Allies at War : The Bitter Rivalry among Churchill, Roosevelt and De Gaulle

by Berthon, Simon

• ISBN13: 9780786709496
• ISBN10: 0786709499
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-18
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Roosevelt, Churchill, De Gaulle. They held the destiny of the Free World in their Allied hands as Nazi forces stormed through Europe in the 1940s. In public, these three extraordinarily powerful men stood firmly together against Hitler. They inspired their troops and gave their nations confidence in the prospect of victory. History has made of them giants of diplomacy and unparalleled masters of strategy. Yet, in private, their relations with each other were marked by turbulence, distrust, duplicity, and ruthlessness, as this new volume in the annals of World War II history dramatically shows. A tie-in with a joint BBC/PBS special scheduled for American television in the fall, this revelatory chronicle by Simon Berthon documents an antipathy that would significantly color Allied policy and alter the postwar relations of France with Britain and America. Throughout the war in Europe, Berthon shows, Churchill and Roosevelt stood at odds with the imposing and, to them, "unreliable, uncooperative, and disloyal" Free French leader Charles De Gaulleto the extent that they kept the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa a secret from him and sought an alternative commander. And even as late as 1943, Roosevelt supported the oppressive and collaborative Vichy government based on misinformation fed to him about De Gaulle. Probingly, with access to official archives never before available, Berthon explores an alliance as it turns profoundly sour and shows how De Gaulle not only heroically held his ground in the cause of a Free France but ultimately implemented against the "Anglo-Saxon powers" his own revenge.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Prologue	xi
Ten Days in June	1	(22)
Three Men of Destiny	23	(23)
Adventures in Africa	46	(21)
Dangerous Liaisons	67	(22)
An End to Flirtation	89	(22)
Hero to Villain	111	(24)
Winter Storms	135	(25)
Churchill's Prisoner	160	(22)
A Bumpy Landing	182	(25)
Dealing with Devils	207	(22)
Casablanca Caper	229	(32)
The President's Fury	261	(29)
D-Day Crisis	290	(25)
Endgame	315	(16)
Notes on Sources	331	(6)
Archive Sources	337	(4)
Bibliography	341

Excerpts

Chapter One

TEN DAYS IN JUNE

It was a relationship that began suddenly and in crisis. On the morning of 9 June 1940, an obscure Brigadier General in the French Army flew into London from Paris. He was forty-nine years old and, it seemed, a political innocent. His mission was crucial to the salvation of France. He spoke limited English, and when he very occasionally did, the result was more comic than diplomatic.

    His name was Charles de Gaulle. He had been a politician for all of four days and a general for just over three weeks. On 5 June, the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, had invited de Gaulle to join his cabinet as Under Secretary of State for National Defence. The Battle of France was entering its final, fatal phase. The greater part of the British Expeditionary Force -- more than 330,000 men, accompanied by 139,000 French soldiers -- had made their miraculous escape from Dunkirk. The German Army’s sickle cut to divide the allied armies had brought such instant success that Hitler was breathless, even confused, by his sudden victory. After a few days’ rest, he launched Nazi forces at Paris and their spearheads sped across the river Somme. French forces fought hard, their casualties exceeding even the murderous killing rate of the deadliest battles of the First World War. But they were badly led and the tactics of their generals, mired in the outdated glory of the earlier war, were irrelevant to the mechanized might of the Blitzkrieg .

    As de Gaulle arrived in London, France was in full retreat and the Nazi road to Paris was open. The task given by Reynaud to de Gaulle was to persuade the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to gamble the full strength of the Royal Air Force on the saving of France. As de Gaulle crossed the threshold of Downing Street he came face to face with Churchill for the first time. Immediately he understood that, like himself, the British leader’s aggression went to the heart. Later he wrote: ‘The impression he gave me confirmed me in my conviction that Great Britain, led by such a fighter, would certainly not flinch. Mr Churchill seemed to me equal to the harshest task, provided it also had greatness.’

