to occupy the area until 1935. Britain and the United States guaranteed their aid to France in case of attack. However, many of the peace terms did not turn out as expected. Britain and the United States soon retracted their assurances. France was left to rely on a set of alliances with central and eastern European powersalliances that paradoxically wound up dragging France back into war in 1939. France withdrew its troops from the Rhineland five years earlier than planned, and German leader Adolf Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936. German reparations, which France needed to pay off debts owed to the United States, amounted to considerably less than first imagined, even though by 1931 Germany had paid 10 billion francs. Under such circumstances, it was not surprising that in the 1930s France built the Maginot Line, a heavily fortified string of defenses running along the frontier from Switzerland to Belgium. The French trusted the Maginot Line to withstand a German assault.Like other nations, France made an effort to forestall war. It joined the League of Nations and signed agreements such as the Locarno Pact of 1925, which reaffirmed the Franco-German border, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy. But a strong sense of vulnerability continued to lie behind French foreign and military policy in Europe throughout the period between World War I and World War II. This vulnerability laid the basis for the appeasement policies and military strategies of the 1930s. A sense of vulnerability was much less apparent in French overseas imperialism in this period. The French colonial empire reached its peak, expanding into the African and Middle Eastern regions formerly controlled by Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The French empire now extended to 11.7 million sq km (4.5 million sq mi)20 times the size of Franceand included a population of roughly 80 million peopleabout twice that of France. Yet commercial relations with the colonies continued to be marginalamounting to only 15 percent of Frances foreign trade in 1929.b.Politics Between the Wars

At home, the shape of politics changed relatively little in the aftermath of World War I, as France was governed by a variety of center-left and center-right coalitions. The most important change was the division of the SFIO into separate communist and socialist parties, which occurred in 1920. The Communist Party continued to profess Marxist revolutionary doctrines and warmly embraced the Soviet regime that had come to power in Russia in 1917. The Socialist Party, under Jaurss protg Lon Blum, adopted a less confrontational position with regard to the Third Republic and refused to endorse the Soviet government in Moscow.

Although the Socialist Party initially had fewer members, they were far more successful than the Communist Party at the polls. In the 1932 election, they won 131 seats in the legislaturemore than any other partywhile the Communist Party won only 10 seats. However, neither party had much impact on French government social policy until the Great Depression, especially because the Socialists refused to participate officially in any coalition they could not dominate.

The major domestic political concerns of the 1920s were fiscal. Although the economy expanded in the mid-1920s, state finances remained shaky. Accumulated war debt and deficit spending caused the franc to decline; it was only one-tenth of its prewar value by 1926. In that year, a centrist government under Raymond Poincar restored the franc by raising taxes and cutting spending. These measures increased confidence in the economy, and capital investment grew. By 1929 manufacturing and trade had climbed to roughly 50 percent above prewar levels. In the agricultural sector, efficiency improved, but the sector was still much less prosperous than were manufacturing and trade.

The coming of the Great Depression changed fiscal concerns into economic ones. France escaped the depression until late 1931, many months after it had begun elsewhere. But when the depression did reach France, it lasted longer. Whereas in 1937 British industrial production was 24 percent greater than in 1929 and German industrial production 16 percent greater, French industrial production in 1937 was 28 percent lower than it had been in 1929. The response of the French government, like that of many other nations, only aggravated the problem. Having fought so hard to support the franc in the 1920s, the French government resisted devaluation, although the franc declined anyway. To protect home markets, the French government, like others, raised tariff barriers, thereby worsening the prospects for a general European recovery. What made Frances situation bearable was the fact that unemployment was less serious than elsewhere, partly because many foreign workers were sent home and many unemployed workers returned to family farms. Nonetheless, the standard of living declined. The center-right coalitions failed to stop the economic slide, and in 1932 they gave way to governments run by the Radicals and supported by the Socialist Party. But these governments could not agree on a coherent economic program. Paralysis in the center-left encouraged the growth of a variety of new political organizations on the right. These ranged from blatant imitations of Benito Mussolinis and Hitlers fascist movements, such as Jacques Doriots French Popular Party (PPF), to more tradition-minded groups, such as the Cross of Fire. Both groups had memberships in the hundreds of thousands. When the operations of a shady financier, Serge Stavisky, were made public and linked to the Radical Party in 1934, the right staged a massive demonstration in Paris, joined by members of the Communist Party. The demonstration threatened to overthrow the Third Republic, although its goal was apparently only to force a change of cabinet. During the demonstration, 17 people were killed and thousands were wounded. The cabinet was changed, but the new government offered no effective cure for the Depression. Equally ineffective was the next government led by Pierre Laval, who would later be a key member of the Vichy government.c.The Popular Front

In 1935 the Communist Party, acting on Soviet leader Joseph Stalins orders, offered to ally with the Socialists and the Radicals to stem the tide of fascism sweeping Europe. This coalition would be called the Popular Front. Stung by previous communist attacks on them as social fascists, the Socialist Party was reluctant to join, but did so. To solidify the alliance with the Radicals, both Communists and Socialists dropped earlier plans to socialize the economy, but even the coalitions mild calls for government intervention to improve the lot of workers scandalized the right. The bitterly fought 1936 elections witnessed the beginning of the end of the broad centrist consensus that had supported the Third Republic. The centers failure to solve the Depression drove voters to extremes on both right and left at the expense of the center, and the Communist Party increased its seats from 10 to 72. This gave Lon Blum the support he needed to form the Popular Front, the first French government led by a Socialist. The record of the Popular Front was mixed. Blum settled a wave of strikes by arranging for wage increases, collective bargaining, a 40-hour workweek, and paid vacations. He also attempted to support farm prices. But Blums government lacked an adequate theory to explain the Depression and had no better idea than earlier ones for how to cure it. When the Popular Front was toppled by the Radicals in 1937, the economy was no stronger than before.Except for a very brief period in 1938, Radicals dominated the government from 1937 until 1940. During this time, they managed to nudge production up, through tax cuts and concessions to business at the expense of labor. Even so, by the summer of 1939, economic activity had returned only to the level of 1928.3.World War II

