The 1950s and 1960s were highly turbulent times in France: despite a dynamic economy ("les trente glorieuses" or "30 Glorious Years"), the country was torn by their colonial heritage (Vietnam and Indochina, Algeria), by their collective sense of guilt from the Vichy Regime, by their desire for renewed national prestige (Gaullism), and by conservative social tendencies in education and industry. The works, positions and thinking of Albert Camus are also emblematic of a reckoning in the French intellectual circles of post World War II, signaling the moral imperative to distance from Communism.