    Churchill wrote no record of this first encounter with the young French general but the minutes of a British cabinet meeting later that day recorded: ‘The Prime Minister described a conversation which he had had that afternoon with General de Gaulle. He had given the Prime Minister a more favourable impression of French morale and determination.’

    De Gaulle had made a mark. However, under heavy pressure from his air chiefs, Churchill refused to commit himself to throwing every British fighter squadron into the French maelstrom. As a lover of France, his emotional inclination was to respond to French cries of help, but he understood that the battle across the Channel was effectively lost; the fighters would be needed to protect the homeland. At this first meeting de Gaulle told Churchill that, in his position, he would have done the same thing. In the years ahead, Churchill never forgot the understanding and strategic appreciation that de Gaulle had shown.

    That night de Gaulle flew back to France and was summoned to see Reynaud at his home. Reynaud, who had been Prime Minister of France for just three months, was a fighter and for that reason had brought de Gaulle into his cabinet. The two men had come to know each other in the 1930s after de Gaulle, then a middle-ranking officer, had spotted Reynaud as the one French politician who might be sympathetic to his views on modern warfare. In the French Army of that time, de Gaulle was an unusual soldier. A thinker and a theorist, he had given lectures at the Sorbonne on the conduct of future wars and published three books, including ‘The Army of the Future’ in 1934. While the French High Command was stuck in First World War theories of a static, defensive war based, in France’s case, on the allegedly invincible Maginot line, de Gaulle realized that future wars would be fought very differently. He proposed the creation of a new army of manoeuvre and attack, comprising a mass of mechanized, armoured units, which could react fast to any threat. De Gaulle’s book, which was only published in English in 1940, became required reading amongst the German High Command and helped to form the tactics of the Blitzkrieg . But at home, apart from Reynaud, his ideas found no support in the military and political establishment. Only on 15 May 1940, five days into the Blitzkrieg , was de Gaulle finally allowed to put his ideas into practice and given command of an armoured division. A fortnight later, at Abbéville, his tanks mounted the one successful counter-attack against the Nazis during the battle of France. However this proved to be far too little and far too late.

    Now, as de Gaulle and Reynaud met on the night of 9 June, disaster was apparent. Enemy forces had reached the Seine below Paris. The capital was almost surrounded and the next day the French Government was to begin its retreat southwards. While Reynaud wanted to fight on, he was surrounded by defeatism. On 18 May he had felt compelled to invite the 84-year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain, the soldier’s hero of the First World War, to join his cabinet, though both Reynaud and de Gaulle knew that Pétain was the screen for those who desired an armistice. "Better to have him inside than out", Reynaud told de Gaulle, but Pétain would weave an insidious spell of surrender inside the cabinet. Indeed, back in January 1940 the editor of a British news letter, Kenneth de Courcy, had reported to the Foreign Office that Pétain, then French ambassador to Spain, had already reached a private understanding with pro-Nazi French politicians, notably Pierre Laval. De Courcy’s report was disbelieved.

    General Maxime Weygand, the recently appointed French Commander-in-Chief, was also showing no sign of fight. Weygand, aged 73, had made his reputation as Chief-of-Staff to the brilliant Marshal Foch in the First World War. At the outbreak of war he had been recalled from retirement to command French forces in Syria. On 19 May, after the first disastrous week of the Blitzkrieg , he had been summoned back to mainland France to take over as Commander-in-Chief. Weygand retained his vigour and a calculating mind; within days of taking overall command that mind told him France was defeated. Immediately after his success at Abbéville, de Gaulle had seen Weygand and received his congratulations. Weygand was in a pessimistic mood. He foresaw the German attack on the Somme, and lamented his poor prospects of a successful resistance. The day before he had left for London, De Gaulle saw Weygand for a second time. De Gaulle later wrote that their conversation remained engraved on his mind. Weygand said that his prophecy of the German attack across the Somme had proved correct and that he could not stop them.

    "All right!" replied de Gaulle, "They’re crossing the Somme. And then?"

    "Then?" replied Weygand, "The Seine and the Marne."

    "Yes, And then?"

    "Then? But that’s the end!"

