Quote of the Day (Charles de Gaulle, on Courage in the Face of Obstacles)

“Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.”—French soldier and statesman Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), Bastille Day Speech, July 14, 1943, Algiers

Flashback, June 1958: De Gaulle Returns to End 4th French Republic, Begin the 5th

Sixty-five years ago this month, Charles de Gaulle returned to power as Premier of France at the start of June 1958, much in the same manner in which he stepped into the public eye in 1940: to rescue the country he loved with mystical fervor.

The WWII Resistance movement commander had stepped away from the government he was widely expected to lead in 1946 and stayed on the sidelines.  The dozen intervening years confirmed his opinion that the Fourth French Republic created after the war would be fatally flawed by legislative wrangling and executive impotence.

Only two Socialists were included in de Gaulle’s government and no Communists, reflecting the general’s suspicions of the latter party dating back to WWII, when, despite its critical support of his leadership of the Resistance, he came to view it as a dangerous revolutionary force.

Though the National Assembly had voted 329 to 224 to put him in power, nobody knew exactly how the 67-year-old de Gaulle would implement the unlimited powers it gave him for six months. Part of his agenda—or at least what could be ascertained from his sometimes vague public utterances on the subject— was to prepare a reform of the republic to be ratified by referendum.

What was still unclear was how he would resolve the crisis that had convulsed the nation and precipitated his return to leadership: the Algerian war of independence. When the conflict broke out in 1954, 1 million European settlers (the pieds-noirs, “black feet”) lived on Algerian land. With so many Frenchmen there, the government was reluctant to leave its colony.

What resulted was one of the most vicious conflicts in postwar decolonization, with a cycle of insurgency followed by counterinsurgency marked by torture. By the time the conflict ended in 1962, 25,000 French troops had died and hundreds of thousands of Algerians.

In France itself, the unrest exacerbated the instability that de Gaulle foresaw would plague the Fourth Republic. Twenty-four cabinets were formed under 16 prime ministers during the 12-year regime. Just as bad, according to a 2004 analysis in the British Journal of Political Science on the republic’s cabinets by John Huber and Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, they were also staffed by ministers who were relatively inexperienced.

Understandably chafing at this inexperience and instability, reactionary elements in the French military, learning nothing from its recent debacle in French Indochina, resisted this new anti-colonial movement, especially when the latest French government indicated it was prepared to negotiate with the National Liberation Front, or FLN.

The anger of the military brass had climaxed on May 13, 1958 with an uprising of French partisans in Algiers, supported by the 10th paratroop division of General Jacques Massu. It was, in essence, a putsch, with Massu and his movement forming a Committee of Public Safety, calling for de Gaulle to return to power in Paris.

The instincts towards Catholicism, conservatism, and monarchism that de Gaulle inherited from his father may have steered him away from many radical or even liberal currents in 20^th-century thought. But above all, the general was a realist.

His growing realization that the economic, political, and human costs of the Algerian War could no longer be contained moved him towards overtures to the Algerian independence movement that deeply disappointed his most revanchist followers.

De Gaulle’s final acknowledgement of Algerian independence sparked another putsch, this time an August 1962 assassination plot against him—the most serious of more than 30 attempts on his life over two decades. (The latter plot inspired Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling 1971 political thriller, The Day of the Jackal.)

Washington watched the developments around de Gaulle with special interest, remembering well the prickly relations the Free French leader had maintained with the Western Allies during WWII.

Winston Churchill had been annoyed by the general but ultimately tolerated him as the best alternative to the collaborationist Vichy regime in WWII. Franklin Roosevelt abided him only on sufferance, with the President’s son Elliott quoting him in the 1946 memoir As He Saw It: “de Gaulle is out to achieve one-man government in France. I can’t imagine a man I would distrust more.”

Amory Houghton, U.S. Ambassador to France, sent a June 1, 1958 telegram that functioned as a flashing yellow light about the general to the U.S. State Department. While noting that “the interests of the United States will be served by de Gaulle’s success,” Houghton also warned that “the General’s character suggests that problems will increase and it is doubtful how well the General grasps and will comprehend the complexity of military and political relationships which have grown up since he retired from the political scene.”

