Charles de Gaulle: Controversial Visionary, Reluctant Democrat, Wartime Hero

A giant of 20th century French politics, one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War, a statesman who restored France’s prestige and put it firmly on the world and European map, a visionary in whose Fifth Republic the French still live today, and a supporter of the decolonisation process and Algerian independence. This is how General Charles de Gaulle made history. A man who left a lasting mark on every step of his life. This is certainly an indisputable fact, but is it also indisputable that the above set of superlatives, which should most aptly sum up the achievements of a man who considered himself to be the personification of France and its greatness, are also indisputable?

Most of all, de Gaulle is undoubtedly to be credited with putting France in the victors’ camp at the end of the Second World War. But that does not mean that, in addition to the above, the following description of a man whose legacy still stirs the spirits today does not also apply. A man of action, inclined to authoritarianism and openly sceptical of democracy, unapproachable and icily haughty, hidden behind a mask of inexpressiveness, and at times irascible, insistent and unwilling to compromise, even when it was in the interests of preserving France’s fundamental values or its future.

Even when his love of country bordered on obsession, he was often unable to control his narcissistic impulses and put both his political survival and the fate of France and its empire at stake.

Charles de Gaulle was undoubtedly one of the most stubborn and self-confident of politicians and, as a man who addressed himself in the third person in his memoirs, would have been an excellent subject for psychoanalysis. But if anything, he was in the right place at the right time, because it was in moments of crisis that he was at his best and most sober. Despite his many character flaws and his modest leadership skills, he possessed among the latter the very qualities needed to act decisively in times of war.

He was one of the few who, at the outbreak of the Second World War and the German attack on France, believed that France would emerge from the grip of war not through collaboration with the Germans and the Vichy regime, but through rebellion and cooperation with the Allies. He had to convince not only the French, but also and above all the British and the Americans. Neither the former nor the latter were enthusiastic about working with this strange and volatile self-proclaimed saviour of French honour and pride.

But his one guiding principle during the war was to vehemently oppose the armistice with the Germans and to fight on the side of the Allies. Without his almost painful persistence, the fate of France would have been very different.

De Gaulle never doubted his mission, living in the conviction that he deservedly shared the military Olympus with figures such as, for example, Joan of Orleans, Napoleon, Pericles and Alexander the Great. He was therefore all the less able to tolerate the often condescending and patronising attitudes towards him of the Allied leaders of the Great Powers, Churchill, Stalin and, most of all, Roosevelt.

It was the latter who was most defensive of working with the overconfident French general and for a long time refused to recognise him as the legitimate representative of the French nation. For pragmatic reasons, he had long hoped for good relations with Vichy. Churchill, too, often despaired of the self-confident Frenchman, but at the same time grudgingly admired his stubbornness – after all, the two statesmen were in many ways too much alike to dislike each other.

Despite France’s second-class role in the emerging geopolitical reality that took shape during the Cold War, de Gaulle never accepted it. Nor was he ever a British or American puppet. Although his movement for a Free France during the war depended entirely on their material and military support, he defended French interests and colonial territories, which were often viewed with too great an appetite by the Allies, almost to the last.

For, in addition to his unshakeable belief in his own right, he had long had an unshakeable belief that France would retain its place as a major world power in the post-war order. When this proved illusory, especially in the light of decolonisation and the emergence of the two poles and the two superpowers, he turned his attention strategically towards Europe and sought a solution for maintaining France’s leading role in international relations in alliances with the other Western European countries. Of course, de Gaulle’s vision of Europe was one of intergovernmental rather than supranational integration.

After temporarily withdrawing from politics, he was called back into the service of the nation by his compatriots when one of the greatest crises in France in the post-war period, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), occurred. By then, decolonisation had everywhere turned into a one-way street of no return, and de Gaulle did not resist it, despite the strong opposition of the Algerian French, who made up ten percent of the population. Algeria marked the last years of his rule.

How did this taller-than-average man of unusual appearance, who had difficulty in forming close emotional and friendly relationships, manage to make such a strong mark on the 20th century? Perhaps it was precisely because of the unorthodoxy and solidity of his personality.

