Supreme Commander (33 page)

Aside from the immediate problem of whether of not to dump the Vichy administrators, there were long-range differences between the two that would have to be settled. For Giraud, what mattered was to maintain order and stability, to keep competent officials at their posts, to insure that pensions for officers and civil servants remained intact, and most of all to keep the forces of radicalism within France under control. All this could best be done by co-operating with the Americans, who seemed to have essentially the same aims. Like many soldiers, Giraud
contended that he was apolitical, which in his case meant that he would do nearly anything to support the status quo.

Roosevelt’s policy toward De Gaulle, with its strong element of personal bitterness, has mystified many observers. No adequate analysis, taking into account all the factors, has been made. One thing is clear—something more than personal pique was involved. Roosevelt’s view of the world was complex, and no one as yet knows what he intended for his postwar program. At times he seemed to favor collective security, modeled on Wilson’s concept of the League of Nations and later implemented through the United Nations. On other occasions he advocated a traditional spheres-of-influence doctrine, best seen in his “Four Policemen” expression, which would have Russia and America rule the world, with some help from Britain and China. Within either context, Roosevelt wanted a stable France. Given American determination to withdraw the G.I.s from Europe once Germany was defeated, stability in France was essential to stability on the Continent.

But how could this be achieved? The great fear was that the French people would, as they had done in the past, run to an extreme. Either the weak, inefficient, radical governments of the Popular Front type would take over, with consequences neither Roosevelt nor Churchill liked to think about, or there would be a man on a white horse, a Boulanger or even a Napoleon. Either result would be a disaster.

De Gaulle was dangerous on both counts. He had the aura of the man on the white horse about him. Without any mandate whatsoever from the French people, he had set himself up as head of the French state. He carried himself like a dictator, deliberately insulted foreigners and Frenchmen who did not agree with him, was totally ruthless in his relations, and used personal loyalty rather than efficiency as a criterion for advancement within his organization. What made him even more dangerous was the way he flirted with the forces of the left. From Roosevelt’s point of view, this made De Gaulle dangerous. “France faces a revolution when the Germans have been driven out,” the President once said, and he felt that the man most likely to profit from it would be De Gaulle. He would ride whatever popular mood existed into power. That Roosevelt was wrong is obvious—there was no fundamental revolution in France and De Gaulle, within a year of the end of the war, held free elections and relinquished his power. But there was in De Gaulle’s behavior a real basis for the President’s fears, which in any case nearly every member of the European section of the State Department shared.

Roosevelt spent much effort trying to find an alternative to De Gaulle. The best hope was the French Army, more specifically Giraud, who represented the forces of stability and conservatism without carrying in addition the tar of the Vichy brush. The trouble here was Giraud’s political innocence, and he soon fell by the wayside. This left the President without a candidate and, because of his tendency to personalize, meant that the United States had no definite policy regarding France. Under the circumstances, the most the President could do was to try to buy time and hope for the best, which in practice meant he followed the dubious course of attempting to stop De Gaulle.

