Money Talks

A few days before the Allied breakout from Normandy in World War II, a Vichy government train was chugging through central France. Its freight: ten billion French francs (then worth $200 million) for the Bank of France in Limoges. At a tank stop the train was boarded by a gang of armed Maquis, who threw the moneybags into waiting trucks and disappeared into the night. When the Allies reached Limoges a few weeks later, they were feted by a bunch of exceptionally free-spending French partisans. Most freehanded of all was lusty, red-faced Colonel Georges Guingouin.

Guingouin, a Communist, was the hero of Limoges. Instead of attempting to liberate the city in a last-minute revolt against the Germans, as ordered by Communist underground leaders, he had waited for the Germans to capitulate, thus avoiding reprisals against the populace (in a neighboring town, the Maquis moved in too soon; the Nazis killed 99 townspeople in reprisal). Guingouin was elected mayor, showered with medals, and his portrait was hung in the council chamber. Communist Party leaders appeared to overlook his disobedience, and even praised him. But Mayor Guingouin consistently dared to criticize the party's leadership. Early this year party leaders decided to crack down on him.

First with the Smear. He got ten weeks in which to confess publicly that he had erred in 1) not ordering the 1944 rising against the Germans, and 2) quarreling with party leaders. Snapped Guingouin: "When are they going to make their auto-criticism and admit their fundamental error?" The party leaders replied by firing him from all executive party jobs. Guingouin fought back with a stream of letters to Communist journals and a confidential memo saying party bureaucrats had "lost all touch with the working masses." He hinted that, if expelled from the party, he might tell all.

Last week the party expelled Guingouin, and, as usual, beat its victim to the smear. Said Communist L'Echo du Centre: ". . . For many years he [Guingouin] has been disposing of considerable sums, of indeterminate origin, under party control, which have been accumulated and hidden away in various secret places . . . The total of these clandestine deposits is many millions of francs." Although seven billion francs, seized in the train robbery, had been returned to the French government after liberation, a sum of three billion was still unaccounted for.

Who Owes Whom? L'Echo accused Guingouin of planning to use the hidden funds to launch a battle against the Communist Party. The money, he replied, belonged to the Resistance, and much of it had been spent on a "fraternal association of former Maquis" and on publishing 10,000 copies of "documents of the Maquis." A further accounting was given by former Maquis Aide Paul Ferret: "We have given 33 million francs to the Communist Party for the purchase of a vacation camp, six million more for buying another property destined for the repose of Communist big shots from Paris. It's the party that owes us money."

Said Georges Guingouin: "If I were in a 'Popular [i.e., Soviet style] Democracy,' I would have been liquidated already." But he is, he stoutly insisted, still a Communist at heart.

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