Three titans
Between 1940 and 1945 three titans of the twentieth century, who became the leaders of the free world at its moment of greatest crisis, fought an extraordinary war within a war. To the outside world they were allies united in the fight against Hitler. Behind the scenes, their relationship was very different.
In June 1940, as France fell to the Nazis, Churchill recognised de Gaulle as "the man of destiny".
Two of the three were the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and the Free French leader, General, later President, Charles de Gaulle. In June 1940, as France fell to the Nazis, Churchill recognised de Gaulle as 'the man of destiny'. But their relationship would turn into a roller coaster of mutual admiration, suspicion and, on Churchill's part, loathing.
The third man was the American President, Franklin Roosevelt. De Gaulle caused Roosevelt more trouble and more infuriation than any other person in the Second World War. To his extreme embarrassment, Churchill found himself caught in the middle of an extraordinary arms length duel between the President, who was the most powerful man in the world, and the French general who put saving the honour of his devastated country above everything else.
The story of this tangled, triangular relationship began in June 1940. The Nazi Blitzkrieg had crushed Belgium and Holland. German forces had forced the withdrawal of nearly half a million British and French troops from Dunkirk. Now Hitler's spearheads were rolling towards Paris.
The French government was divided but its Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, remained determined to resist the Nazis. On 5 June 1940 he appointed to his cabinet a recently promoted and junior brigadier-general, Charles de Gaulle, as Under Secretary for Defence. Reynaud knew that de Gaulle was an unequivocal fighter, and he dispatched him to London to plead with Churchill to send the full might of the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command across the Channel to help in the battle to save France.
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Free France
Churchill refused; in his heart, he knew that France was lost. However, de Gaulle immediately impressed him as a welcome contrast to the defeatist High Command of the French Army. During the vital week of 10 to 17 June, de Gaulle and Churchill tried to stiffen resistance in the French government and army. At the same time Churchill and Reynaud pleaded with Roosevelt to make a public commitment to support Britain and France.
However Roosevelt would only give private assurances and any prospect of France staying in the fight was removed. On 17 June, the aged Marshal Phillippe Petain succeeded Reynaud and France sought an armistice with Hitler. De Gaulle escaped to London and Churchill recognised him as the "leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to him in support of the allied cause". Free France was born.
During the late summer of 1940, de Gaulle raised a fledgling Free French army and navy of some four thousand men. But all he had was an office in London, Churchill's backing and hope. What he needed was territory and a base of his own.
All de Gaulle had was an office in London, Churchill's backing and hope.
De Gaulle turned his eyes to the French Empire in Africa. In late August a small Free French expedition rallied the French Central African territories of Chad and the French Congo and Cameroons to de Gaulle's cause. He and Churchill next targeted the strategic port of Dakar in French West Africa. The British chiefs of staff were ordered to organise an expedition, code named 'Menace'.
'Menace' turned into a fiasco. The plan was based on the hope that local French forces in Dakar would rally to de Gaulle as soon as they saw the combined British and Free French fleet draw near. Instead they stayed loyal to the regime of Vichy France which Petain had now established in the unoccupied zone of France. A civil war between Frenchmen was the last thing de Gaulle wanted and the expedition withdrew.
'Menace' hugely damaged de Gaulle, particularly in the eyes of Roosevelt. The President was determined to stop American troops becoming embroiled in a European war and believed that the best way to achieve that was to help other countries to fight Hitler. He sent supplies to Britain and also began to cultivate Petain's Vichy state. Even though Vichy was collaborating with the Nazis, it still possessed substantial armed forces, in particular a powerful navy, and Roosevelt hoped that it could be encouraged to resist.
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America enters the war
Churchill also flirted briefly with Vichy but by the spring of 1941 he realised that Petain and the Vichy leaders in the French empire had no intention of resuming the fight. He and de Gaulle decided on a joint British and Free French invasion of the Vichy controlled countries of Syria and Lebanon.
However, after local Vichy forces surrendered and an armistice was concluded, de Gaulle believed that he had been double-crossed by the British commanders on the spot who rode roughshod over commitments made to the Free French. He thought that Britain had secret designs on French territories in the Middle East and his suspicions led to his first row with Churchill.
By the end of 1941, the two men had resolved their differences and seemed once again united. Then, on 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbour finally forced the United States into the war. Churchill's prayers were answered. At last Roosevelt was a fighting ally. Amidst the Anglo-American harmony between the two leaders, there was only one immediate note of discord - the problem of France.
Roosevelt began to see de Gaulle as an untrustworthy nuisance.
While Churchill had stayed loyal to de Gaulle and the Free French, Roosevelt had continued to cultivate Vichy and ignore de Gaulle. A fortnight after Pearl Harbour de Gaulle launched a Free French coup against the tiny, Vichy controlled islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland. His unauthorised action infuriated the American government and Roosevelt began to see de Gaulle as an untrustworthy nuisance. The dispute deepened during the British and French invasion of French North and West Africa in late 1942, Operation 'Torch', from which Roosevelt insisted that de Gaulle be excluded. Roosevelt hoped that as soon as allied forces arrived on French African soil, the local Vichy commanders would switch from collaboration with the Nazis to collaboration with the British and French.
Roosevelt alighted on another French General, Henri Giraud, whom he intended to promote as a rival leader to de Gaulle. Giraud had been captured by the Nazis in May 1940. In early 1942 he dramatically escaped from the German fortress in which he was held prisoner of war. He was brave, high ranking, untainted by Vichy collaborationism, and, most important of all from Roosevelt's point of view, had no connection with de Gaulle. He seemed the ideal figurehead. Roosevelt received assurances from American emissaries in Algeria that, as soon as Giraud appeared on the scene, the local Vichy leaders, both civilian and military, would instantly accept his command.
