ABSTRACT
First and foremost, France emerged from the Second World War, technically on the side of the victors, but in reality with a deep-seated sense of defeat which the disappointments of post-war foreign policy gradually transformed into a pessimism, or defeatism, deepened by pre-war memories. All European countries emerged from the war impoverished and faced with the need to adapt themselves to the changed economic, political, and international circumstances of the post-war world. Party conflicts were, therefore, relatively free from bitterness and much of the mutual respect engendered by co-operation in war-time governments survived the ending of the political truce in 1945. The war-time apparatus of planned production and distribution provided ready-made administrative and technical machinery for the application of post-war controls. The tragedy of post-war France is the absence of a positive ideal to set against similar expressions of negativism.