The failure of the Third Republic to deal effectively with the Depression was accompanied by the collapse of its foreign and military policy. Until 1936 the rise of Nazi Germany caused little controversy in France. The government responded to growing Nazi power by attempting to strengthen ties with Frances central and eastern European allies, establish new agreements with Italy and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and renew the old entente with Britain. But after the Popular Front government came to power, the right, which portrayed the Popular Front as the prelude to a communist takeover, began to see Hitler as less of a menace than Blum. The left, torn between its old pacifism and its fears of creeping European fascism, was divided on whether to confront or negotiate with Germany. Clearly, the majority of the French people wanted to avoid war at almost all costs, and British pressure to do so inclined France toward a policy of appeasement. In 1936 France merely protested Hitlers remilitarization of the Rhineland, despite the fact that this move violated the treaties of Versailles and Locarno. While the Popular Front was in power, Blum declined to aid the Spanish Republic, which was fighting a brutal civil war against anti-Republican forces led by Franco and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Since the right favored Franco, Blum feared a civil war in France if he intervened in the Spanish conflict. In March 1938 France acceded to Germanys annexation of Austria. At the Munich Conference (see Munich Pact) in September 1938, France violated its own defense treaty with Czechoslovakia by agreeing to German occupation of the Czech Sudetenland. The next March, France stood by while Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Only on September 3, 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, did France and Britain reluctantly declare war. Even then France took little offensive action beyond participating in a naval blockade of Germany, still hoping that something might be worked out. Such paralysis, far from thwarting Nazi aggression against France, only invited it. The German attack on France in May 1940 was no repetition of the attack of September 1914, which had stalled out very quickly. Hitler directed his massed tank divisions north of the Maginot Line through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes forest. France and the rest of the Allied Powers did not lack men and material, but they were unprepared strategically. In six weeks Hitler won the decisive victory that had eluded the Germans in World War I. Seventy years after the Battle of Sedan, France was once again an occupied nation.a.The Vichy Government

While millions took to the roads to escape the German advance, the French government left Paris for Bordeaux. On June 17 the government asked Germany for an armistice, after which aging Marshal Henri Ptain, the hero of World War I, was appointed prime minister. On June 22 France signed an armistice agreement in the same railroad car in which the Germans had signed the armistice of 1918. French armed forces were to be demobilized, the southern third of France would continue to be governed by the French, and the northern two-thirds was to be occupied and administered by the Germans with funds provided by French taxpayers. Reassuring the French people with a soothing, paternal radio voice, Ptain called upon France to lay down its arms and accept the armistice. Most French people, in shock over the quick defeat, followed his advice. With the German invasion of France in 1940, France was divided into two zonesone directly occupied by the Germans and another with a separate government seated in Vichy in Southern France, which became known as Vichy France. The Vichy government actively collaborated with the Germans and was led by Marshal Henri Ptain, a World War I (1914-1918) military hero, and his aide Pierre Laval. In 1942 Germany seized Vichy France and began a direct occupation of this region as well.

In the south, the government moved from Bordeaux to Vichy, where on July 10 it voted overwhelmingly to authorize Ptain to draft a new constitution. Under this constitution, Ptain became head of state and the final arbiter in all decisions, while a variety of ministers responsible to him carried out government functions. Ptains deputy, Pierre Laval, pushed the plan through the Chamber of Deputies. The professed goal of the new regime was a national revolution, which would regenerate a decadent France by rerooting the nation in its traditions of religion, family, and the land. The squabbling and corruption of parliamentary democracy was now supposed to give way to the authoritarian efficiency of one-man rule. Legally and spiritually, the Third Republic, which was blamed for involving France in a war it could not win, was now dead.In fact, Vichy was a hodgepodge of competing factions and interests. The principal division lay between the traditionalists and the modernizers. A majority of Vichyites were traditionalists who sought to contain capitalist competition, organize society into partially self-governing associations, and restore the influence of the Catholic Church. The modernists, who were closely associated with big business, wanted to push France forward through more active government intervention in the economy. Although they were in the minority, the modernists gradually gained influence, in large part because their program called for measures that were more practical. If Vichy had a positive legacy, it lay in its efforts at government economic planning, which were continued after the war and helped remove obstacles to growth. One of the ironies of the Vichy regime was that in some ways it promoted modernization more effectively than the Third Republic had.

Yet Vichy also meant an active collaboration with Nazi Germany. Although Vichy leaders protested after the war that they had resisted German demands as much as they had dared, they were in fact convinced in 1940 that the future belonged to fascism. They actively cooperated in building the Nazi-dominated European empire, doing even more than Germany expected or demanded. Germany did not, in the end, reward France for this cooperation. France was required to supply Germany with hundreds of thousands of forced laborers and more material aid than any other German satellite. Despite their vast agricultural resources, the French ate more poorly and suffered more inflation during the war than any other western European people except the Italians. Alsace-Lorraine was again annexed by Germany, and in November 1942, the Germans occupied the southern third of the nation, thereby removing most of Vichys independence.However, the most shameful acts committed by the Vichy government resulted more from its own hatreds than from German demands. Not only did Vichy hunt down and execute resistors to German rule, but it also initiated its own campaign of anti-Semitic persecution. Jews were fired from positions in the civil service, judiciary, army, public schools, and cultural institutions (publishing houses, newspapers, radio, and entertainment), and only a limited number were permitted to practice medicine and law. Vichy seized Jewish property, while Jews who had recently immigrated to escape persecution elsewhere were interned in concentration camps. Still worse was Vichys collaboration in the Holocaust. Vichy was not inclined to commit genocide itself and was anxious to keep French-born Jews under its control, all the better to strip them of their property. However, Vichy employed its own police and militia to round up Jewish men, women, and children, most of them foreign-born. They were then shipped in appalling conditions to German-occupied Poland and gassed in Nazi death camps. The death toll of Jews transported from France was about 75,000.b.The Resistance

