Gaulle, Brig-General Charles de and the Free French

Gaulle, Brig-General Charles de and the Free French During the night of 16/17 June 1940 the French government just formed by Marshal Pétain asked Germany for an armistice. On 18 June de Gaulle (1890–1970), broadcasting from London, declared that the war had not been decided by the fall of France, and that the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished. Four years later he returned to France and formed a new French government. Between those two events, de Gaulle and the Free French movement which he founded played a significant part in the political and military history of the Second World War and a decisive role in the history of France.

This was essentially the achievement of one man. Born in Lille on 22 November 1890, the son of a professor, de Gaulle was brought up as a Catholic and a patriot, with a profound conviction of the greatness of France. He entered the army as an officer cadet in 1909, and served as an infantry officer during the First World War. He was wounded three times, and taken prisoner in March 1916—an event which at least had the merit of keeping him alive in a war in which junior infantry officers suffered extremely heavy casualties. After the war his career in the army was not distinguished, but he made some mark as a controversial writer on strategy and military theory, notably in two books, Le Fil de l'epée (‘The Edge of the Sword’, 1932) and Vers l'armée de métier (‘Towards a Professional Army’, 1934), in which he advocated the creation of a career army based on powerful and mobile armoured forces. He promoted his ideas through the press, and by securing a political patron in Paul Reynaud.

His ideas met with little success, and in 1937 he was simply the commander of a tank regiment. When war began in September 1939 he commanded armoured units in the Fifth Army; but when Reynaud became prime minister in March 1940 he was rapidly appointed to command 4th Armoured Division, then in the process of formation. He led his new division in battle at Laon ( 17– 20 May) with some success, and fought another action at Abbeville during 28– 30 May. On 1 June he was promoted to brig-general, thus attaining the rank which became so firmly attached to his name. On 6 June Reynaud, trying to strengthen his government, appointed de Gaulle as under-secretary for national defence, a post which he held for only ten days. At the beginning of June 1940, therefore, de Gaulle was the most junior general in the French Army and a junior minister in the French government. It did not look a strong base.

During his few days as a minister, de Gaulle visited London and met Churchill for the first time ( 9 June); and he also attended Reynaud's last two conferences with Churchill in France ( 11–12 and 13 June). During these meetings he made a strong impression on the British prime minister—a matter of crucial importance in the next few days.

Late on 16 June Reynaud resigned and was replaced by Pétain, who at once asked for an armistice. On Reynaud's resignation de Gaulle ceased to be a minister, and he was smuggled out in an RAF aircraft to the UK. On 18 June he made his BBC radio appeal to Frenchmen to continue the fight, which was only permitted on the personal intervention of Churchill. Then, after some days of hesitation, the British government recognized de Gaulle on 28 June as ‘the leader of all free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to him in support of the Allied cause.’ This was followed on 7 August by an agreement on the organization of Free French forces, whose financial costs would be met by the British government. The Free French movement had begun. Its four-year life may be examined in three parts: its uncertain start, from June to December 1940; a time of troubles and consolidation, from January 1941 to January 1943; and a final phase of success and homecoming, 1943–4.

The British government gave its support to de Gaulle in June 1940 in the hope that he would attract a significant following, and that he would win over a large part of the French Empire to continue the war (seeFrance, 4). Neither of these hopes was fulfilled in the short run. De Gaulle's only means of influence was the radio: he broadcast on the BBC six times at the end of June, and another six times in July, but met little response. No significant political or military figure joined him, and the empire remained loyal to Pétain's Vichy government. In mid-August the Free French army comprised only 140 officers and 2,100 other ranks. But at the end of August there was a change. The colonies of French Equatorial Africa, were won over by the daring actions of Boislambert, Leclerc, and de Larminat, with the help of Félix Eboué, the governor of one of the colonies, Chad. These territories were economically poor and far distant from the centre of war in Europe, but they formed a vital territorial base: a starting-point in more than one sense, for it was from Chad that Leclerc's tiny force set off early in 1941 to capture the Libyan oasis of Kufra (see Fezzan campaigns)—the beginning of the long march which was to end at Strasbourg in 1944.

These successes were followed by the débâcle of the Dakar expedition in September 1940. It was a humiliating failure, and its consequences for de Gaulle and the Free French might easily have been fatal. Churchill could have cast all the blame on de Gaulle; but instead he went out of his way to emphasize his confidence in him. De Gaulle himself was briefly plunged into despair, but rallied quickly, sailing on to Duala in the French Cameroons and spending the next two months touring Equatorial Africa and restoring the confidence of his movement.