The President expressed his views most clearly in a May 8, 1943, message to Churchill. He said De Gaulle was becoming “well-nigh intolerable,” for he was stirring up strife between various elements in Algiers, making promises to the Jews that incited the Arabs, “expanding his present group of agitators,” and so on. “I am inclined to think that when we get into France itself we will have to regard it as a military occupation run by the British and American generals,” Roosevelt said. “The top line, or national administration, must be kept in the hands of the British or American Commander-in-Chief.”
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As Milton Viorst has put it, “Roosevelt, irritated by French politics, without deep understanding of French history, with no experience in European diplomacy, took a condescending view of France and its prospects as a nation.” The Americans were already working out a program to bring democracy to Germany; Roosevelt evidently thought that the United States would have to show France the way too. Hull was in “complete agreement” with this policy, which he felt was needed to “prevent anarchy.”
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Eisenhower was caught in the middle of this plethora of political conflicts, which were far more complex than the summary above indicates. Roosevelt instructed him to act in North Africa as the military governor of a conquered province, but if he did that even Giraud would balk, and Eisenhower would be forced to use invaluable manpower to maintain order in North Africa. Nonetheless, the President wanted to keep De Gaulle out of power and made Eisenhower responsible for achieving this end. This ran counter to British wishes, and if Eisenhower was ever tempted to forget that he had more than one master Macmillan was there to remind him. Both Churchill and Roosevelt wanted Eisenhower to bring De Gaulle and Giraud together, a nearly impossible task because they wanted it accomplished on different terms. De Gaulle, in turn, wanted Eisenhower’s help in freeing France of the Vichy administrators,
while Giraud and Roosevelt wanted Eisenhower to see to it that the administrators stayed and the army was re-equipped. The De Gaulle faction put pressure on AFHQ to get the British and American governments to recognize the committee in Algiers as the provisional government of France, while the Giraud group wanted something altogether different. Eisenhower’s personal wish was to escape from politics altogether, and his official desire was to get the issue settled so that he could get on with the war. But the stakes were high, the problem complicated, and there was no easy or quick solution. There was simply no way for Eisenhower to escape a deep and lasting involvement in the politics of war-torn France, especially as he became more and more accomplished as a diplomat and the leading actors came to look to him for solutions.

On May 30 De Gaulle arrived in Algiers. Churchill and Foreign Secretary Eden were already there. The Prime Minister had come, along with Brooke and Marshall, to discuss post-HUSKY strategy with Eisenhower, but Churchill also wanted to be a witness to the French union. He no longer flattered himself with the belief that he had undue influence with De Gaulle, who he knew was going to go his own way whatever the Prime Minister thought, but Churchill did feel that along with Eden he could play some sort of role. De Gaulle had declared that if Giraud wished to continue as commander in chief of the French armed forces he should not serve as a member of the prospective committee. Churchill was a strong advocate of civilian control of the military, but in this case he did not agree with De Gaulle. He talked about the problem with Eisenhower, calling De Gaulle an “ego-maniac” and a “Prime S.O.B.” These were welcome words to American ears, and Eisenhower ventured to say that Giraud was a capable leader of the French Army who had done what he was told. Eisenhower declared that he intended to continue to back Giraud as commander in chief of the French armed forces and would expect the governments to do the same.
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Behind the scenes, meanwhile, De Gaulle’s supporters were building their strength for the showdown. Some two thousand Fighting French enlisted men and officers, who had fought through the desert with the Eighth Army, had gone AWOL (the British had ordered them to stay in Tripoli) and come into Algiers, where they were proselytizing among Giraud’s French troops and officers, with great success. Giraud’s police tried to herd up the Free French, but they simply scattered to the homes of friends outside Algiers.

With, in effect, two French armies in Algiers, one responsive to Giraud and the other to De Gaulle, and with the eventual government of
France at stake, the atmosphere was tense. A Fighting French officer boasted that De Gaulle had enough troops to take control of the city in a coup. With Darlan’s death fresh in everyone’s mind, the possibility of assassination could not be ignored. Eisenhower quietly checked on the number of American and British troops available for combat in the city and found there were almost none. There were, however, two British battleships and an aircraft carrier in the harbor and, of course, the air forces. Eisenhower felt that De Gaulle could probably take Algiers with an organized putsch but would be unable to hold it long. He did promise his aides one day he would start wearing a pistol, but he forgot it the next.
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The French, it turned out, were doing a better job of keeping calm than the British and Americans. On June 3 De Gaulle and two of his Free French representatives met with Giraud and two of his followers. Monnet was the seventh member of the committee. The proposal before them was to constitute themselves into what was in effect a provisional government of France. Giraud at first balked at the proposal. He wanted to keep all the power Eisenhower and the Americans had given him for himself, but Monnet advised him to yield and he ultimately agreed. Thus the French Committee of National Liberation (FCNL) was born. After discussion, the FCNL proclaimed itself the central French power. At Monnet’s urging, the committee was careful to state definitely that it would “relinquish its power” when France was liberated. De Gaulle and Giraud were co-presidents of the Committee, and Giraud remained as head of the armed forces.
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Eisenhower was delighted. Although neither the British nor the American government recognized the FCNL as a provisional government, they did agree to deal with it as an administrative agency for French interests. This meant, Eisenhower hoped, that all relations with the French would now be on an impersonal basis. When Churchill or Roosevelt wanted something, Macmillan or Murphy could discuss it with the FCNL. The old days, in which Eisenhower personally had to talk everything over with Giraud, hopefully were gone.
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The members of the FCNL, however, soon began bickering with each other. De Gaulle wanted to dismiss the old Vichy administrators, starting with Boisson at Dakar. Giraud would not agree. De Gaulle wanted control of the armed forces taken out of Giraud’s hands and placed in those of the FCNL, and he was furious with Giraud for the supine way in which he accepted the “constant and unjustified interference by the Allies in French affairs.” De Gaulle was also upset because the
Americans had prevented some of his followers in London from coming to Algiers.

