A few weeks after the Liberation of Paris, at the start of September 1944, the factory gates at Renault's Billancourt plant reopened. Operations restarted slowly, in an atmosphere poisoned by plotting and political conspiracy. In 1936, the Billancourt factory had been the scene of violent political and industrial unrest that had surfaced under Leon Blum's Popular Front government. The political jostling and violence that followed liberation ostensibly reflected the rivalries between capitalist collaboration and communist resistance, many of the scores settled predated the invasion.