A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

by Julian T. Jackson

One aspect of the civil organization of Carlton Gardens that did not function well was the Department of Political Affairs, which de Gaulle had entrusted to Palewski. De Gaulle intended it to create a kind of clandestine organization of the Free French in France by making secret contacts with influential French personalities.

The result was that Palewski had a political mission but no agents to carry it out; and Passy had a few agents who were forbidden to stray into what de Gaulle viewed as politics.

The BCRAM eventually became the link between the Free French in London and the Resistance in France. But de Gaulle, for all his imagination, was slow to grasp the importance of this.

Since the conquest of Gabon in November, the Free French had made little military impact. One Free French battalion was sent to join up with the British who were fighting the Italians in East Africa.

In fact Djibouti remained in Vichy hands until the end of 1942.

Even more important potential prizes were the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon.47 Catroux’s original mission in Cairo had been to win over General Dentz, the Vichy commander in the Middle East. Once it was clear this would not happen, another idea was hatched at Carlton Gardens. The Free French would foment an internal anti-French revolt by promising the local population independence.

De Gaulle was rescued from his impasse by developments at Vichy. When pressing the case for action in Syria, it was obviously in de Gaulle’s interest to put the worst possible complexion on Vichy’s intentions. But it was difficult for the British government to decide whether he was right because the Vichy regime was so hard to read.

Pierre-Etienne Flandin,

In the end only about 5,500 soldiers rallied to the Free French and 30,000 preferred to return to France. Most of Dentz’s troops viewed the Gaullists as rebels.

Churchill’s attitude to de Gaulle never fully recovered from the shock caused by the General’s behaviour in the summer of 1941 – with greater consequences for the life of the Free French than de Gaulle’s short-term ‘victory’ in overturning the Acre armistice.

De Gaulle wrote to Churchill on 3 September but more in a spirit of self-justification than apology. For the moment Churchill’s instructions were that de Gaulle should ‘stew in his own juice’ and not be allowed to broadcast.

Apart from Muselier, the eight members of the Committee were firmly behind de Gaulle: Pleven was in charge of economic matters and the colonies, Cassin justice and education, Dejean foreign affairs, the recently arrived Diethelm interior and information, and so on.

The first official declaration of the Free French was the Brazzaville Manifesto of 27 October 1940 arguing that the Vichy regime was illegitimate and illegal. This was followed by an ‘Organic Declaration’ of 16 November 1940 which put the case even more explicitly.

we proclaim simply that we are fighting for democracy, we will perhaps win provisional approval from the Americans but we would lose a lot with the French which is the principal issue. The

Although from the mid-1930s de Gaulle – thanks to his association with Reynaud – had been trying to work through the existing parliamentary regime, everything was changed in his eyes by the debacle of 1940. What appalled him was that at France’s greatest moment of peril the Republic had let the country down.

Just as he was penning these outbursts of sarcastic contempt against the defunct regime, de Gaulle’s views had started to evolve. During his stormy encounter with Churchill in September 1941, when the latter had suggested that de Gaulle set up an advisory committee, the idea was presented as a way of scotching accusations that the General had ‘moved towards certain Fascist views’.

First, political ambiguity was turning out to have more disadvantages than advantages. De Gaulle’s refusal to make political statements so as not to alienate potential supporters carried the risk of satisfying no one. As

In reality de Gaulle was in no position to give ‘orders’ to anyone in France. But the prospect of the Communists becoming a major player in the struggle against the Occupation lent weight to Hauck’s argument that the Free French should reach out to the French working class.

Within a few weeks, de Gaulle’s public commitment in favour of democracy had gone further than anyone could have imagined. To understand why, we need to appreciate the importance that the Resistance was beginning to assume in his thinking.

Since Moulin’s key task was the military organization of the Resistance it did not necessarily have any direct impact on de Gaulle’s political thinking. But it did mean that the Resistance started to figure more centrally in his mind than it had previously.

During his month in London Pineau saw much of the other French Socialists in the city – those who warned him that de Gaulle was a ‘fascist’, but also those like Hauck who had rallied to de Gaulle despite reservations.

Leclerc wrote to de Gaulle in May 1942 warning him that these developments were ‘worrying the great majority of Free French’. In his view, the victory of the Free French had to be followed by ‘national revolution’ – the term used by Pétain for his own anti-democratic, reactionary and anti-Semitic policies.50 When Leclerc went further and told de Gaulle he was repeating the errors of the 1930s, he was sharply reprimanded.

These conservative officers may have been the military heroes of the Free French, but they were no longer part of the argument about the political future of Gaullism.

Admiral William Leahy.

viewed the Free French with a mixture of suspicion and derision, and was confirmed in his suspicion by Leahy who reported that the Vichy regime was so opposed to de Gaulle that any move in his direction would push Vichy towards the Germans, exactly the opposite of Roosevelt’s policy of gambling on Vichy.15

By the end of his five months in the United States Pleven had established a functioning Free French Delegation in Washington to replace the amateurish efforts of Sieyès, although he had not been able to persuade Jacques Maritain to come on board.