The Battle of France

On 3 September 1939, two days after German forces attacked Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany. While the latter was under pressure to win the war as quickly as possible, the Allies were buying time and preparing logistically for a long war in which they had a much better chance of victory. By imposing an economic blockade, they also intended to slowly strangle Germany from within, so they were in no hurry to go anywhere with offensive military operations.

This kind of phoney war led to the forced inactivity of troops on the ground and was a real frustration for de Gaulle, who was then serving as commander of the 5th Panzer Division in Alsace. He was so bored that he was reading biographies of famous composers, while pondering the lessons of Poland’s unexpectedly sudden defeat.

He stressed even more than he had done for years the importance of heavy tank units and the much-needed mechanisation and motorisation of the French army, which, in his opinion, would be the only thing that would prevent a repeat of the Polish scenario on French soil. To this he added aviation, which was also occupying an increasingly crucial place in modern warfare.

All these processes of modernisation of the army were, in his opinion, proceeding too slowly, and he wrote several documents and submitted them to his superiors. One of his memoranda was sent to as many as eighty important military and political figures, prophetically warning of the apocalyptic dimensions of the war that had just been launched. In his view, everything pointed to a conflict that would develop into the most brutal and destructive in history and that would completely shake up the existing political and social order.

By then the days were numbered for Prime Minister Daladier, who, together with the British Chamberlain, was responsible for the Munich debacle and the so-called policy of appeasement of Germany, which, however, had the opposite effect and served up Czechoslovakia, Austria and, finally, Poland on a platter to Hitler.

Of course, de Gaulle was much more interested in directing military policy in practice than in theory, which is why he began to approach the otherwise well-known Paul Reynaud, who was next to occupy the prime minister’s chair. They shared similar views on the futility of a policy of appeasement, the necessity of mechanised warfare as opposed to static warfare, and were opposed to an armistice.

And indeed Reynaud became Prime Minister, which had already brought the tenacious de Gaulle closer to a more powerful position. He sent Reynaud a proposal for a war cabinet. But the new government was a colourful and disjointed mix of mediocre politicians, few of whom wanted to continue the war with Germany. So the idea of an armistice quickly found its way to the French government’s desk, and few were as furious about it as de Gaulle.

Rapid developments came to his rescue. First, on 9 May 1940, a determined Winston Churchill replaced the perennially vacillating Neville Chamberlain in Britain, and then, the day after, Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The war in the West was on, and with it the Battle of France.

Action at last, de Gaulle wrote excitedly to his wife Yvonne. Despite his initial defeats, he was optimistic, and he was promoted to become the youngest general in the French army. As always, he pushed himself to the limit and demanded the same of his men. He chain-smoked and slept so little that the cigarette butts in the ashtray were still warm when he woke up in the morning. He spent most of his time in solitude, both during meals and during his regular visits to the front, as well as in the evenings.

“Why are you always alone, Commander? We would like to socialize and talk with you,” his subordinates tried to get closer to him. But in his characteristically tactless style, he immediately brushed them off: “And what would you like to talk about?”

De Gaulle was a loner by nature, and as a leader he believed he needed as much time as possible to think and make decisions. Although he listened to others, he rarely took them into account. He once said, “I only appreciate those who can stand up to me, but what if I can’t stand them?”.

All the descriptions of the people who ever worked with him were similar: authoritarian, reclusive, cold, egocentric and insistent, but at the same time dedicated, hard-working, resilient, and also extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful.

He was omnipresent at the front, but his leadership style was not inspiring but awe-inspiring. After only a few weeks on the battlefield, his life changed for good from military to political anyway, when Reynaud finally summoned him to Paris to join the government and offered him the post of Undersecretary for Defence. But official France was then in its last gasps and de Gaulle could only watch in silence as it disintegrated.

Reynaud had already made the most fatal mistake of his life. In the hope of boosting morale in the army, he offered a place of honour in the government to the then 84-year-old Marshal Pétain for his services in the defence of France in the First World War.

Instead of saving the honour of Pétain’s army, he began to argue passionately for an early armistice with Germany, convinced that France had no hope of victory. De Gaulle was furious, and in the meantime Italy had joined Germany in the war.

Paris was lost on 14 June and the battle for France ended ingloriously on 25 June, a few days after the humiliating signing of the capitulation in the forest of Compiègne, in the very same carriage in which the Germans were forced to sign the capitulation at the end of the First World War, on 11 November 1918.

