In October 1945, Papon was appointed as vice-director of Algeria at the Minister of Interior. A year later, he became secretary of state to the Ministry of Interior Jean Biondi of the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Eric Roussel, a De Gaulle biographer, wrote that to the general and president, who was concerned with the survival of the Republic against undemocratic movements:"the authority of the state is so sacred, the danger constituted by the communists so intolerable, that he is disposed to accept without too many problems of conscience men who may have, for a fairly long time, worked on behalf of Vichy."