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Bitter quarrels
President Franklin D Roosevelt©It did not turn out that way. The allied landings succeeded with only a few thousand casualties but the Vichy leaders would only obey the orders of the senior Vichy commander, Admiral Francois Darlan, who coincidentally had arrived in Algiers just days before the invasion. Contrary to Roosevelt's expectations, Giraud held no sway and the Americans were forced to make a deal with Darlan, who in three days of slippery negotiation switched sides to the allies and became French leader in North Africa.
In London extraordinary new documents show how Churchill deployed MI5 to restrain de Gaulle.
The Darlan deal provoked widespread criticism in Britain and America and despair amongst young French freedom fighters in Algiers. Four of them decided there could only be one solution. On 24 December 1942 Darlan was assassinated. At Roosevelt's instigation, Giraud replaced him as French leader, but even the President, despite his hostility to de Gaulle, realised that there needed to be unity between the Free French and the former Vichy forces now under Giraud's command.
At the Casablanca conference in January 1943, Roosevelt tried to force a shot gun marriage between Giraud whom he privately called 'the groom' and de Gaulle 'the bride'. Churchill summoned de Gaulle from London to attend the nuptials but, to his huge embarrassment, de Gaulle initially refused to come. For him a summons by a British Prime Minister to a meeting on French soil in which he was supposed to make peace with former Vichyites was too much to take.
Eventually de Gaulle, realising that he could not break with Roosevelt and Churchill, relented and, at Roosevelt's prompting, agreed to shake hands publicly with Giraud at a press conference in Casablanca. The show of unity was for the cameras only.
The early months of 1943 pitched the triangular relationship into its lowest ebb. In the privacy of the White House, the President poured scorn on the Free French leader. In London extraordinary new documents show how Churchill deployed MI5 to restrain de Gaulle. De Gaulle himself muttered darkly in private against his American and British allies.
Yet all the time support for de Gaulle in the French Empire and the underground resistance inside France was growing. Roosevelt however was determined to destroy him and used a series of strategies to achieve his ends. Churchill found himself caught in the middle, on the one hand furious at the damage de Gaulle was doing to his relationship with Roosevelt but also understanding that, however much he distrusted him, de Gaulle was the one French leader who had always stood unequivocally against Hitler.
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The eve of D-Day
US troops landing on Normandy©Without the backing of Churchill and the British government, Roosevelt found himself unable to break de Gaulle. However he refused to have any discussions with him which might be construed as displaying political recognition. Roosevelt's attitude would lead to the final showdown in the bitter triangular relationship on the very eve of D-Day.
On 4 June 1944, de Gaulle arrived in Britain from Africa. He had been kept out of the D-Day planning but Churchill realised that he must be on the spot when the invasion happened. De Gaulle was also intended to broadcast to France immediately after the allied Commander-in-Chief, General Eisenhower. When de Gaulle read Eisenhower's text, he was appalled. It made no mention of himself or the French Committee for National Liberation, which de Gaulle intended to become the French provisional government.
De Gaulle insisted that he would only broadcast at a time and in words of his own choosing. He then raised the stakes by withdrawing the co-operation of 200 French liaison officers, who were intended to accompany the invasion, on the grounds that there had been no discussions with Roosevelt about their political duties.
On the night of 5 and 6 June 1944, as the first paratroopers took off for France, there was a furious row in London as de Gaulle sat tight. De Gaulle's ambassador, Pierre Vienot, shuttled between Churchill's residence in Downing Street and the Connaught Hotel, where de Gaulle was staying, and found himself submerged in the scorn and bile the two men were pouring on each other.
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De Gaulle triumphs
As D-Day dawned, there was still no certainty about de Gaulle's broadcast but, as so often in the past, when it came to his public behaviour, he performed immaculately and made a stirring speech to his countrymen. Late on D Day he also relented on the French liaison officers and allowed them to go.
Churchill remained furious but, after much pressure from his colleagues, allowed de Gaulle to visit France on 14 June. As soon as he arrived in the liberated town of Bayeux, it was clear to all that de Gaulle was the name on every French person's lips.
Roosevelt, ever the politician, saw the writing on the wall. He invited de Gaulle to Washington in July 1944 and received him like a monarch. Back in France, de Gaulle simply appointed his own men to set up local administrations in liberated areas, bypassing the American plan for a military government of occupation.
De Gaulle was the name on every French person's lips.
Finally, in October 1944, Roosevelt and Churchill recognised the French Committee of National Liberation as the provisional government of France and de Gaulle as its leader. De Gaulle curtly responded, 'The French government is happy to be called by its name'. De Gaulle had won and, in the process, inflicted on the American President his greatest personal defeat of the Second World War.
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Find out more
Books
The Second World War by Winston Churchill (6 vols, 1948-54, and subsequently)
Churchill. A Study in Greatness by Geoffrey Best (2001)
Churchill's Grand Alliance: the Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-1957 by John Charmley (1995)
Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets by David Stafford (1999)
The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General De Gaulle by Charles Williams (1997)
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About the author
Simon Berthon was series producer of the BBC 'Allies at War' TV series. He was founding editor of ITV's current affairs series 'The Big Story', and previously deputy editor of ITV's 'World in Action'. His most recent TV film was the Channel Four special 'Churchill v Hitler: The Duel'. Simon Berthon wrote the book Allies at War (Harper Collins, 2001) to accompany the television series.
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