[1946-1958] The Fourth Republic
In the year 1946, France was a nation of ghosts and blueprints. Ghosts haunted the bombed-out cityscapes of places like Caen and Le Havre, leveled by the war that had just ended. They lingered in the memories of a brutal occupation and a bitter, complex liberation. But there were also blueprints, plans for a new France, a new Republic, drawn up by people filled with a desperate, determined hope. The air itself seemed to hum with this contradiction, the smell of dust and rubble mixed with the fervent debates spilling out of cafés and assembly halls. France had been freed, but it was starving, exhausted, and deeply divided. At the head of the provisional government stood a figure of immense stature, both literally and figuratively: General Charles de Gaulle. To many, he was the living embodiment of the French Resistance. He envisioned a new France with a strong leader, a powerful president who could rise above the squabbling of politicians and provide stability. But the people, wary of strongmen after the trauma of the Vichy regime, and the political class, jealous of its own power, rejected his vision. In a dramatic gesture of protest, de Gaulle resigned in January 1946, retreating to his country home to write his memoirs, a modern-day Cincinnatus leaving a city he felt was ungrateful. His departure created a vacuum, and into it stepped the architects of the Fourth Republic.
The constitution they created was, in many ways, the opposite of de Gaulle's vision. It established a classic parliamentary system where power was concentrated in the National Assembly. The President was a largely ceremonial figure, and the government, led by a Prime Minister, could be brought down at any moment by a vote of no confidence. This system was designed to prevent the rise of another dictator, but in doing so, it enshrined a fatal weakness: chronic instability. In the twelve years of its existence, the Fourth Republic would burn through more than twenty different governments, some lasting only a few days. The Prime Minister’s office became a revolving door, a symbol of the political paralysis that would come to define the era, even as the nation itself was undergoing a profound transformation.
Initially, a fragile unity held. The government was a coalition of the three largest parties that had emerged from the Resistance: the Communists, the Socialists, and the new Christian Democratic party, the MRP. But this “tripartisme” shattered within a year. As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe, the Cold War reached Paris. The Communists, loyal to Moscow, were expelled from the government in 1947, becoming a powerful and permanent opposition force. From then on, governments were formed from shaky, short-lived coalitions of centrist parties, constantly battling threats from the Communists on the left and a new political movement on the right, led by the one man who had foreseen this chaos: Charles de Gaulle himself.
Yet, behind this facade of political turmoil, a genuine miracle was taking place. This period marked the beginning of “Les Trente Glorieuses,” the thirty glorious years of unprecedented economic growth that would transform France from a war-torn agricultural nation into a modern industrial power. Fueled by massive aid from the American Marshall Plan, which poured over 2.7 billion dollars into the French economy, and guided by the brilliant technocrat Jean Monnet’s national plan, factories were rebuilt, infrastructure was modernized, and production soared. Gross Domestic Product grew at an average rate of 5% per year. The country was buzzing with a new energy, a drive to rebuild and innovate that stood in stark contrast to the inertia of its government.
This economic boom reshaped French society and daily life. A post-war baby boom put immense pressure on housing, leading to one of the most visible legacies of the era: the construction of vast housing estates, the “grands ensembles,” on the peripheries of major cities. These towers of concrete, with their functional, modernist architecture, were a world away from the romantic image of old Paris. For the families moving into them, they offered unheard-of comforts: central heating, private bathrooms, modern kitchens. Consumer society arrived with a flourish. Refrigerators, washing machines, and televisions, once luxuries, began to appear in ordinary homes. On the roads, a new icon emerged: the quirky, lovable Citroën 2CV. Designed to carry a farmer’s family and a basket of eggs across a plowed field without breaking any, it became the affordable symbol of a newfound freedom and mobility for millions.
Culture was also in flux. The intellectual capital of the world was still Paris, where existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir held court in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, debating freedom and responsibility in a world that had lost its old certainties. American culture, once banned, now flooded in. The French fell in love with American jazz, Hollywood movies, and Coca-Cola. It was also an era of significant social progress. The welfare state, “la Sécurité Sociale,” was established, providing healthcare and pensions for all citizens. And women, having finally won the right to vote in 1944, began to play a more visible, though still limited, role in public life.
But the Fourth Republic was living on borrowed time, haunted by the legacy of another era: its vast colonial empire. The very ideals of liberty and self-determination that France proclaimed at home were being brutally denied in its colonies, a hypocrisy that would tear the Republic apart. The first great wound was Indochina. A bloody war for independence began in 1946, draining the French treasury and costing tens of thousands of lives. The conflict culminated in 1954 with the catastrophic French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The image of the besieged, exhausted French garrison surrendering to the Vietnamese forces of Ho Chi Minh sent a shockwave through France. It was more than a military defeat; it was a deep psychological blow, a humiliation that signaled the beginning of the end of the French empire.
Two years later, in 1956, came another humiliation. In response to the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, France joined with Britain and Israel in a secret pact to invade Egypt. The military operation was a success, but the political fallout was a disaster. Under intense pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, the invading forces were forced into a swift and ignominious withdrawal. The Suez Crisis starkly revealed the new world order: France was no longer a great power that could impose its will on the world. Its foreign policy was subject to the approval of the two new superpowers.
These colonial conflicts were mere tremors before the earthquake that was Algeria. The Algerian War, which erupted in 1954, was the crisis the Fourth Republic could not survive. Algeria was different from other colonies. Legally, it was a part of metropolitan France, and it was home to over one million European settlers, the “pieds-noirs,” who had lived there for generations and considered themselves French. For them, Algerian independence was unthinkable. The ensuing war was one of exceptional brutality, characterized by guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and the systematic use of torture by the French army. The conflict divided French society more deeply than any issue since the Dreyfus Affair. Families, friends, and intellectuals were torn apart, fiercely debating the morality of the war.
By May of 1958, the situation reached its breaking point. In Algiers, a mob of furious settlers, fearing that the government in Paris was preparing to negotiate with the Algerian rebels, seized government buildings. They were supported by senior French army generals, who effectively staged a coup. The army issued an ultimatum to the powerless politicians in Paris: bring back Charles de Gaulle, or they would send paratroopers to seize the capital. The nation teetered on the brink of civil war. The spectacle of the French army threatening to attack the French government revealed the utter collapse of the Fourth Republic’s authority.
Faced with an impossible choice, the panicked leaders of the National Assembly turned to the one man who could command the army’s loyalty and prevent a military takeover. They called upon Charles de Gaulle. After twelve years in the political wilderness, the General returned. He did not come as a dictator, but he came with conditions. He would agree to become Prime Minister only if he were granted emergency powers for six months and tasked with writing a new constitution. On June 1st, 1958, the National Assembly, in a final act of desperation, voted to grant him his wish. In doing so, the Fourth Republic, born of a desire to limit the power of a single man, surrendered its own existence to him. The era was over.
The Fourth Republic remains a paradox in French history. It was a period of systemic political failure that oversaw a remarkable economic and social renaissance. It was an era of modernization, European integration, and rising living standards, yet it was also an era of colonial bloodshed and national humiliation. It was the unstable, chaotic, and ultimately doomed system that, against all odds, laid the foundations of modern France before collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, paving the way for the far more stable, and far more powerful, Fifth Republic.