Everything came to a head at a meeting on the morning of June 10. De Gaulle stated his position, failed to carry a majority, and thereupon indulged in a calculated outburst. “Shrouded in sorrow,” he declared he could “no longer associate with the Committee” and resigned.
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Whatever illusions Eisenhower had had about being free of French political troubles now disappeared. The day after De Gaulle’s outburst Roosevelt sent Eisenhower three cables. In the first he said he was not displeased, for he felt “this De Gaulle situation was bound to come to a head sooner or later” and better now than a month hence. In the second cable Roosevelt repeated a message he had sent the same day to Churchill, insisting that Giraud must have complete control of French troops in North Africa. He said he would send “several regiments to Dakar and also naval vessels if there were any sign that De Gaulle proposes to take things over in French West Africa.”

In the third message Roosevelt referred to De Gaulle’s intention of dumping Boisson. Churchill had given Boisson an oral promise, and Roosevelt a written one, that he would not be punished for co-operating with Vichy. Thus Roosevelt ordered Eisenhower to pass an important message to both Giraud and De Gaulle, a message that was to come from the general, not the President. Eisenhower was to say that he was pleased by the expression of French unity shown in the formation of the FCNL and then to express his concern over reports of the possibility of the removal of Boisson from his West Africa post as a violation of this very spirit of unity and co-operation. He was then to ask for reassurances that the reports were unfounded. Roosevelt told Eisenhower to “go as far as you like in carrying out” these orders.
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Eisenhower spent the morning in conference with Murphy and Macmillan. He ruefully commented that Marshall and others had advised him “to get out of the political machinations, and yet the President had plunged him back into them.”
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Because Eisenhower did not speak French he asked Murphy to deliver the message to Giraud. Murphy did so, and Giraud replied, “
Tres bien.
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De Gaulle was pleased with the hornet’s nest he had stirred up and when Murphy saw him was in a “most amiable state of mind.” He talked for an hour. He told Murphy the United States should make more of an effort to understand him and his movement. He had realized from the first, he said, that Great Britain could not win the war alone and that therefore France’s future would hinge on the efforts of the
Americans. He realized that the British were “traders capable of quick shifts of policy to meet their own interests and that they wished to use France for the purpose,” so he felt no compunction about using the British “as a convenience.” He expected from the United States “better comprehension” of the new France which he was building. Again and again he referred to the American attitude on Boisson, saying “it presented him with the gravest kind of problem on a matter of principle concerning French Sovereignty. If he yielded … he was lost.”
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Monnet, meanwhile, oiled the wheels and got the FCNL rolling again. De Gaulle returned to the committee, which expanded from seven to fourteen members, with a permanent subcommittee composed of De Gaulle, Giraud, Juin, and two others to control military affairs. Giraud had gone along because Monnet advised him to do so, but by June 16 it was clear that De Gaulle dominated the larger committee. Giraud charged that Monnet had betrayed him and threatened his own resignation. Murphy insisted that he remain in office. Eisenhower was out of town on a three-day inspection trip to Clark’s Fifth Army, and in reporting these developments to Roosevelt, Murphy was most pessimistic. The diplomat saw no way to prevent a Gaullist takeover.
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