Two years later, an intelligence report prepared in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research was equally skeptical about the outcome of de Gaulle’s Algerian maneuvering:

“Even if de Gaulle is able to establish autonomous organs in Algiers, it is unlikely that peace could be restored, at least in the short run, without political negotiations with the FLN, which both he and the army strongly resist. de Gaulle’s policy, unless it is modified on this point, is therefore probably inadequate to bring peace to Algeria in the foreseeable future.”

What the State Department did not foresee was that, within five months, de Gaulle would squelch a "Generals' Putsch" intended to seize control of Algeria and topple his own regime. That strengthened his hand internally, leading to the Evian Accords with the FLN in 1962.

On a broader front, de Gaulle delivered on his promise to deliver a new constitution, in effect ushering in a new Fifth Republic--or, as Lara Marlowe characterized it in a September 2018 Irish Times article, "The Beginning of French Politics As We Know It." The French President effectively ended the chaos that had characterized his nation's postwar era, partly through the executive-oriented measures of the new constitution, partly through his own considerable mystique.

That mystique, erected on the basis of the general’s indomitable defiance of his nation’s Nazi occupiers, was maintained by his height and hauteur. It was a fearsome thing for another politician to look up at the high forehead and Cyrano nose of the six-foot, five-inch head of government. He didn’t leaven his interactions with charm, as FDR and Churchill could do.

Washington and London, as they anticipated, had to get used to this prickliest of allies—one so intent to preserve France’s ability to act unilaterally on the world stage that he pushed his country to become a nuclear power, withdrew from NATO, and kick-started the Canadian separatist movement with the cry, “Vive le Québec libre!"

According to biographer Jean Lacouture, de Gaulle was a "grand nomad" who sometimes had to "take to the wilderness for his true stature and the sheer gap left by his absence to be perceived." 

If confirmation were needed of this contention, it came through the events of late spring 1958--and, indeed, since 1969, when his resignation as President after a decade in power left a vacuum in moral authority that his successors, for all the constitutional authority he bequeathed them, have struggled to fill.

Fortunately, he did not turn into a Bonaparte but something like a French George Washington--a military leader who withstood the siren call of absolutism, a President who left those who followed him in office with enormous executive power to be used for good or ill, and a leader with a grand vision for his country--or, as de Gaulle described it on the first page of his war memoirs, "France is like a princess in a fairy story, Madonna in a fresco.”

This Day in WWII History (Churchill, de Gaulle Rally Demoralized Countrymen)

June 18, 1940—With France overrun and British forces only narrowly making it back across the English Channel, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle appealed to their beleaguered countrymen to continue the fight against their Nazi foes. 

Their inspirational speeches became an essential part of their legends. Churchill’s address to the House of Commons especially echoes to the present day with its ringing closing: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’” De Gaulle’s “Appeal of June 18” is still taught to French schoolchildren as the birth of the Resistance movement.

The British Prime Minister had been a fixture in his nation’s politics for the prior four decades, so his speech in the House of Commons was heard and absorbed immediately by the electorate. But the French general at this point was still relatively little-known, so his words were not recognized as the official kick-off of the Resistance until well into the war.

In recent weeks, statues of Churchill and de Gaulle have been defaced by vandals who decried their racist attitudes. To be sure, both men were imperialists who did not regard colonials (often non-white) as equal to their rulers.

Speaking before the Peel Commission in March 1937, Churchill said: "I do not admit that wrong has been done to these people [Native Americans and blacks in Australia] by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put in that way, has come in and taken their place.” In 1959, while noting that the presence of Moslems testified to France’s tolerance, de Gaulle also warned against admitting them in mass numbers, scoffing: “Those who advocate integration have the brain of a hummingbird.”

But both acknowledged frankly that the survival of their countries depended on colonies that could help sustain the fight against the Nazis. Moreover, for all their paternalism towards subject peoples, their battle against Nazism was the most important victory over racism in the 20^th century.