It was from this base that de Gaulle launched two vital initiatives in autumn 1940. One was military: the capture of Libreville, the capital of Gabon, from its Vichy garrison in November (see Gabon campaign). This was a useful gain in itself, but even more important because it was carried out despite British reluctance and non-co-operation. It was a gesture of military independence. The other was political: the Brazzaville declaration and ordinances of 27 October. In the manifesto de Gaulle declared that a true French government no longer existed: the body at Vichy which claimed that title was unconstitutional and subject to the Germans. ‘It is therefore necessary that a new authority should assume the task of directing the French effort in the war. Events impose this sacred duty upon me. I shall not fail to carry it out.’ De Gaulle also announced the creation of a Council of Defence for the Empire. The ordinances made clear that decisions would be taken by de Gaulle, after consultation when appropriate with the Council of Defence. These proclamations were followed on 16 November by an ‘organic declaration’ setting out the legal case for regarding the Vichy government as unconstitutional. On the same date de Gaulle declared his confidence in the future by founding the Order of Liberation (see decorations), whose members were to form a distinguished company. The British were not consulted about any of these actions, which amounted to an assertion of political independence and legitimacy.

By the end of 1940 the balance sheet of the Free French enterprise was modestly favourable. On the debit side, numbers were small, and most of the empire had remained loyal to Vichy. The credit side showed a firm territorial base, crucial British support, and determined steps towards independence. Moreover, de Gaulle had secured the valuable adherence of General Catroux, formerly governor-general of French Indo-China, who had joined the Free French in September 1940. The future of the movement depended on the answers to two great questions. How could the tension between the principle of Free French independence and heavy practical reliance on the UK be resolved? And could de Gaulle's claim to embody the true France achieve solid support either from the empire or from within France itself? The next two years were to be a time of troubles, but they saw some progress on both these fronts.

The main trouble faced by the Free French was a series of imperial quarrels with the British. Of these the first, longest, and most bitter arose in Syria and the Lebanon. In May 1941 the Vichy government gave permission for German aircraft to use Syrian airfields to support a rising against the British in Iraq. The British commander in the Middle East, General Wavell, scraped together enough British, Australian, and Free French forces to invade Syria and the Lebanon. The Syrian campaign began on 8 June; the Vichy commander, General Dentz, asked for an armistice on 18 June; and terms were eventually agreed on 14 July. These terms (negotiated by General Maitland Wilson for the British, with the agreement of General Catroux for the Free French) proved completely unacceptable to de Gaulle, on two counts: first, authority over the Levant states was transferred straight from the Vichy French to the British, with no reference to the Free French; and second the Vichy troops were to be sent home as quickly as possible, without allowing the Free French any opportunity to win them over. During the protracted negotiations, de Gaulle had anticipated trouble and had withdrawn from Cairo to Brazzaville, whence he denounced the terms unequivocally. He then flew back to Cairo to tell the British minister of state, Oliver Lyttelton (1893–1972), that unless the armistice was revised to meet his wishes he would remove the Free French forces in the Middle East from British command. The cease-fire terms were rapidly ‘interpreted’ to allow the Free French to seek recruits among the Vichy forces (some 6,000 men agreed to come over), and Lyttelton assured de Gaulle that the UK recognized the historic interests of France in the Levant.

This phrase highlighted the heart of the problem. It was de Gaulle's unshakeable intention to maintain the French Empire in its entirety. The British, who were normally willing and indeed anxious to fall in with this objective, made an exception in the Middle East, where they were under pressure from Arab nationalism, and insisted on a guarantee of independence for Syria and the Lebanon. In the circumstances, even de Gaulle was compelled to accept this in principle, but in practice he adopted every possible expedient to delay independence and to maintain French control. This political problem was made worse by bitter personal friction between de Gaulle and Maj-General Edward Spears, the principal British representative in the Levant, who had previously been one of de Gaulle's leading supporters. The Levant proved a running sore in Free French relations with the British for the whole wartime period.