Most French people initially supported Ptains regime, but resistance to German rule and opposition to Vichy began almost immediately after France was defeated. Charles de Gaulle, a career general and undersecretary of war who had bitterly criticized French strategy in the 1930s, escaped to London in June 1940 and established a government in exile. Lacking any formal authority, de Gaulle attracted few followers at first, but he received vital recognition and material assistance from British prime minister Winston Churchill. In June 1944, during World War II, Allied forces invaded Normandy, in German occupied France. American and French forces retook Paris from the German army, a major symbolic victory for the Allies. As this article indicates, little damage was done to Pariss cultural treasures during the German occupation. The war in Europe continued for another nine months.

In France, small groups of resisters formed and committed isolated acts of protest and sabotage. These groups were better organized in the southern unoccupied zone and attracted support from various parties, especially the Communist Party. Contacts between de Gaulles government in London and the Resistance in France increased, and gradually de Gaulle was able to impose control from abroad on the expanding Resistance in France.

In 1943 de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers, after clashing with Churchill and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt over strategy. De Gaulles relations with the Resistance in France were also sometimes difficult. Resistance leaders feared de Gaulles ambitions, but sufficient harmony was maintained to prevent a breakdown in relations. As the tide of war turned against the Germans and the Germans demanded more forced labor from the French, the ranks of the Resistance swelled. By 1944 most people could demonstrate they had done something to resist the Germans, so they could later claim to have been members of the Resistance. Following the successful landing of Allied troops in Normandy on June 6, 1944, France was gradually liberated. The communists made some attempt at seizing power, most notably through an uprising against the Germans in Paris in August 1944. But in the end de Gaulle was able to establish his authority throughout France without much difficulty. A new provisional government under de Gaulles leadership assumed power. The harshness of the occupation led to rough justice against former collaborators, often without formal trials. About 10,000 people were executed and 40,000 sent to prison. Laval was tried and executed. Ptain was also tried and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.I.The Fourth Republic

France emerged from World War II profoundly weakened economically, but it had once again learned to appreciate its republican traditions. Indeed, one effect of Vichys collapse was to discredit the traditional right, which had never really accepted the values of 1789 as its own. The nearly universal acceptance of republican values after 1945 facilitated the building of a more stable political system. The year 1945 was also a turning point demographically and economically, after which France acquired an energy not seen for half a century. Striking new population growth and a rising standard of living increased demand for consumer goods and for more education and other services from the state. Women, enfranchised in 1944 by a wartime decree, exercised their newly acquired right to vote and gradually improved their economic status.Having dealt with some of the collaborators, the new government sought to build on the patriotic spirit of the Resistance, hoping to synthesize unity out of the myth that nearly everyone had been a resistor. The government enacted fresh reforms, extending the vote to women. But political differences soon resurfaced, and parties quickly formed. The political right, which had been discredited by its association with Vichy, was in disarray. A new centrist party, the Christian Democratic Mouvement Republicain Populaire, or MRP, emerged and won about 25 percent of the votes in the fall 1945 legislative election, as did the older socialist and communist parties. The National Assembly drew up a new constitution amid protracted controversy. It soon became clear that the constitution would mandate another parliamentary regime, not the presidential system that de Gaulle favored. De Gaulle resigned in January 1946 and spent the next 12 years in virtual political exile. The assembly approved a proposed constitution calling for a state dominated by a single-chambered legislature, but the voters rejected it, fearing it would facilitate a communist takeover of the whole government. In October 1946 the voters approved a second draft, which proposed a two-chambered legislature, but included mechanisms to make it easier to pass legislation than under the Third Republic. The Fourth Republic was born.During the 12 years of its existence, the Fourth Republic witnessed a string of relatively short-lived governments that over time tracked more and more to the right. None was particularly distinguished, except for that of the Radical Pierre Mends-France, who sought to breathe life into the republic through a series of reforms inspired by British economist John Maynard Keynes. Two major items dominated the political agenda: the economy and decolonization.1.Economic Issues

At the end of World War II, the French economy suffered from low production and an excess of money, which led to rapid inflation. The Vichy experiments at planning and the postwar nationalization of key industriescoal, gas, electricity, and some banks and insurance companiesprepared the way for bold efforts to energize the economy. Beginning in 1946, Jean Monnet, head of the state planning commission, administered a program to break through traditional economic bottlenecks by stimulating investment and thereby production. Part of the investment capital was provided by the United States under the Marshall Plan. In addition, France and other European nations recognized how economic isolationism had undermined all their economies during the 1930s. They began to form international associations to promote more broadly based economic growth and to lay the basis for possible long-term political integration. An additional incentive to form such associations was the fear that an economically weak and politically divided western Europe would invite further expansion by the Soviet Union, which after World War II had established a broad band of satellite countries in eastern and central Europe. In 1951 France joined with West Germany and other European nations in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the brainchild of the French statesman Robert Schuman. The ECSC led to the formation in 1957 of the European Economic Community, known as the Common Market, a trade association that included Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Although generally successful, reduction of tariff barriers tended to benefit large producers at the expense of smaller ones. In the 1950s many small producers backed a short-lived, right-wing protest movement for tax relief, led by the shopkeeper Pierre Poujade. The movement failed, but it expressed resentment against modernization that would show itself more forcefully later.2.Decolonization

