[1945 - Present] The Modern Republic: Post-War France to Present Day

In 1945, France was a nation both liberated and broken. The joyous clamor of victory bells could not drown out the silence from towns where a generation of young men was missing, nor could the tricolor flags fluttering from Parisian balconies hide the rubble-strewn streets of cities like Le Havre and Caen. The country was physically and morally exhausted. From these ashes arose the Fourth Republic, a political system born of compromise and plagued by instability. Ministries rose and fell with bewildering speed—24 governments in just 12 years—paralyzing decision-making as France faced the monumental tasks of reconstruction and the painful, violent unraveling of its colonial empire, most notably in Indochina and the increasingly bloody conflict in Algeria. By 1958, the war in Algeria had brought France to the brink of civil war and military coup. The Fourth Republic was powerless. In the crisis, the nation turned to the one figure who seemed to stand above the political fray: Charles de Gaulle. The wartime hero returned from his self-imposed exile on the condition that he be allowed to write a new constitution. This was the birth of the Fifth Republic, the system that governs France to this day. It replaced parliamentary chaos with a powerful, authoritative presidency. De Gaulle embodied a “certain idea of France”: a nation proud, independent, and a major player on the world stage, beholden neither to Washington nor Moscow. He withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command and aggressively pursued an independent nuclear deterrent, the *force de frappe*, ensuring France’s seat at the top table of global powers. While de Gaulle reshaped France’s political identity, the country was undergoing a breathtaking economic and social transformation. The period from roughly 1945 to 1975 is known as *Les Trente Glorieuses*—the Thirty Glorious Years. Propelled by the Marshall Plan and state-led industrial policy, the French economy grew at an astonishing average of 5% per year. This was not just an abstract number; it was a revolution in daily life. For the first time, ordinary families could afford a refrigerator, a television, and a car, most iconically the quirky and ubiquitous Citroën 2CV. A post-war baby boom swelled the population, and to house these new families, massive, modernist housing projects, the *grands ensembles*, rose from the fields on the peripheries of major cities. It was an era of dizzying progress and technological optimism, symbolized by the joint Franco-British development of the Concorde, the world's first supersonic passenger jet, and the launch of a pioneering civilian nuclear energy program that would eventually provide over 70% of the nation's electricity. Yet, beneath the surface of this prosperous, conservative, and patriarchal Gaullist France, a new generation was simmering with discontent. They had not known the war, only the boom years, and they found the society built by their parents to be rigid, authoritarian, and boring. In May 1968, the pot boiled over. It began with student protests at the University of Nanterre, spreading to the Sorbonne in Paris. The issues were varied—university reform, opposition to the Vietnam War, sexual liberation—but they coalesced into a wholesale rejection of the established order. The government’s heavy-handed police response backfired spectacularly, galvanizing public sympathy. Soon, the students were joined by workers. In a matter of weeks, France was paralyzed by the largest general strike in its history, with up to 11 million people—a quarter of the population—off the job. With graffiti proclaiming “Beneath the paving stones, the beach!” a spirit of joyous anarchy reigned. De Gaulle seemed to lose control, secretly flying to a French military base in Germany to secure the army's loyalty. For a moment, revolution felt possible. But he returned, delivering a defiant radio address, dissolving the National Assembly, and calling a snap election, which his party won in a landslide. The protests fizzled out, but nothing would ever be the same. May ‘68 failed as a political revolution, but it was a monumental cultural success, ushering in a more liberal, individualistic France and cracking the foundations of the old social order. The 1970s brought an end to the party. The 1973 oil crisis slammed the brakes on the Trente Glorieuses, ushering in an era of economic anxiety and rising unemployment that the French would dub *la morosité* (the gloom). Politically, the post-de Gaulle era saw a continued modernization under presidents Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who championed projects like the futuristic Centre Pompidou and the development of the TGV high-speed rail network. But the biggest political earthquake was yet to come. In 1981, France stunned the world by electing François Mitterrand, the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic. For the political Left, it was a moment of ecstatic triumph after decades in the wilderness. Mitterrand’s government immediately unleashed a wave of sweeping social reforms: the death penalty was abolished, the work week was shortened to 39 hours, and a fifth week of paid vacation was granted to all workers. Like a pharaoh of old, Mitterrand also sought to leave his mark on the capital with his *Grands Projets*, a series of monumental architectural works that redefined the Parisian landscape. These included the controversial but now-beloved glass Pyramid at the Louvre, the Opéra Bastille, and the colossal Grande Arche de la Défense. His presidency also introduced France to “cohabitation,” the awkward political arrangement where a president from one party is forced to govern with a prime minister from another, a recurring feature of French politics since. Throughout this period, France’s destiny became ever more entwined with that of its neighbors. The Franco-German partnership, born from the ashes of three wars, became the engine of European integration. France was a key architect of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which transformed the European Economic Community into the European Union. In 2002, the country made a profound and symbolic break with its past, retiring the historic French Franc for the new single currency, the Euro. Yet this embrace of a European identity coincided with growing internal fractures. Persistent unemployment, particularly among the youth and immigrant communities in the sprawling suburban *banlieues*, created a powder keg of social tension that exploded in 2005 with weeks of nationwide riots. Debates over immigration, national identity, and the cherished principle of *laïcité* (a strict form of secularism) grew increasingly polarized. This landscape of uncertainty and resilience has defined 21st-century France. The presidencies of Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, and François Hollande were marked by struggles with economic stagnation and the challenge of the far-right, now rebranded as the National Rally under Marine Le Pen. The nation’s soul was tested by a devastating wave of Islamist terrorism, from the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to the coordinated massacres in Paris in November 2015, which claimed 130 lives. These events forced a painful national conversation about freedom, security, and the very meaning of being French. The 2017 election of the young centrist Emmanuel Macron seemed to offer a break from the old political divides, but his ambitious reform agenda has been met with fierce resistance, from the populist *gilets jaunes* (yellow vests) movement to massive union-led strikes. Today, France stands as a proud, complex nation, a cultural and intellectual powerhouse that continues to wrestle with its colonial past, its place in an integrated Europe, and its vision for a future as turbulent and uncertain as any moment in its long, dramatic history.