    "How do you mean? The end? And the world? And the Empire?"

    According to De Gaulle, Weygand gave a despairing laugh. "The Empire? But that’s childish! As for the world, when I’ve been beaten here, England won’t wait a week before negotiating with the Reich."

    Both Weygand and Pétain would have lead roles in the later drama between Churchill, Roosevelt and de Gaulle. But at this point their course of surrender was not the only one; there seemed alternative ways for France to fight on. The first option was to create a redoubt in the rugged terrain of Brittany, based in the town of Quimper, where the Government and remnants of the French Army could retreat, regroup and resist. The second plan, as de Gaulle had hinted to Weygand, was to carry on the war from the French Empire in North Africa, comprising the territories of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. They already contained a large army of some 370,000 men -- of whom nearly half were French. Reynaud put de Gaulle, the one fighting soldier inside France whom he could count on, in charge of preparations for both options.

    On 10 June there was suddenly a new hope that was born of a further shattering blow. The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, declared war on Britain and France. He was joining the party late, jumping in only when the outcome was certain. At this time, before her army and navy displayed their inherent feebleness, Italy seemed a powerful nation and the shock of Mussolini’s declaration was felt far beyond Europe.

    Since the middle of May, both Churchill and Reynaud had been pleading for help from the American President, Franklin Roosevelt. Indeed, almost as soon as he had become Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, Churchill had been banking on the United States. A few days afterwards his son Randolph happened to call on his father at breakfast time and found him upstairs ‘shaving with his old fashioned Valet razor. He had a tough beard and as usual was hacking away.’ Father told son to sit down and read the papers while he finished shaving. After further minutes of hacking away Churchill turned to Randolph and said, "I think I see my way through". Astounded, Randolph asked his father whether he meant "avoid defeat" (which seemed to him credible) or "beat the bastards" (which seemed incredible). Churchill flung the razor into the basin and said, "Of course, I mean we can beat them." Randolph replied that he was all for such a proposition but did not see how his father could do it. With great intensity Churchill turned round and said, "I shall drag the United States in."

    Churchill never succeeded in his ambition, which would only be fulfilled by Pearl Harbour. It was not for want of trying. On 15 May he had sent a message to Roosevelt, imploring an immediate loan of fighter aircraft and fifty old American destroyers, which were sitting mothballed from the First World War. Roosevelt’s reply was non-committal, stressing the difficulties of obtaining the agreement of the United States Congress and the restrictions imposed on him by America’s Neutrality Act. At that stage the strong reputation of the French Army also led his administration to assume that the threat of Hitler could be contained within the European continent.

    Churchill’s pleas to Roosevelt were matched by Reynaud, who wrote to Roosevelt that the French, ‘will fight before Paris. We will fight behind Paris. We will lock ourselves up in one of our provinces and if we are driven out we will go to North Africa, and, if need be, to our American possessions.’ But for France to fight on, Reynaud told Roosevelt that he required America to supply her with guns, planes and perhaps even men.

    The American Ambassador in Paris, William C. Bullitt, then a close friend of Roosevelt, reinforced the French Government’s requests but on 1 June, when the crisis was clear, Roosevelt repeated his refusal to send the old destroyers to Britain or France. Ingenuously, he advised Bullitt that ‘several American republics have destroyers, which they might be willing to sell and could sell under their laws.’ Bullitt felt shamed when the French War Minister, Edouard Daladier, responded "that civilization in the world should fall because a great nation with a great President could simply talk." Bullitt cabled Washington, ‘words, unaccompanied by acts ... are rather sickening.’

    This was not quite fair to Roosevelt; there had been one act that, despite the legalities of neutrality, was partial to Britain and France. On 1 June, as the retreat from Dunkirk was awakening America to the realities of the disaster in France, the President ordered his Navy and War departments to draw up a full list of the entire American stocks of guns and ammunition which could be spared for Britain and France. It comprised half a million World War One rifles, which had been stored in grease for twenty years with 250 cartridges apiece, 900 field guns and ammunition, 80,000 machine guns and a few extras. Roosevelt bypassed the neutrality laws by approving the sale of the whole bundle for 37 million dollars to an intermediate agency that would then sell it on to Britain and France. But it was not until 11 June that the first consignment was loaded onto British merchant ships. They would be too late to help in the battle of France.

