851.01/3310: Telegram
The American Representative to the French Committee of National Liberation at Algiers (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 4—12:28 p.m.]
13. The Communist delegation to the Provisional Consultative Assembly has made public a resolution submitted to the French Committee of National Liberation urging that the Committee transform itself promptly into a provisional government of the French Republic on the basis of a precise war program and with determined men capable of realizing such a program.
Reflecting the continuing differences with de Gaulle1 over Communist representation on the Committee (see my telegram number 91 December 4 [5], and despatch number 13, December l2), the resolution emphasizes that such a true national government could not be constituted without participation of representatives of the French Communist Party and the Confédération Générale du Travail.
Other steps urged by the Communist resolution include:
- 1.
- More exact determination of the duty of the Commander in Chief and the Commissioner of National Defense.
- 2.
- Creation of a special commissariat to bring the maximum aid to resistance groups in France, coordinating their action immediately with the general war strategy.
- 3.
- Intensification of industrial and agricultural production with greater over all powers for the Commissioner for Production. (A Committee post demanded by the Communists).
- 4.
- Full development of the war spirit through greater activity by the Commissariat for Information. (Another post sought by the Communists, involving reorganization of the press, cinema and radio).
- 5.
- Destruction of all vestiges of a fifth column by ruthless punishment of traitors, involving a decree putting “outside the law” any individuals who had participated in Vichy measures throwing Frenchmen into the service of the enemy, and all persons whether in official position or not who had in any manner aided “collaboration”.
- 6.
- Rapid completion and application of the program of improving the position of Moslems.
- 7.
- Reorganization of the Committee’s diplomatic personnel abroad to make sure that these representatives are imbued with “the sentiment of the new France”.
- 8.
- Reorganization of the Committee’s work so that it would deal only with questions of principle, leaving application of general directives to the various Commissioners, and a clear separation between powers of the Committee and the Government General of Algeria.
Sent to Department. Repeated to London.