Mitterrand master of dark arts
For 14 years, François Mitterrand ruled France, displaying a high political skill and a low cunning that delighted his subjects. By the time he was elected president in 1981, he was known to be a rough customer. He had emerged from the chaos of the post-war liberation claiming to be the leader of an obscure Resistance network. As minister of the interior during the Algerian War, he approved the use of torture. ‘Mitterrand,’ a colleague once said, ‘is not a man with whom one would want to go alone on a tiger hunt.’
The subtitle of this excellent new life – A Study In Ambiguity – is well chosen, since Mitterrand’s career was dogged by allegations that, far from being a resister, he had worked for the Vichy regime.
It was also said that the founder of the French Socialist Party had been a member of the anti-Semitic extreme right before the war, and had joined a pro-fascist terrorist organisation. Philip Short finds no evidence that he did – although as a student, Mitterrand moved in pro-fascist circles.
The key to an understanding of the man is not idealism or conviction, but cold ambition. To a small circle of friends and family, he was charming – most others he just used.
Short has had co-operation from Mitterrand’s surviving circle, including his widow Danielle, and Anne Pingeot, the younger woman with whom he lived for 30 years. As a result, his private life is portrayed with insight and sympathy.
Sometimes, however, Short’s sympathy seems to run away with him. In describing Mitterrand’s early public life, he gives his subject the benefit of the doubt too easily. This is particularly the case with the war. Mitterrand claimed he was a prisoner of war in Germany. Allowed to leave on work detail, he apparently absconded and took a train to France. Short does not query this implausible sequence of events.
But he has written a wonderful summary of the presidential years. By the time Mitterrand defeated President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the elections of 1981, he had become master of the dark arts of French domestic politics. The ease with which he could entrap his opponents was a joy to watch. He lured the communists into coalition, and then destroyed them by imposing policies they loathed.
Short believes Mitterrand was the most significant French statesman of the 20th century, the man who dragged France into the modern era. He argues this case well, although sceptics may be unconvinced. Mitterrand was certainly a man of intellectual agility. But as a statesman, his career seems to have been one long apology for his country, rather than a triumphant affirmation of it.