Overall the Fourth Republic dealt successfully with economic issues, but it was less successful in resolving colonial ones. Decolonization eventually brought down the regime, much as the Franco-Prussian War had terminated the Second Empire and World War II the Third Republic. The sprawling French Empire, like those of other European nations, faced widespread revolts after World War II. In Indochina, resistance movements had been organized to oppose the Japanese, who had occupied the area during World War II. After the war, these movements were redirected against French imperialism. From 1946 to 1954 the French army attempted to suppress the resistance movements in Indochina, but it was dealt a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 (see First Indochina War). Prime Minister Mends-France arranged for as graceful a diplomatic and military withdrawal from Indochina as was possible under the circumstances, and he preempted trouble in Morocco and Tunisia by conceding independence. The prime minister faced a much more difficult situation in Algeria, where the vast majority of Arab Algerians wanted independence but the 1 million European settlers there demanded the continued protection of French rule. A violent independence movement began in 1954, and increasingly large numbers of French troops were sent to Algeria to put it down. The movement escalated into a virtual civil war involving the use of terror and torture. Extremists in the French army and their sympathizers who feared a French pullout from Algeria plotted to bring down the French government. By 1958 it was clear that the Fourth Republic could not resolve the crisis (see Algerian War of Independence). Supporters of Charles de Gaulle, who had bided his time in retirement, plotted to use the turmoil to put him in power under a new constitution, and eventually a smooth transition was arranged. De Gaulle became the last prime minister of the Fourth Republic. In May 1958 the National Assembly vested him with full power for six months and the authority to draft a new constitution, to be approved by the voters. Then in June the Assembly dissolved itself. The Fourth Republic was dead.J.The Fifth Republic

A new constitution for Frances Fifth Republic was drafted by a committee headed by Gaullist Michel Debr. The new constitution was a hybrid of the presidential and parliamentary systems. It pruned back the powers of the two-chambered legislature and granted the president considerably more power than the presidents of previous regimes. But it also maintained a prime minister, who was chosen by the president yet needed the support of the legislature. Perhaps because the first president was likely to be the charismatic de Gaulle, the constitution did not spell out the distribution of power between the president and prime minister. This ambiguity would create uncertainties later, but it also allowed for flexibility in situations in which the presidency and the legislature were controlled by different parties. The constitution was approved by 80 percent of the voters in September 1958. The elections that followed gave a new Gaullist party a near majority in the legislature, while the left, which had opposed the new constitution, lost badly. Following procedures stipulated by the new constitution, which gave the right to choose the president to a college of local officials, de Gaulle, not surprisingly, was made president. De Gaulle chose Debr as his first prime minister.1.The De Gaulle Years

De Gaulle attempted to keep the French colonial empire together by granting more autonomy to the remaining colonies within a new French Community. But in the end he had to agree to their overwhelming demands for independence. The Algerian crisis, which had brought him back to power, was the toughest problem on his agenda. De Gaulle had led the differing parties to believe he was sympathetic to their opposite positions. He had misleadingly assured the French Algerians that I have understood you. But he gradually recognized the hopelessness of continued repression in Algeria, and in 1962 he reached agreement with the insurgents in meetings at Evian, France. Dedicated soldier, brilliant strategist, and stubborn political ally, Charles de Gaulle rose from the ranks of the French military to become president of France in 1959. De Gaulle achieved his goals of securing independence and a powerful political role for France through strong leadership and unswerving loyalty to his country. During three decades, he managed to maintain a closed and guarded private life, remaining an enigma to all but his family and closest associates. This profile of de Gaulle, written by French sociologist and journalist Raymond Aron toward the end of the presidents first term, appeared in the 1964 Colliers Year Book.

The Evian Accords, which 90 percent of French voters also approved, provided for an Algerian referendum on independence. A majority of Algerians voted for independence. Even before the accords were reached, however, a group of military officers and colonials organized the Secret Army Organization (OAS), which conspired to overthrow the government. De Gaulle put down this rebellion in 1962, ending the Algerian crisis. French Algerians remained bitter over what they saw as de Gaulles sellout. Most of them also had to endure the insult of living in a France governed by their nemesis, de Gaulle, after having suffered the injury of leaving Algeria forever.De Gaulle envisioned a greater role for France in world affairs than it had played under the Fourth Republic. With the Algerian crisis settled and Soviet expansionism into Europe more or less contained, de Gaulle set out to create and lead a group of nations distinct from the American and Soviet superpowers. To give this group teeth and to gain independence from the United States, he initiated a successful, if expensive, program to develop nuclear weapons. Then in 1967 he pulled France out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a defense alliance led by the United States that France had joined earlier to provide a common front against the USSR.

De Gaulle maintained cordial relations with former French colonies and even intervened in Canadian internal affairs by declaring solidarity with Canadian Francophones who were demanding independence for the province of Qubec. He also prevented Britain from joining the Common Market on the grounds that it was too closely tied to the United States. At the same time, he forged stronger ties with West Germany. In the end, de Gaulle did make the French feel that they continued to be an important presence in international affairs, even after their once extensive empire had crumbled.

At home de Gaulle worked to strengthen the franc, which in the late 1950s was again in trouble, instituting devaluations and government austerity measures. Whatever the effect of these measures, the economy experienced another growth spurt in the 1960s, which added credibility to the Fifth Republic. To enhance his authority, de Gaulle had the constitution altered in 1962 to provide for the direct election of the president, beginning with the next election, in 1965. De Gaulle was elected to a second term as president in 1965, but he had a harder time winning than expected. He failed to get a majority of votes in the first round of the election. Even in the second round, his margin of victory was only 10 percent over that of his challenger, Franois Mitterrand.