At the same time Vichy’s stock seemed to be falling. In November 1941, as a sop to the Germans, Darlan had sacked Weygand from his post in North Africa. Since Weygand was the Vichy leader considered least favourable to working with Germany, this seemed to suggest that the regime was shifting towards an even more collaborationist position.

De Gaulle immediately grasped the implications of the decision: instead of encouraging France’s Empire to enter the war on the Allied side, the Americans were pursuing a ‘policy of neutralization, bit by bit, of the French empire’.19 To challenge this policy, de Gaulle took the extraordinarily provocative decision to occupy the tiny French islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland.20

De Gaulle, delighted at this opportunity to eliminate his opponent, retaliated by announcing that if Muselier left the Committee he would also lose his command of the Free French navy.

In the long term, Muselier’s elimination increased the cohesion of the Free French. His was the last open challenge to de Gaulle from within the movement. But in the short term the crisis convinced many British, American and Soviet observers that de Gaulle would not survive much longer without major changes in his team.

This man might play a decisive part in bringing about things of which you had hopes’ – which presumably meant finding a plausible Vichyite alternative to de Gaulle.37 But Giraud showed no interest in coming to London.

Sautot seemed in his eyes to have an unhealthily good relationship with his British and Australian counterparts. De Gaulle therefore decided in 1941 – at a time when he was locked in conflict with the British over Syria – to despatch a High Commissioner of the Pacific Territories to keep a watchful eye over Sautot.

Although the New Caledonia crisis had blown over by the end of May, it left bitterness on both sides – and began to insinuate into Roosevelt’s mind doubts about whether the French should be allowed to hold on to their Empire after the war.

Even his suspicious nature had not spotted the true reason: Churchill had decided to launch a purely British operation, about which he was adamant that ‘de Gaulle’s people should be misled.’

The French held out longer against the British in Madagascar in 1942 than they had against the Germans in 1940.

In his diary Oliver Harvey, Eden’s Private Secretary, expressed the Foreign Office view that the problem was caused by the military ‘who cannot get out of their stupid heads that de Gaulle is a “rebel” whereas Vichyites are “loyalists” ’ – but also by the fact that Churchill ‘now so loathes de Gaulle, he almost prefers Vichy’.

René Pleven,

Bir Hakeim

To implement these policies the Germans bullied Pétain into taking Laval back as his Prime Minister. Darlan had hardly been a lukewarm collaborator but his motivations had been opportunist; Laval was ideologically committed to the policy.

But seeing that the plan had backfired, de Gaulle quietly shelved his intention of bringing Vallin on to the National Committee, and sent him off on a mission to Africa. The Vallin affair showed that the future evolution of ‘Gaullism’ remained a matter of debate and had not been resolved by de Gaulle’s adoption of democratic rhetoric.

Four days earlier, American troops had landed in Algeria and Morocco in Operation Torch. In retaliation, and to secure France’s southern coast, on 11 November the Germans moved troops into the previously non-occupied zone.

On the eve of the landings, however, Giraud was still in Gibraltar negotiating with the Americans. Insisting that he be appointed commander in chief of the entire operation, he was already revealing that mixture of obstinacy, stupidity and bad judgement that would ultimately be his downfall.

De Gaulle’s revolutionary eloquence counted for little against Roosevelt’s pragmatic cynicism. His priority was to end hostilities in North Africa as fast as possible because for the Americans every day counted. While Darlan was negotiating with the American military commanders in Morocco, the Vichy authorities were allowing German forces to land in Tunisia – as de Gaulle had predicted would happen two months earlier.

Other members of Darlan’s governing council included General Noguès, who had refused to rally to de Gaulle in 1940, and Marcel Peyrouton, who had been Pétain’s Minister of the Interior.

the moment, however, Darlan enjoyed the full backing of the United States. And every day he was entrenching himself further. Churchill, embarrassed at the outset, told Eden at the end of November that Darlan ‘has done more for us than de Gaulle’.

Dining with de Gaulle on 8 December, Alexander Cadogan noted: ‘De Gaulle’s one remedy is “Get rid of Darlan.” My answer is: “Yes but how?” No answer.’24 The answer came on Christmas Eve 1942, when a young royalist, Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, ambled into Darlan’s study and shot him dead. The assassin was executed two days later with suspicious haste. Algiers was so thick with plots that we will never know for sure who organized the assassination.

Giraud’s weakness was that he had no understanding of the anti-Vichy France that was being forged out of the Resistance.

In the battle to prove his legitimacy to the Allies, de Gaulle came to see that the old political parties so despised by the ‘super-Gaullists’ could be a useful weapon.

This attentiste position became harder to sustain in March 1943 when a major crisis blew up in France. The Vichy government, under pressure to provide labour for German factories, had instituted a compulsory labour draft (Service du Travail Obligatoire – STO).

De Gaulle was pitching for unity in Algiers on his terms.67