ABSTRACT
The Resistance activists had looked forward to a cultural and intellectual renewal as well as a political and social one. Under Charles de Gaulle direction, the country's political institutions were changed and a new regime, the Fifth Republic, established. While Fourth Republic politics appeared to be reverting to the patterns of its pre-war predecessor, the heady experience of the Resistance, the liberation, and the confrontations accompanying the Cold War stimulated intense, sometimes feverish activity among French intellectuals. The de Gaulle, the other "strong man" waiting in the wings, Mends-France wholeheartedly supported parliamentary government. He let the Assembly vote on the European Defense Community, an issue so controversial that no previous Fourth Republic prime minister had been willing to submit it to parliament. But the parliamentary institutions of the Fourth Republic made it an uphill struggle for him to enact his program. The French army was repositioned to fight the guerrillas of the FLN's Algerian Liberation Army.