However, de Gaulle still seemed unremovable and irreplaceable in 1968, when he faced his worst crisis. That May, a student protest movement escalated into a massive national strike, paralyzing the country. These developments drew on multiple resentments that had been building against the Fifth Republic for years, particularly among the young and the working class. De Gaulle wisely retired from the scene, waiting for the country to grow tired of the chaos. He then boldly reentered, presenting himself as the only alternative to anarchy and promising university reforms for the students and wage increases for the workers. In the legislative elections of June 1968, de Gaulles party won a crushing victory. But de Gaulles prestige had declined greatly, and he ruled with less mastery than before. Aging, tired, and apparently looking for an exit, in 1969 he pledged to leave office if the voters rejected his proposal to restructure the Senate. It was rejected and de Gaulle resigned. The most prominent French leader of the 20th century made perhaps the strangest departure from politics in all French history. With de Gaulle gone, Gaullism became an affair of more ordinary politicians. The Fifth Republic, which de Gaulle had previously seemed to embody, became more depersonalized and institutionalized. De Gaulle was succeeded as president by the much less commanding Georges Pompidou, who was closely tied to big business. Pompidou was less committed to French intervention in world politics than de Gaulle had been, and he permitted Britain to enter the Common Market. In economic matters, he leaned more toward a laissez-faire position than had de Gaulle, and his administration undertook relatively few new initiatives. When Pompidou died in 1974, he was succeeded by Valry Giscard dEstaing, who was not a Gaullist but the leader of the center-right Independent Republicans. A technocrat by training, Giscard had a progressive agenda. He proposed to protect the environment, legalize contraception and abortion, lower the voting age, and redistribute taxes. He was successful in most of these initiatives. However, his popularity was undercut by the first major economic downturn since World War II, which caused unemployment and inflation to grow. He was defeated in 1981 by Franois Mitterrand, whose Socialist Party also won a majority in legislative elections.2.The Socialist Era

An able political strategist, Mitterrand had rebuilt the Socialist Party during the 1970s, working first with the Communist Party and then apart from it. His decisive victory in 1981 marked the first major swing to the left since the Popular Front in the 1930s. Even more significantly, it was the first time power had been passed to an opposing party without a major change to the constitution. It seemed that the Fifth Republic was a regime that both left and right had learned to live within. After Mitterrands election, struggle among the major political parties centered not on which one offered the most popular, distinctive vision of the future, but on which one appeared best able to achieve commonly desired goals of economic growth and political stability. Ideological differences between left and right mattered less than before; voters were now looking for competent leadership.One indication that voters were abandoning traditional ideological causes was a major drop in support for the once powerful French Communist Party in the elections of 1981. The French Communists were unable or unwilling to follow the example of the more successful Italian Communist Party, which broke with Soviet Marxist orthodoxy. The French Communist Partys refusal to innovate structurally or ideologically led to the loss of the support of many intellectuals and workers. The Communist Party henceforth exerted only marginal political power, although its decline was temporarily masked by the appointment of four Communist Party members to the cabinet of Mitterrands first prime minister, Pierre Mauroy.Mitterrand decentralized power by allowing localities more self-government. He enacted a string of new reform measures that gave workers new rights to bargain collectively, raised the minimum wage, and increased family subsidies and old-age pensions. The death penalty was abolished, and new prisons were built to alleviate overcrowding. The government nationalized the nations major banks, as well as a number of large industries. By 1983 the government controlled 13 of Frances 20 largest companies. In the end, however, these reforms did not add up to a successful economic or fiscal strategy. Deficits escalated and the economy failed to expand under the governments stimulation, leading to greater unemployment, inflation, and trade deficits. After two years of left-wing euphoria, the Mitterrand regime was losing its popular support, while the right regained strength.When the Socialists tried to impose controls on state-subsidized, private Catholic schools, they provoked one of the largest popular demonstrations in French history. A new extreme right-wing movement, the National Front, emerged, led by a former paratrooper, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The National Front drew its support chiefly for its anti-immigrant proposals, which proved especially popular among unemployed older males. It won over 10 percent of the vote in some elections. Although the National Front divided the right, the government could not afford politically or economically to continue on its earlier course and began dropping its socialist agenda. Budgets for social programs were slashed, and private industry was favored with tax cuts. The economy improved somewhat, although unemployment continued to rise.Mitterrand hoped to divide the right-wing opposition by introducing proportional representation in elections to national and regional assemblies. The new system, which awarded seats to parties according to their share of the vote, was intended to favor small splinter parties and make it more difficult for stable majority coalitions to form. Mitterrands reform allowed the National Front to claim more than 6 percent of seats in the National Assembly in the legislative elections of 1986. But the left lost anyway. For the first time in the Fifth Republic, the president came from a different part of the political spectrum than did the prime minister and the majority in the legislature. In fact, cohabitation, as it was called, worked more smoothly than some observers had predicted. Mitterrand dealt primarily with foreign affairs, and the new Gaullist prime minister, Jacques Chirac, focused on domestic matters. This arrangement lasted only until 1988, when the Socialists won a slim margin in the legislature after Mitterrand defeated Chirac in the presidential elections. Cohabitation was tried again without much friction in 1993, when the Socialists again lost control of the legislature and Edouard Balladur, a Gaullist, became prime minister. In 1995 Chirac succeeded Mitterrand as president, but he, too, had to contend with cohabitation after just two years in power. The center-right lost control of the legislature in 1997, and Chirac was obliged to appoint a Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin. Cohabitation sharply constrained Chiracs political influence. He was unable to prevent the left-wing majority from instituting major reforms, including 1998 legislation to shorten the work week from 39 to 35 hours (which took effect in 2000) in an effort to increase employment opportunities. 3.Ghosts of the Vichy Past