In addition to paternalism, Churchill and de Gaulle exhibited swollen egos. But for all their large and real faults, they are remembered rightly as heroes to their countrymen. The desperate situation they faced in June 1940 brought their leadership into sharp focus. It is worthwhile recalling the several ways in which this quality manifested itself:

*Patriotism. Advocacy of imperialism was the negative side of Churchill and de Gaulle’s abiding faith in Britain and France. The positive side was their belief in the best parts of their nation’s heritage. De Gaulle was careful to distinguish between patriotism and the nationalism that fueled the rise of Fascism: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”

*Conservative, but not reactionary, politics. Churchill and de Gaulle were not only fierce anti-Communists but had little use for Socialism. But they refused to ally with the sizable far-right movements in their countries. Churchill spoke repeatedly throughout the 1930s against appeasement, which assured that he would remain without a leadership position among the Tories throughout the decade. A devout Roman Catholic, de Gaulle never became infected with the anti-Semitism displayed by so many French co-religionists in the wake of the Dreyfuss Affair of the 1890s. Unlike many in the French military, though de Gaulle scorned most politicians, he accepted the legitimacy of the French republic itself. As David Bell noted in a 2018 article in The Nation, he “never embraced the viciously intolerant reactionary nationalism so common among monarchists on the prewar French right.”

*Realism about their nations’ dire crises. Particularly in the case of Churchill, admirers have pointed to the hope the two leaders provided when little appeared on the horizon. But—unlike current leaders on both sides of the Atlantic—that did not mean that they sugarcoated, let alone denied, the catastrophic losses their nations’ armed forces had just sustained, nor what could happen if they lost. The very first line of Churchill’s address spoke of “the disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight.” He went on to spell it out: “Our Army and 120,000 French troops were indeed rescued by the British Navy from Dunkirk but only with the loss of their cannon, vehicles and modern equipment. This loss inevitably took some weeks to repair, and in the first two of those weeks the battle in France has been lost.” Similarly, de Gaulle acknowledged in his London radio address: “It is quite true that we were, and still are, overwhelmed by enemy mechanized forces, both on the ground and in the air.” Later, during his political career, he observed, "Politics is nothing else than the art of realities."

*Identification of their countries’ real sources of continuing strength. These frank admissions of losses bolstered the credibility of Churchill and de Gaulle when they explained how they thought Britain and France would defeat Adolf Hitler in the end. Churchill cited the many troops that had escaped the Nazis’ trap in France, the million and a quarter men currently under arms in Britain, the logistical difficulties that would face the Nazis during a cross-channel invasion, the powerful Royal Navy, and the cooperation of the British Empire’s self-governing dominions: Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. De Gaulle pointed to the assistance of Great Britain, the support of France’s colonies, and the industrial strength of the United States.

*Calls for collective action. With the crises facing their country so utterly grave, neither Churchill nor de Gaulle was foolhardy enough to say, as one Western leader proclaimed several years ago, “I alone can fix it.” Churchill consulted with his generals and the self-governing dominions, who agreed the fight could be continued. De Gaulle summoned “all French officers and men who are at present on British soil, or may be in the future, with or without their arms,” as well as “all engineers and skilled workmen from the armaments factories who are at present on British soil, or may be in the future.”

*Refusal to compromise with evil. Influential voices in both Great Britain and France contemplated giving up the fight against the Nazis. In May 1940, two members of Churchill’s Cabinet, Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax—who, before the outbreak of hostilities, had pursued appeasement of the Nazis—proposed negotiating peace with Hitler. Several weeks later, they had to be persuaded that De Gaulle, only recently promoted to Brigadier General, should be allowed to speak on the BBC for a Free France, rather than Marshal Henri Petain. (The latter would see the honor gained through his WWI service effaced by his leadership of the infamous Vichy collaborationist regime.)

*Refusal to break constitutional norms. Crises offer dictators the opportunity to seize total power. But unlike Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, who exploited unrest in their countries to seize total power (or by current European and American leaders who have tried to do likewise), Churchill and de Gaulle continued to work, as far as possible, within the constitutional systems of Britain and France.

*Heightened eloquence. Churchill’s powers of rhetoric were such that he won the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature. De Gaulle’s eloquence is less well-known to Anglophones, but his vision of his country called out the most unexpectedly romantic sentences from this hard-headed general and politician. His War Memoirs begins with this famous paragraph: "All my life I have had a certain idea of France. This is inspired by sentiment as much as by reason. The emotional side of me tends to imagine France, like the princess in the fairy stories or the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny. Instinctively, I have the feeling that Providence has created her either for complete success or for exemplary misfortunes.” 

In calling fellow citizens to arms in their June 18 addresses, Churchill and de Gaulle marshalled the weapons immediately at hand to them: words that expressed truth--an appropriate response to a dictatorship that used propaganda to incite attacks on religious and racial minorities and to devastate an entire continent. 

