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He returned to Paris in 1944, the idol of France and commander of 500,000 armed men. Only his own character stood between De Gaulle and a dictator's power. But as France's first postwar President, he had a precise conception of his mission: to restore republican order and "let the people pronounce." He refused to take the drastic action that might have eased France's grievous economic problems. "You won't get me talking economics and finance for a whole afternoon again," he told his Finance Minister irritably one day. Yet at the same time he despised the old "regime of parties." refused to deal with working politicians. "A man equally incapable of monopolizing power and of sharing it," complained one of his ministers.
In the end, the pols prevailed. Under their influence, the French electorate rejected a constitution that would have given France the strong executive De Gaulle believed it needed. In an ill-fated attempt to create national unity, De Gaulle gave the Communists five Cabinet posts, only to have them revile him because he refused them the crucial Ministries of War, Foreign Affairs and Interior. Finally, one cold day in January 1946, the general called in his Cabinet and announced: "You espoused the quarrels of your various parties. It is not this way that I understand things ... I have therefore resolved to abandon office . . . My resolution is not subject to discussion." As De Gaulle walked away, Communist Boss Maurice Thorez broke the stupefied silence. "This departure does not lack grandeur." he said.
Two-Pistol Technique. The twelve years of retirement that followed were in some ways the most educational in De Gaulle's life. After abandoning active efforts at a political comeback in 1953, he continued to drive into Paris from Colombey once a week to hold court in his Spartan Left Bank office on the Rue de Solferino. And because he remained for many Frenchmen a kind of father figure, men of every political current called to confide in him. Without ever soliciting information, De Gaulle became perhaps the best-informed man in France on the inner workings and gaping inadequacies of the Fourth Republic.
Even more educational was the composition of his memoirs. Painstakingly set down in elongated script, the memoirs were written in a classic prose Frenchmen had not seen in a long time—precise yet lyrical, stamped with honor, revealing the essential selflessness of a man dedicated to his nation's grandeur. On the strength of this literary achievement, France's intellectuals—who do so much to set their country's political tone—for the first time gave De Gaulle their wholehearted admiration.* And in the act of reducing his life to book form, the general reviewed his past mistakes, sketched out alternative plans of action that might have worked better. Says one of De Gaulle's associates: "Writing the memoirs made him a political tactician."