After punishing thousands of people who collaborated with the German-backed Vichy regime in World War II, the French in the 1950s and 1960s sought to forget about the Vichy past. Although many people guilty of heinous crimes remained at large, the trials of Vichyite collaborators were routinely halted under pressure from powerful state officials with compromising pasts of their own. Prior to the 1990s, no French president had officially acknowledged the role played by the French state in the commission of crimes against humanity during the war. Rather, to foster a badly needed sense of national unity, most French parties, especially the Gaullists, cultivated the myth that nearly everyone had belonged to the French Resistance. As time passed and the Fifth Republic acquired stability, France became more willing to reexamine critically the Vichy legacy. Path-breaking research beginning in the 1970s exploded the myth of near universal participation in the Resistance and proved beyond doubt the willingness of Vichy leaders to collaborate with Nazi Germany. The French soon began revisiting the Vichy years in a growing flow of books, documentaries, and films, most of which confirmed the new research. In 1995 President Jacques Chirac publicly acknowledged the role of the French people and government in abetting crimes under German occupation. Two years later French Catholic bishops apologized for the churchs failure to resist the deportation and murder of Jews more vigorously, and the leaders of the French police union apologized for police participation in the roundup of Jews. Also in 1997, the government initiated procedures to return artworks and other property stolen from French Jews during World War II by the Vichy authorities.The most controversial aspect of this wrenching reassessment of the Vichy years was a new round of trials directed against collaborators who had yet to be tried and punished. Painful memories were already stirred in 1987 during the trial of Klaus Barbie, a notorious German Gestapo (secret state police) officer. Barbie was convicted of crimes against humanity committed in Vichy France and sentenced to life imprisonment. Other trials followed. In 1991, Ren Bousquet, an important French police official in the Vichy government, was indicted for crimes against humanity. Bousquet had previously escaped trial with the help of powerful friends, but he was assassinated before the trial began. In 1994, Paul Touvier, a French member of the Vichy militia who worked under Barbie, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. Touvier had been sentenced to death for treason shortly after Frances liberation, but he had escaped his sentence with the help of influential allies, including conservatives within the Catholic Church. In 1998, Maurice Papon, an administrator in the Vichy regime and later a Gaullist minister, was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity and sentenced to ten years in prison. After escaping to Switzerland, Papon was extradited to France in 1999, where he served three years in prison and was released in 2002 on grounds of ill health. Papons trial was likely to be the last of its kind, leaving the French public divided over whether such trials had even begun to rectify the atrocities committed by the defendants.4.Economy and Society After World War I

a.Stagnation Between the Wars

Despite dramatic ups and downs resulting from World War I and the worldwide depression of the 1930s, France changed relatively little economically and socially between the two world wars. By 1924 the French had again reached their 1914 levels of industrial production. Although industrial production grew another 40 percent by 1929, three-quarters of this increase was lost during the global depression. Agriculture was relatively stagnant during the same period. Production of some crops, notably wheat, became more efficient, but overall, French agriculture lagged increasingly behind that of other nations. It was, for example, only one-third as efficient (measured in output per farmer) as agriculture in the United States. Partly as a result of the large number of Frenchmen killed in World War I, population growth between the wars was sluggish. The most striking demographic trend was the continued immigration of foreigners. By the 1930s 2.5 million immigrants lived in France, making it Europes foremost melting pot. However, some of these newcomers returned home when the employment situation deteriorated during the depression. During the interwar period, the standard of living rose only slightly. Workers and small farmers, in particular, saw barely any improvements in their quality of life. Demographic and income stagnation meant little growth in consumer demand, delaying the onset of a consumer society. Modern lifestyles and an artistic avant-garde could be found in Paris and a few other areas, but most regions, especially in the center and south, showed few signs of change. On the eve of World War II, a full half of the population still lived in agricultural communities. Feminism in this period was relatively inactive, and the legal and economic condition of women improved very little. Partly because the population was growing so slowly, females were constantly reminded of their natural duty to become mothers, while contraceptives and abortion were banned. The frozen condition of the French economy and society undoubtedly underlay often-heard charges that France had become so decadent that it could not meet the challenges of modern international economic and political competition.b.Post-World War II Growth

The end of World War II marked a decisive economic and social turning point. The war cost France about 600,000 dead, but this was less than half the death toll of World War I. The French population surged significantly in the late 1940s, reversing decades of little growth. By 1962 the population had reached 46.5 million, by 1975, 52.7 million, and by 1995, 58.1 million. Some of this increase was due to more births among native-born French women, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1990s, with the spread of birth control and the aging of the French population, population increases came largely from immigration, mostly from southern Europe and northern Africa. By 1975 about 4 million immigrants lived in France, making it more racially and ethnically diverse than at any time since the barbarian invasions of the early Middle Ages. Immigrants provided much needed labor in boom periods, but when unemployment rose in the 1980s and 1990s, their presence was resented. This resentment prompted support for the anti-immigrant policies of the National Front. Prejudice against immigrant workers was also fueled by their comparatively low standard of living.Increasing population, government planning, funds from the Marshall Plan, and greater European integration sparked a boom in industrial production, which rose 80 percent between 1950 and 1958. Agriculture was transformed by additional mechanization, as the number of tractors increased sixfold between 1945 and 1980. As productivity rose, the number of farmers declined steeply, from 35 percent of the population in 1945 to 6 percent in 1990, nearly severing the nation from its peasant roots. The economy grew at an average annual rate of 4.5 percent between 1949 and 1959, and 5.8 percent between 1959 and 1970. Altogether, the gross national product increased fivefold between 1946 and 1977. Since then, economic growth has been more sluggish, due partly to oil price increases in the 1970s and increasing competition from abroad.