    On the evening of Italy’s entry into the war, Roosevelt made a speech at the University of Charlottesville which unexpectedly suggested a dramatic change of attitude and seemed to offer a hope that words might at last turn to something more concrete than the sale of old weapons. The speech was inspired by Roosevelt’s fury that Mussolini had rebuffed all his pleas to stay out of the war. His pique spawned what, even watching and listening to it sixty years later, was a magnificent oration.

    "On this 10th day of June nineteen hundred and forty, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbour", declaimed Roosevelt. After great applause among the students in the hall, he continued with a rhythmical and mesmerizing cadence, "On this 10th day of June nineteen hundred and forty, in this university, founded by the first great American teacher of democracy, we send our prayers and our hopes to those beyond the seas who are maintaining with magnificent valour their battle for freedom ... We will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation."

    In London, Churchill and his colleagues sat up late to listen to the speech and the thrilling prospects which Roosevelt seemed to be brandishing. The next morning Churchill cabled Roosevelt, ‘We all listened to you last night and were fortified by the grand scope of your declaration. Your statement that the material aid of the United States will be given to the Allies in their struggle is a strong encouragement in a dark but not unhopeful hour. Everything must be done to keep France in the fight.’

    According to his private secretary, John Colville, Churchill harboured a genuine hope that ‘America will come in now, at any rate as a non-belligerent ally.’ This was what Churchill had been seeking since his first plea for help in the middle of May. He understood that an instant American declaration of war was out of the question. This could only be enacted by Congress, which was riddled with isolationism. But Roosevelt himself had already displayed a deeper understanding that the European conflict could, if unchecked, spill over to the Americas. If the President exercised his unparalleled political skills, might he not be able to twist Congress’s arm and go beyond the mere sale of old weapons to a clear commitment to unconditional material aid -- which the Charlottesville speech seemed to imply? Might not Roosevelt even deliver a latent threat that, in the last resort, America itself would go to war?

    Reynaud too, fortified by Roosevelt’s speech, sent a further, extravagant appeal. ‘It is my duty,’ he wrote, ‘to ask you for a new gesture of solidarity, even greater than before. At the same time that you tell the men and women of America about our plight, I implore you to declare publicly that the United States extends to the Allies moral and material support of every kind, except the sending of an expeditionary force. I implore you to do this before it is too late.’ What Reynaud really wanted was the dispatch of American warships to European waters as an immediate and direct warning to Hitler, an incontrovertible sign that in the end the United States would not allow the Nazis to go unchallenged.

    On the afternoon of 11 June, after the messages to Roosevelt had been cabled to Washington, Churchill flew over to France to meet the French cabinet which had now left Paris and was lodging at a chateau near Orleans in central France. The British contingent understood that the meeting was an opportunity for the French High Command to provide the latest battle analysis and for the two Governments to plan further resistance. Churchill did not know that the day before, Weygand had arrived, uninvited, at Reynaud’s Paris home to declare that France had no choice but to seek an armistice. The battle, he stated, was over. De Gaulle, who was with Reynaud, reminded the Commander-in-Chief that there were other prospects. Weygand mockingly replied "Have you something to suggest?" De Gaulle, now a cabinet member, tartly reminded his former superior officer that the Government did not have suggestions to make, but orders to give.

