ABSTRACT
The first part of the nightmare was the possibility that a man named Edouard Balladur would become president of France on the strength of opinion polls. The Gaullists wanted, for purposes of national reconciliation, unity, and so forth, to emphasize the myth of a France united in Resistance, even within the Vichy regime. This was perfect for people like Mitterrand, eager to downplay their own vacillations and procrastinations. The French chose Mitterrand, as they say, en connaissance de cause, "with direct personal knowledge". Somewhere they knew that they had accepted Marshal Petain, and then they had rejected and rebelled against the cruel German occupation, and then they had accepted De Gaulle as a savior. And they had instinctively reacted as Mitterrand did, when the first shots were fired in the Kabylie on All Souls Day 1954, "Algeria is France!" precipitating the cruelest colonial wars, only coming later, with de Gaulle, to the conclusion that maybe it could no longer be.