The benefits of this growth trickled down to ordinary citizens in the form of increases in real wages, especially after 1960. A large variety of consumer goods became widely available and affordable, raising the standard of living. Higher standards of living led to growth in the service sector of the economy, which by the 1990s absorbed more than half the national work force. The state became an increasingly important employer as the range of government services and pensions expanded. The government established a system of state-sponsored medical care, which paid the major costs of treatment for most citizens. Slowly the state also expanded its educational and research institutions. Between 1950 and 1984, the number of baccalaureate students rose from 32,000 to 249,500, reflecting the increasing importance of education and the declining importance of land as the basis for a successful career. These changes were accompanied by a slow change in the status of women. Women were granted the vote in 1944, and they improved their levels of education. Contraception and abortion were legalized in the 1970s, giving women more control over their reproductive lives. By 2000 women provided 45 percent of the national work force.Although women made many gains since World War II, they did not achieve political representation in proportion to their numbers. Thus, for example, in 1993 women held barely 6 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. During the 1990s, feminists and their sympathizers lobbied for a law of parity that was intended to force the nomination of more female candidates. Enacted in 2000, this law required that at least half of all candidates chosen by parties to run for municipal office be women. It also reduced state subsidies to parties that declined to meet this requirement. Most French voters supported the law as a means to rectify the gender imbalance. The law had some success in reducing gender inequality, but it did not produce gender-balanced political representation. Some parties evaded the law by accepting lower government subsidies, with the result that in 2002 women still held only about 12 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies.c.Social and Economic Outlook

Today, France continues to face significant social and economic problems, some of them a product of Frances growth since World War II. Despite the proliferation of government social welfare programs, wealth in France remains more unevenly distributed by social class than in any other northern European country, and regional variations are significant as well. Economic development has produced major environmental problems that need to be resolved. Among them is the escalating problem of air pollution, in large part the result of the increasing number of automobiles in Paris and other cities. Contraception and abortion have led to a declining birthrate since the 1970s, which in turn has led to the aging of the French population. Budgets for social services have escalated beyond taxpayers willingness to support them, requiring cutbacks in free services and possibly putting the whole French welfare state in jeopardy.During the 1990s the unemployment rate climbed to more than 12 percent, thereby replacing inflation as Frances most critical economic problem. In 2004 the unemployment rate stood at 9.9 percent, and the French economic outlook remained cloudy. Growing international competition and a downturn in the U.S. economy in the late 1990s reduced demand for goods produced in Europe, with the result that in 2002 the French economy grew at its lowest rate in years.5.France and the European Union

The establishment of the European Union (EU) in 1993, a successor of the European Community, had profound consequences for France and other European nations. Power over a wide range of policies, once exercised solely by European national governments, gradually shifted toward the EU. The creation of the EU marked the evolution of the European Community from a largely economic organization into a political one, which now includes a European Parliament. The Maastricht Treaty of 1991, which created the EU pending the treatys ratification by member states, provided a new impetus toward further European integration. Among its provisions was the call for a single European currency. This currency, the euro, was introduced for limited purposes on January 1, 1999, much to the surprise of many observers. They had been skeptical because the EU had not always been able to agree on a common economic policy. In early 2002 euro notes and coins became legal tender and entered circulation, replacing national currencies in 12 of the 15 EU member states. French governments of both the center-left and center-right have consistently supported European integration under the auspices of the EU, and this support has perhaps been Frances most significant contribution to world affairs since it dissolved its overseas empire. A Frenchman, Jacques Delors, provided strong leadership as president of the European Commission, an agency of the EU, from 1984 to 1994. France has favored European integration for several reasons. First, as Charles de Gaulle had recognized in the 1960s, France without an empire was too small a nation to play a major role in international affairs. Frances influence abroad promised to be enhanced if it joined with other nations of Europe to pursue a common foreign policy. Second, trans-European institutions, such as those of the EU, could help restrain Germany, whose great industrial and financial power was bound, in the absence of such institutions, to dominate Europe economically. Membership in the EU would allow France and other nations to have greater economic influence in Europe through common policies on trade and interest rates. Third, at a time when growing international competition meant that France had to compete more intensively to sell its goods abroad, participation in the EU ensured that France would have greater access to the markets of its neighbors.No doubt the French economic situation would have been worse had the EU not acted to promote growth. Agreements between the EU and several eastern European countries during the 1990s made markets in those countries more accessible, and successful implementation of the euro facilitated commerce across national borders. However, the extent to which greater European integration will be, on balance, a boon to the French economy and society is controversial and uncertain. New opportunities for reaching foreign markets must take into account the difficulty of maintaining domestic wage rates that are much higher than wage rates abroad. Greater European integration also threatens to increase the influence of large multinational corporations on national policies while limiting the ability of countries such as France to address important domestic concerns, such as environmental pollution. As they become integrated into wider and deeper economic and political networks, France and the other EU members may well be compelled to develop a broader definition of the nation than they have ever known before.The EUs decision to welcome 10 new member states in 2004 brought integration questions to the forefront. In June 2004 the EU member states agreed to the final text of the first EU constitution, which was primarily developed to streamline EU institutions for an enlarged EU. The final text was the result of more than two years of draft negotiations aimed at facilitating greater integration while maintaining the autonomy of member states. Built on the founding treaties of the EU, the constitution further defined the roles and powers of the EU, its members, and EU institutions, such as the European Parliament. Ratification of the constitution required approval by all 25 member states (including the 10 new members), either by popular referendum or by parliamentary vote. 6.Recent Political Developments

Meanwhile, in 2000 the term of the French president was reduced from seven years to five years by a popularly approved amendment to the constitution. The main argument in favor of this change was that it would discourage further rounds of cohabitation (power sharing), which had become associated with deadlocked government. Under the amendment, legislative and presidential elections are more likely to occur in the same year and hence to register similar outcomes. The shortened presidential term took effect in 2002.a.The Return of the Center-Right