De Gaulle invoked “the flame of the Resistance” against the enemy, while Churchill’s speech gave rise, in addition to “their finest hour,” this famous sentence that called for ending the hunt for scapegoats for Britain’s military calamity: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

De Gaulle’s arrogance and humorlessness alienated Franklin Roosevelt, and often he sorely tried the patience of Churchill. But in encountering de Gaulle for the first time in June 1940, the British leader was impressed by the lonely, courageous stance that this newly minted brigadier general and under secretary of state took as the only member of the French government willing to carry on the fight against Hitler from Great Britain. 

Churchill and de Gaulle may have been egocentric, stubborn and not always enlightened towards those who fell outside the whites they saw as integral to their countries' history and governance. But they also recognized in each other brilliance, fortitude and a sincere, steadfast devotion to their countries’ highest ideals—enough to sustain them through their subsequent stormy wartime partnership.

This Day in WWII History (French Celebrate Liberation of Paris in ‘Night of Truth’)

Aug. 25, 1944—After four years of a humiliating occupation by Nazis who traduced their national ideals, killed 150,000 and deported or made prisoners of war another 1.9 million, and turned more people than anyone wanted to admit into collaborators with the enemy, Frenchmen deliriously celebrated the liberation of Paris. 

In a post 10 years ago, I recounted Ernest Hemingway’s war dispatch about witnessing the return to freedom of “the city I love best in all the world.” (In short order, he did his part for the war effort by “liberating” the bar at the Ritz Hotel.)

Far more can be said—and has been said—about this emotional high point in the Allies’ destruction of Fascism. But I thought I’d focus on two Frenchmen who would play a major role in the postwar world.

The first is Charles de Gaulle. Long a burr in the side of the Allies whose support he needed to free his country, the general had helped shove the liberation decisively ahead of schedule. 

Only four days before the liberation, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had told him that, instead of immediately supporting the Resistance fighters and striking government workers now pouring into the streets, the Allies would come back to the city later so that they wouldn’t use up resources needed to clear out the Nazis in the rest of the country.

De Gaulle urged him to reconsider. Retaking Paris wouldn’t be a problem, he said. If Eisenhower insisted on withholding forces, de Gaulle would order General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division anyway. Oh, yes—and if the Allies didn’t act, they ran the risk of Communists taking over the city.

In the early stages of the war, in an attempt to preserve French autonomy, de Gaulle had used Communists as part of the Free French movement. Now, though, he demonstrated why a college professor of mine termed him “perhaps the first Cold War” with this hint of a Marxist takeover of the City of Lights.

The play worked. The Nazi forces in the city were crushed between Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division and the Allies’ 4^th Infantry Division. In his victory speech, de Gaulle hailed the former but offered not a word about the latter. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had long since come to consider such slights as typical of the man. 

The two leaders had to deal with him, however, because by this point in the war, he was the one leader with both credibility and widespread support from the public. He was the focal point the next day in leading a victory march down the Champs d’Elysees. As can be seen in the accompanying photo, at six feet and a half, he made for an easy assassination target.

Indeed, for a short bewildering but terrifyingsecond, shots from a rooftop sniper rang out, disrupting the parade and raising fears that de Gaulle had been hit. But the general’s scoffing at death (“Mosquitoes do not bite General de Gaulle,” he had joked to aides who urged him to take precautions against malaria) seemed borne out once again, as he survived the attack.

The other figure who played a notable part in the day—not by participating in it, but by witnessing to it—was Albert Camus. A young journalist, novelist and playwright with a strong interest in philosophy, Camus had attempted to join the Resistance as a soldier but could not serve because of recurring bouts with tuberculosis. Instead, he became editor of the clandestine newspaper Combat.

While Hemingway couldn’t help writing about himself in chronicling the liberation of Paris, Camus submerged his own personality in conveying the impact of “The Night of Truth” for Combat.  His eloquent editorial celebrating the event represented a touchstone in the 20^th century’s struggle against totalitarianism, and established his own striking voice in witnessing to that clash:

“While the bullets of freedom are still whistling throughout the city, the cannons of the liberation are entering the gates of Paris amid shouts and flowers. In the most beautiful and hottest of August nights, the eternal stars over Paris mingle with the tracer bullets, the smoke of fires, and the colored rockets of a mass celebration. This unparalleled night marks the end of four years of monstrous history and of an unspeakable struggle in which France came to grips with her shame and her wrath.”