    De Gaulle immediately sought out another French general, Charles Huntziger, whom he had suggested to Reynaud as a replacement for Weygand. Huntziger said he would act on any order given to continue resistance from Brittany or Africa. However Reynaud, having appointed Weygand only a few weeks before, fatally backed off from another change. As the British arrived at Briare it was left to Weygand to convey, with his customary precision, the imminence of defeat. To any suggestion from Churchill of alternative, even guerrilla, forms of resistance, Weygand’s mind was closed. Churchill turned to Pétain, reminding him how, after the British Fifth Army disaster at the Battle of Amiens in March 1918, he had visited Pétain at his headquarters and the French general had outlined his plan to fight back, re-establishing the line a few days later. "Yes", retorted Pétain, "You, the English, were done for. But I sent forty divisions to rescue you. Today it is we who are smashed to pieces. Where are your fifty divisions?" In fact, even in 1918, Churchill had seen the defeatism in Pétain’s eyes; it was his commander, Foch, who had revived the Allies.

    The self-justification for France’s fall was already emerging among the defeatists. It was the British who had scuttled and, run from Dunkirk; the British who were failing to send over their fighter squadrons; the British who wished to resist Hitler with French blood. If the British could not come to the rescue, the only possible saviour was America; and America was dithering. As the British group gathered in melancholy fashion for a late dinner in Briare, only one Frenchman seemed to be unimpeachably opposed to submission.

    General Edward Spears, a fluent French speaker and close friend of Churchill, was acting as Churchill’s personal liaison to the French Government. His first sighting of the gaunt de Gaulle produced a memorable portrait. ‘His bearing alone among his compatriots matched the calm, healthy phlegm of the British. A strange-looking man, enormously tall, sitting at the table, he dominated everyone else by his height, as he had done when walking into the room. No chin, a long, dropping, elephantine nose over a closely-cut moustache; a shadow over a small mouth whose thick lips tended to protrude as if in a pout before speaking, a high receding forehead and pointed head surmounted by sparse black hair lying flat and neatly parted. His heavily hooded eyes were very shrewd. When about to speak he oscillated his head slightly like a pendulum, while searching for words.’

    The next morning, 12 June, after a further pessimistic meeting during which Weygand exaggerated German strength and undervalued his own, Churchill prepared to fly back to London. Before he left, he had a last encounter, with the Commander of the French Navy, Admiral François Darlan. His fleet was powerful and modern, the fourth largest in the world. It was now becoming Churchill’s dominating fear, as it would become Roosevelt’s, that should France give in, her navy would be taken over by the Nazis. Churchill took Darlan aside. "Darlan, you must never let them get the French Fleet." Darlan solemnly promised that he would never do so. This meeting was the last that the British leader would see of the unholy trinity of Pétain, Weygand and Darlan. But in the years to come all three would be siren voices, tearing at the threads of Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s relationships with de Gaulle.

    Churchill returned in his Flamingo aircraft, which was normally escorted by twelve hurricanes. The morning was cloudy, which made it impossible for the hurricanes to join up. Churchill took the risk to fly alone. As the Flamingo neared the Channel, the weather cleared and its passengers could see the port of Le Havre in flames eight thousand feet below. Crossing the channel, the pilot made a sudden dive to one hundred feet above the sea and skimmed his way back to the coast. Churchill only learned later that they had passed beneath two German fighters, which were attacking fishing boats. The Germans had not spotted the defenceless Flamingo.

    Back in London, Churchill reported to the War Cabinet on the enfeeblement of Weygand and Pétain. Of the latter he said, "Pétain is a dangerous man at this juncture: he has always been a defeatist, even in the last war." Churchill also told his colleagues that the young and energetic de Gaulle had made a very favourable impression on him. Indeed he thought it possible that, if the present line collapsed, Reynaud would turn to de Gaulle to take command.

    Churchill now understood that there was only one hope of keeping France in the war. Both he and Reynaud had to wring more out of Roosevelt. Churchill wrote to him again, mentioning for the first time the name of de Gaulle: ‘The aged Marshal Pétain who was none too good in April and July 1918 is I fear ready to lend his name and prestige to a treaty of peace for France. Reynaud on the other hand is for fighting on and he has a young general de Gaulle who believes much can be done. This therefore is the moment for you to strengthen Reynaud the utmost you can. If there is anything you can say publicly or privately to the French now is the time.’

(Continues...)

Excerpted from ALLIES AT WAR by Simon Berthon. Copyright © 2001 by Simon Berthon. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.