The fate of Madagascar produced a similar, though less severe, dispute. The sweeping victories of the Japanese in South-East Asia early in 1942 aroused fears that they would strike across the Indian Ocean, and in May of that year a British expedition landed at the port of Diégo-Suarez, at the northern tip of Madagascar, to pre-empt a possible Japanese strike there. The British commander entered into negotiations with the Vichy governor-general to reach an agreement which would remove the need to occupy the whole island. De Gaulle was offended on two counts: that the operation was mounted without even informing the Free French; and because he rejected any dealings with the Vichy authorities. He had a fierce set- to with Churchill on these questions; but on this occasion the quarrel died away as the British went on to conquer the whole island and then (in November 1942) turned over its administration to the Free French.

Relations between the Free French and the British were also plagued by three successive affaires Muselier. First, Vice-Admiral Muselier, the commander of the Free French naval forces, was arrested by the British in January 1941 on false charges of conspiring with the Vichy government. On de Gaulle's intervention he was quickly released, but the incident left its mark, demonstrating the dependence of the Free French on what amounted to little more than the whims of the British. Then in September 1941 Muselier himself took part in a move to displace de Gaulle as leader of the Free French, in which he acted with the connivance of a number of British officials and with at least the knowledge of the prime minister. In the event Muselier overreached himself, and de Gaulle was able to win over Churchill in support of his authority; but again the affair left a bitter aftertaste. Finally in March 1942 Muselier attempted to secede from de Gaulle's command, taking the Free French fleet with him. This time he had the support of A. V. Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and briefly that of the war cabinet. De Gaulle stood fast, the British climbed down, and it was Muselier who left the Free French organization. But at one point de Gaulle went so far as to write a ‘political testament’, to be published in the event of his arrest by the British—a clear sign both of the vulnerability of his position and of his determination to stand firm.

In these difficulties with the British, where could de Gaulle turn for support? In June 1942, during the Madagascar crisis, he enquired whether the Soviet government would give him refuge if he had to break with the British; but it is doubtful if this was a serious prospect. In the latter part of 1941 he had made approaches to the Americans, and in November that year Lend-Lease was extended to the Free French, which diminished his dependence on the British for supplies. But relations with the Americans were always difficult, partly because the USA maintained good relations with Vichy, and partly because Roosevelt conceived a strong personal animus against de Gaulle, whom he refused to accept as the representative of France. For his part, de Gaulle was suspicious of American encroachments on the French Empire, especially in the Caribbean (see French West Indies). All in all, the Free French had little to hope for from the USA and they caused an extra irritant to the Roosevelt administration when, in December 1941, they occupied the French colony of St Pierre and Miquelon.

In these circumstances, it was crucial for the Free French that they found a source of support in their own country. For a long time de Gaulle's movement was virtually cut off from France itself, and the first resistance groups grew up spontaneously. During 1940–1 de Gaulle, managed to send a few agents into France to report on the situation there, but it was not until 1942 that effective two-way traffic was established by his intelligence services (see Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action) and leaders of the resistance began to reach England— Christian Pineau, François Faure, Pierre Brossolette, Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, Henri Frenay, André Philip. Drawing on their advice, de Gaulle emphasized his attachment to democracy, reiterated his determination to accept the will of the French people when it could be freely expressed, and also declared himself in favour of some form of social security, which opened the way for him to appeal to left as well as right in France. He thus enhanced his claim to be a national leader, attracting support across the political spectrum. In this process of forging links between de Gaulle and the resistance, and of drawing the diverse resistance groups (including the communists) together, the key role was played by Jean Moulin who made his way to London in October 1941. He met de Gaulle at the end of November, the two men struck a remarkable accord, and they agreed to make an attempt to unite all the resistance movements into one broad organization recognizing de Gaulle's leadership.

These links with the resistance in France gave de Gaulle a new authority. His movement was no longer made up of émigrés (always a dangerous charge), nor solely dependent upon the empire. While these changes were in progress, he received another fillip in the shape of military success. At the end of May and beginning of June 1942 a Free French brigade under General Koenig fought a successful action in defence of Bir Hakeim, in the Libyan desert. It was not a big battle—only some 5,500 French troops took part—but as so often with the Free French it was its symbolic value which counted. It is striking, but not wholly incongruous, that the battles of Stalingrad and Bir Hakeim are each commemorated by the name of a station on the Paris Métro: both were psychological turning-points, though of a vastly different kind and scale.