Some of the terms of the Armistice may have been of some comfort to the French, however, such as the fact that half of French territory remained free and that the Germans were not interested in French colonial possessions.

The birth of a legend

As soon as de Gaulle learned that his government intended to sign the Armistice, he wrote a letter of resignation, which he was never able to send because of the rapid pace of events. Just before the end of the Battle of France, he was in London negotiating the continuation of the war and British assistance in the redeployment of French troops from North Africa to Europe, making acquaintances that would help to shape his future.

He was spotted by none other than Winston Churchill, frustrated by the defeatism of the French political and military elites and all the more impressed by this, in many ways strange, but energetic and tenacious general. For all that drove him at the beginning of the war was how to get France back into it.

This aspiration was, of course, shared by the British, who feared the loss of an ally. The idea of a permanent union between France and Britain was also born at that time, but it fell on deaf ears in France, except with de Gaulle. Reynaud resigned and the mandate to form a new government was given to the elderly and increasingly backward Marshal Philippe Pétain.

But de Gaulle’s reputation was not much better either. He was not entirely unknown to the British media, who wrote of an aggressive right-winger and a fanatical enthusiast for the mass use of armoured vehicles, a man with a lust for power and whose ideas on social order were not the most compatible with democracy.

At the same time, he was recognised for his clarity of mind and strength of will, and was described as the only one who could stand up to the new regime under Marshal Pétain, which was becoming more collaborationist by the day, and organise a revolt from abroad. And indeed he settled in London before the capitulation.

In his memoirs, he described the feelings he felt when, at the age of forty-nine, he bade farewell to a life spent in the embrace of his beloved France and set off with two suitcases for new adventures, to a country whose language he did not know and which he had visited for the first time only ten days before.

Shortly afterwards, his wife and three children unexpectedly joined him in London. She left France and, like thousands of other refugees, bravely set off. The fact that her daughter Anne had a severe form of Down’s syndrome only made the journey more difficult. When the couple finally found each other, through a series of fortunate circumstances, it was one of the few times they kissed in the presence of others.

On arrival in London, before the signing of the Armistice, de Gaulle went straight to 10 Downing Street and began to discuss the next steps with Churchill.

On 18 June 1940, Charles de Gaulle, by then a little-known general in the French army both at home and abroad, addressed his countrymen over BBC radio. He became the first public figure and public voice to oppose the signing of the armistice between France and Germany and to advocate the continuation of the war on the side of Great Britain. He warned that France could rely on her colonies to supply the resources that would lead her to victory and that, together with the Allies, she would be stronger than Germany in the long run. The man who could lead her to victory was, of course, himself.

In the days and weeks that followed, he began to present himself as the only true and legitimate successor to the last government, while Marshal Pétain in France tried to counter him with similar propaganda. Pétain argued that the Armistice was not incompatible with French honour and that he had remained on French territory in order to protect his compatriots, while de Gaulle put his tail between his legs.

For a while they fought a real radio duel, while British politicians were divided. Some had long supported Pétain’s government and hoped that it would be prepared to work with them, although he very quickly began to meet Hitler in public. They were also suspicious of de Gaulle, who, although he claimed to be the leader of the so-called Free France, was not initially supported by many influential Frenchmen.

On the contrary, many of them warned against his authoritarian motives, his vague agenda and his unpleasant and dubious character. Many still hoped that one of the more reliable politicians in Pétain’s camp would switch sides, and perhaps with it de Gaulle. Winston Churchill remained his greatest supporter, and without his backing the General’s rising star would have quickly gone astray.

Meanwhile, Pétain’s government had established itself in the small town of Vichy in the Free Zone, and there the truncated French Parliament committed suicide. It voted Pétain powers which allowed him to declare himself head of state with full executive powers, while at the same time allowing him to suspend parliamentary sessions indefinitely.

The new regime, neutral on paper, soon proved authoritarian, repressive, anti-Semitic, Anglophobic and, of course, Germanophilic. Diplomatic relations with Great Britain were severed and the British had no choice but to bet on the socially maladjusted General de Gaulle. The moment he had been preparing for for years had finally arrived.

