Adams Brown Jr. observed in 1940 that 'an examination of the W French stabilization leads straight to the heart of the post-war gold I For their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, I should like to thank Barry Eichengreen, Susan Howson, Charles P. Kindleberger, Larry Neal, Stephen A. Schuker, and anonymous referees. It is a pleasure to thank the Institute for Advanced Study, where this article was written while I was resident as a member of the School of Historical Studies.* Brown, Gold standard reinterpreted, p. 433; the difficulties for central bank cooperation are detailed in Clarke, Central bank cooperation, chs. 6 and 7.
French food rationing was more stringent than that of any other Occupied country in Western Europe in the Second World War, and the nation's resulting aversion to a regime that controlled rations and prices would increase the difficulties of post-war governments. This article investigates the role of French state management in wartime food shortages, assessing the parts played by French policy and German interference in the food shortages, the diversion of supplies to the black market and the inequities in distribution. It finds the French rationing administration to have been poorly organized, but attributes significant responsibility to the German Occupation authorities, whose interference increased the rationing system's dysfunction. French consumers blamed the French state for the problems and relied increasingly on alternate means to supplement inadequate rations. The result was a rationing system that delivered malnourishment, social division and hostility to state management of the food supply.
State measures to confiscate the ‘illicit profits’ earned from commerce with the enemy and the black market in Occupied France are generally considered to have been an abject failure. Economic collaboration and illicit commerce had been widespread. The need to ‘purge’ the profits from black market transactions and economic collaboration was considered essential at Liberation. An examination of the confiscation effort from archival sources shows that the purge achieved limited success, but that complete success was rendered impossible by factors that limited other post-war purges: the shortage of trained personnel and investigative resources, the need for hard evidence for legal procedures (rather than vigilante justice), the efforts of collaborators to cover their tracks, and the evolution of public opinion, which was quickly disappointed by the slow pace of confiscations. Although success was limited, the effort to punish the profiteers it could convict had been necessary, as a matter of elementary fiscal justice and an essential step in the restoration of the authority of the state.
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