Bir Hakeim was the signal for de Gaulle, in June 1942, to change the name of his movement from ‘Free France’ to ‘Fighting France’, which doubtless made a useful point at the time but has not endured in the public mind. In any case, behind the name lay the question of what it represented. Repeatedly the Free (or Fighting) French were referred to as a movement: but where were they moving to? There can be no doubt of de Gaulle's answer: towards becoming the government of France. That was the purpose of the Brazzaville declaration in 1940. In September 1941 de Gaulle went further down the same road by forming a French National Committee, whose members held titles amounting to ministerial portfolios—for the economy, finance, foreign affairs, and so on. It was the framework for a government under the cover-name of a committee, though its recognition as such by other governments, except the USSR, was still far off.

At the end of 1942 and beginning of 1943, indeed, there occurred events which endangered all these advances by the Free French. In November 1942 the Americans and British landed in French North Africa (see North African campaign). To ease the path of the invasion, the military commanders (with the support of their governments) reached agreements with Admiral Darlan, minister of marine in Pétain's government, C-in-C of the French armed forces, and a leading advocate of collaboration with the Germans. In these events de Gaulle and the Free French were disregarded. They had not been informed, still less consulted, about the plans to invade North Africa; and the Darlan deal threatened their whole position. If the Americans and British had continued to support Darlan, it was at least possible that the liberation of France would end in a Vichy restoration. That particular danger was removed when Darlan was assassinated on Christmas Eve 1942; but the Allies, and especially the Americans, accepted in his stead General Giraud, an officer with strong links with Vichy, so that a similar prospect was revived. The political future of the Free French was still in the balance.

At the Casablanca conference in January 1943 (see SYMBOL), de Gaulle was put under the strongest pressure to accept a new French organization in North Africa in which he would be subordinate to Giraud, who would be the principal among three co-presidents of a new committee and also C-in-C of French forces in Africa. But de Gaulle resisted all coercion and blandishment. He permitted himself a brief and unconvincing handshake with Giraud for the benefit of photographers; and the two generals held a meeting which ended with an enigmatic Gaullian communiqué: ‘We have met. We have talked.’ In fact, de Gaulle evaded at Casablanca the subordination to Giraud which the Americans, and at that time also the British, tried to impose upon him.

The last stage of the great journey of the Free French, which ended with their emergence as the government of France, filled most of 1943 and 1944, and comprised four sets of events, each embodying a struggle. There was a political conflict in Algiers, in which de Gaulle prevailed over Giraud; the difficult amalgamation between the armed forces of Free France and the Vichy army of North Africa; a dispute with the Americans and British over the administration of liberated France; and a struggle to ensure that de Gaulle's authority was accepted within France by the resistance groups, especially the communists. The last of these is a matter for the story of events within France. The others form the culmination of the epic of the Free French.

The main outline of the de Gaulle–Giraud contest stands out clearly, despite some obscure detail. At the end of April 1943 Giraud made a vital concession by waiving his claim to leadership in whatever organization was to be set up, and accepting partnership instead. On 30 May de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers, and in June agreement was reached on the formation of a French Committee For National Liberation (CFLN), at first made up of seven members, with de Gaulle and Giraud as co-presidents. Then de Gaulle speedily strengthened his position by doubling the size of the committee and including a majority of his own supporters. A sharp crisis in June about the military functions of the CFLN was resolved by the end of July by de Gaulle becoming sole chairman of the committee with Giraud as C-in-C—but under a Committee of National Defence, whose chairman was again de Gaulle. De Gaulle thus outmanoeuvred Giraud, and at the same time survived an attempt by Roosevelt to get rid of him. In November 1943 de Gaulle removed Giraud from the CFLN altogether; and finally in April 1944 completed the process by assuming command of the armed forces. Giraud vanished from the scene, virtually without trace. It was a triumph for de Gaulle's strong will and his deft political footwork. He owed much also to the help of the British, who for most of 1943 had supported him against Giraud—and against the Americans.