Jacques Chirac was overwhelmingly reelected in the presidential election of May 2002. In a surprise showing the previous month, National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen had finished slightly ahead of Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin during the first round of presidential balloting. Appalled by the success of Le Pen, over 1 million people took to the streets in protest before the second round of balloting. Chirac swept the election, winning the second round of balloting with more than 80 percent of the popular vote. The outcome was a stunning defeat for the Socialist Party and for Jospin, who resigned his post and retired from politics.In the June 2002 legislative elections a coalition of center-right parties backing Chirac, called the Union for the Presidential Majority, captured an absolute majority in the National Assembly, thereby completing the rout of the left. (The coalition was later renamed the Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP.) The elections ended five years of cohabitation between Chirac and the Socialist-led National Assembly and gave Chirac significant new power over the direction of the French government. Chirac appointed Jean-Pierre Raffarin as prime minister of the new government. Raffarin, a member of the small, pro-free-market Liberal Democracy party, had led an interim government since May, following Jospins resignation. Raffarin pledged to support Chiracs conservative reform agenda, including a major crackdown on crime, tax cuts, and the easing of labor regulations.Despite the lopsided conservative victories, the record of Chirac and the new government, particularly its economic policies, would be watched closely by voters. Of special concern were tax cuts introduced by the government in hopes of spurring economic growth and boosting future government tax revenues. In the short term, the cuts threatened to expand Frances budget deficit beyond 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a limit imposed by the EU as a requirement for adopting the EUs common currency, the euro. Frances budget deficit exceeded the 3 percent limit two years running, in 2002 and 2003, leading the European Commission to issue a formal warning to France to restrain government spending. However, the commission subsequently announced it would suspend its excessive deficit procedure, thereby sparing France from fines for violating the EU deficit ceiling. With little room to maneuver, the French government was forced to reduce planned tax cuts in the 2003 budget, provoking sharp protests from the right. Nevertheless, the budget deficit again exceeded 3 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, the persistence of high annual unemployment rates in France drew strong criticism from the left.In 2003 the government announced a proposal to restructure the public sector pension system, prompting widespread demonstrations. Later that year, both houses of parliament approved the reforms, which required employees in the public sector to work more years to be eligible for full state pensions. But opposition to Raffarins economic reforms raised questions about the governing coalitions ability to maintain popular support. In local elections held in March 2004, center-right parties lost control of 13 regions to leftist partiesa result that analysts attributed to growing public discontent with the governments economic policies.b.Vote on the EU Constitution

In July 2004 Chirac announced that France would hold a referendum on the new EU constitution. In June the EU member states had agreed to the constitutions final text, ending extensive negotiations. Chiracs move signaled his confidence that French voters would support the constitution, as France was not bound by its own constitution to hold a referendum. Under Frances constitution, the result of any referendum would be legally binding. Prime Minister Raffarin led the governments campaign in favor of the EU constitution, holding firm to the official position that it would strengthen Frances position in Europe. Leaders of the UMP and the Socialist Party also supported it. Parties of both the far right and far left led the opposition campaign, joined by some trade unions, farmers groups, and antiglobalization activists. They raised many doubts about the EU constitution, charging among other things that it would undermine national sovereignty and allow unrestrained free market policies. The possible accession of Turkey to the EU, widely opposed in France, also became a hot-button issue.In the referendum held in May 2005, almost 55 percent of the French electorate voted against the proposed EU constitution. Analysts attributed the result to dissatisfaction with the government, particularly its handling of the economy, in addition to fears about the implications of an enlarged and more integrated EU. With confidence in the government badly shaken by the result, Raffarin tendered his resignation. In his place Chirac appointed a trusted protg, former foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, who quickly formed a new government. Chirac announced the top priority of the new government would be to lower the countrys high unemployment. c.Civil Unrest

The need for more jobs and better economic opportunity was further emphasized when rioting broke out in France in late October 2005. Decades of poverty and racism boiled over after two boys were accidentally killed while fleeing police in a suburb of Paris, sparking nearly three weeks of rioting in the economically depressed suburbs and quickly spreading to hundreds of other French cities and towns. Nearly 3,000 people were arrested during this period, as protesters set thousands of cars on fire and clashed with police. Much of the violence was instigated by people of African descent living in France, who suffer from some of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the country. It was the worst period of civil unrest in France since student uprisings and a general strike paralyzed the country in 1968. The French government declared a state of emergency to help control the situation, while at the same time announcing new job programs and economic assistance to address the deeper causes of the crisis.Even greater unrest broke out in early 2006, after the French government proposed a change in labor law to allow employers to fire young workers during a two-year trial period. Under the new law, a worker could be fired without requiring the employer to give a reason. The government claimed the change would give employers more flexibility, leading to greater job growth and reducing Frances high unemployment rate. In February 2006 students began demonstrating against the proposed labor law reform at various French colleges and universities, shutting down many schools. The demonstrations grew in March, escalating into violence that resulted in hundreds of arrests, much like the protests in late 2005. In early April more than a million people across France took part in raucous demonstrations, demanding that the proposed law be repealed. Under mounting pressure, Chirac and de Villepin backed down in mid-April. A weakened version of the law was quickly passed, removing the controversial provision and emphasizing more job training and internships. d.The Sarkozy Presidency

Chiracs second term expired in 2007, and UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidential election in May. Sarkozy secured 53 percent of the vote in the runoff against socialist candidate Sgolne Royal, who took 47 percent. A divisive and controversial figure in French politics, Sarkozy gained a reputation as a law-and-order hardliner while serving as minister of the interior. In November 2005 he was accused of fanning the violence in impoverished urban areas after he called the rioters scum and said that immigrant neighborhoods should be cleaned out with a power hose. In his campaign for the presidency, Sarkozy promised to re-energize the French economy and reduce unemployment through restrictions on the 35-hour work week, tax cuts, and stricter controls on immigration. He named Franois Fillon, a former social affairs minister, as prime minister. In his previous post Fillon pushed through reform of Frances pension system despite considerable opposition. Sarkozys UMP lost seats in the National Assembly in elections in June 2007. Although the UMP still maintained a majority, it had predicted a landslide in its favor. Instead the UMP went from 359 to 314 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly. The Socialist Party gained 36 seats to bring its total to 185 seats. The History section of this article was contributed by Thomas E. KaiserMicrosoft Encarta 2009. 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.