On the issue of the amalgamation of the two armies de Gaulle showed a willingness to compromise which was not always reckoned to be his most prominent characteristic. The problem was deep-seated. The Free French army had been founded on the rejection of established authority, and its soldiers were imbued with an independent, almost a freebooting spirit. Its numbers were small (no more than 50,000 in all at the end of 1942), but some of its units had a proud fighting record and shared the battle honours of the British Eighth Army. The armies of North and West Africa, on the other hand, had remained loyal to established authority in Vichy; their numbers were large (some 230,000 at the end of 1942, with more in reserve); and they had stood idle for over two years. The two forces were thus in marked contrast with one another, their differences neatly embodied in the names of the hadjis (those who had made their pilgrimage with the Free French) and the moustachis (after the symbolic moustache of the orthodox regular). Yet for France to make a substantial military contribution to the defeat of the Axis the amalgamation of the two was vital. The Free French could provide the spirit, the army of North Africa the numbers—and also one of the best professional officers in the army, General Juin. Here lay a key problem, for Juin had been a faithful servant of Vichy, and had even taken part in a mission to Göring led by Jacques Benoist-Méchin, a leading collaborator. In principle de Gaulle always insisted on the outand-out rejection of Vichy; but on this matter he chose to compromise. After Juin had fought successful actions against the Germans in Tunisia at the end of 1942, de Gaulle wrote him a warm letter of congratulation. The difficult amalgamation of the two armies was begun as far as possible on equal terms. There emerged Juin's French Expeditionary Corps, which fought with distinction in the Italian campaign, and de Lattre's First Army, which took part in the invasion of southern France in August 1944 (see French Riviera landings). The French Army was back in action, no longer in brigade strength as at Bir Hakeim, but on a large scale.

Free France thus assumed the political shape of the Committee For National Liberation and the military shape of a large army. There remained the last crucial step: to become the acknowledged government of France. De Gaulle pursued this objective relentlessly. In November 1943 he set up a Consultative Assembly to mobilize the widest possible range of support, and to fulfil some of the functions of a parliament. He pressed on with preparations to take over the work of government when the liberation of France took place. In January 1944 Commissaires de la République were nominated to replace the prefects in liberated areas. Their instructions were categorical: ‘You represent the government to the people, and not the people to the government’. They were not to share power with the resistance groups. In a speech to the Consultative Assembly on 27 March 1944 de Gaulle referred to the CFLN as the provisional government of France; and on 3 June an ordinance published by the committee formally claimed that title.

This claim had yet to be accepted by the Americans and the British, whose forces had to play the major role in the liberation of France; and it also remained to be seen how far the resistance groups would acknowledge the authority claimed by the CFLN. These matters were resolved during the summer of 1944. The question of the administration of liberated areas was still unresolved when the Allied armies launched the Normandy landings on 6 June (see OVERLORD). In principle the Allied authorities intended to establish a system of military government; but in practice, fully engaged in a great battle, they were glad to work with the administration introduced by the CFLN. De Gaulle himself landed in France on 14 June, installing his Commissaire de la République at Bayeux and making much of his welcome by the population. On his return to England he declared that the provisional government was an accomplished fact, which the Allies would now accept. This proved to be true. The British had long favoured acceptance of the CFLN as the best practical means of administering liberated France, but had been unable to overcome the dogged opposition of Roosevelt to such a step. The establishment of de Gaulle's authority, and the obvious co-operation of the resistance groups in northern France, changed the position rapidly. In July de Gaulle visited Washington and was warmly received, with Roosevelt announcing publicly that he was ready to treat the CFLN as the de facto authority in liberated France. Then on 23/24 October the USA formally recognized de Gaulle's administration as the provisional government, and the British followed rapidly.

Before then de Gaulle had received his own recognition from the people of Paris. On 26 August 1944 he walked down the Champs Elysées to the acclamation of a vast crowd, and then went on to Notre Dame, where he stood unmoved when a sudden fusillade broke out inside the cathedral. It was the formal entry of a great Frenchman into the capital city. The mission of France Libre was complete, and the work of a new French government was about to begin.

What had de Gaulle and the Free French accomplished? In military terms, they ensured that French forces never dropped out of the war, and in 1944 took a real part in the liberation of their own country. In world affairs, French sovereignty and the potential role of France as a European power were constantly maintained. France emerged from the ordeals of defeat, occupation, and profound internal divisions with a greater degree of cohesion and stability than anyone would have predicted in 1940. For those who started with so little, it was no small achievement. De Gaulle served as his country's president until January 1946 and again from 1958 to 1969.

P. M. H. Bell

Bibliography

de Gaulle, C. , Mémoires (Pléiade edition, Paris, 2000), introduction by Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac.
Kersaudy, F. , Churchill and de Gaulle (London, 1981).
Lacouture, J. , Charles de Gaulle, Vol. 1: The Rebel 1890–1944 (London, 1991).
Ledwidge, B. , De Gaulle (London, 1982).