De Gaulle set up the Committee for a Free France and declared himself its leader. This earned him a sentence of death in abstentia for high treason from the Vichy regime. At the same time, he created the Free French Forces and the National Defence Committee, and asked the British government to recognise all these bodies as the legitimate representatives of the French people. Despite the fact that many French exiles lobbied against such a decision, there were few alternatives.

As de Gaulle was still largely unknown to both the French and British public, and had no command of English, the British began to ‘sell’ him to the media, which was no easy task. One diplomat, when asked about this mysterious French general, said: “I can hardly tell you anything about him, except that he has a head like a banana and hips like a woman.”

He was also very protective of his privacy and his wife, Yvonne, never wanted to be the centre of attention. Once, Churchill, who naturally enjoyed the attention of the media and the public, organised a photo-therapy for the de Gaulle couple. In the pictures, which are supposed to show them in human light and going about their daily business, they look distinctly unnatural and uncomfortable.

Autocrat, democrat, madman?

The responsibility de Gaulle had as a newly-appointed inter-war political leader without a clear political position was enormous. He was aware of this and naturally set himself to rise to the challenge, aided by total commitment to his country, strength of will, confidence in his own leadership abilities and a considerable measure of self-confidence bordering on arrogance. At first he had only a handful of casual supporters, but his support base was rapidly strengthening, just as Pétain’s was weakening.

Indeed, the hero of the First World War had many followers precisely because of the reputation he had earned for his courage on the bloody battlefields of the most murderous global conflict of all time. But by 1940, he was no longer the same man, and many who had revered him for his past actions quickly turned their backs on him.

Pétain also blamed de Gaulle, accusing him of being a British mercenary bent on destroying the French empire. He never spoke his name in public again.

As part of its campaign against Vichy propaganda, the BBC began broadcasting a regular half-hour night programme entitled Frenchmen Talking to Frenchmen as early as mid-July 1940. Until the first letters from enthusiastic listeners began to arrive from France, the programme makers did not even know if anyone was listening.

Many exiles, often including de Gaulle, were lined up in front of the microphone. Although he was not a natural rhetorician and his voice had an unusual intonation, this may have added a special glow to his speeches that made them even more memorable.

The next step in gaining support for the Free French had to be taken in the colonies. Some of these were firmly in the hands of Vichy, such as North Africa, where French troops were commanded by Pétain’s follower and anti-Semite Charles Noguès.

In most of equatorial Africa, however, the picture was different. There, de Gaulle was welcomed with open arms by enthusiastic crowds during his visit, something he was not at all used to. The streets were filled with joyful people, as if a cruel war had not just begun.

But the first dangerous divisions between the British and de Gaulle’s Free French took place in the Middle East, a region that had played an important geostrategic role for both colonial powers for many years. The British, who had already begun to face up to the imminent inevitability of decolonisation during the war, began to promise independence to countries such as Syria and Lebanon, otherwise French mandates.

At the same time, they were in the hands of Vichy, which the British more or less did not care about, as long as they did not fall into the hands of the Germans. As so often, de Gaulle retorted: “I don’t think I shall ever get on with the English. They are all the same, totally focused on their own interests and business … Do you think I am interested in an English victory in the war? Not at all. All I am interested in is France’s victory.”

His colleagues found it difficult to calm him down and it was rumoured that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The British also got fed up and punished him by banning him from broadcasting on the BBC for a while. But both sides were forced to cool their nerves, dependent on each other, committed to the battle for freedom and to opposing the regimes that oppressed it.

In addition, de Gaulle had a growing number of capable and reliable personnel at his side, on whom the British could rely. And of course Churchill remained in his favour – one more bizarre than the other, they liked to smoke and debate together in French.

In November 1940, de Gaulle returned to London after visiting the colonies, although he seriously considered moving his headquarters to Brazzaville, where he was worshipped as a demigod.

By the end of 1940, his successes were unevenly distributed – he had gained a French colonial base, but most of the empire remained loyal to Vichy; he had secured the support of the British government for Free France, but at the same time the British government was still at times flirting with the Vichy regime; he had gained a large number of supporters, but there was a particular distaste for his modus operandi amongst many of the exiles.

In his first manifestos, in which he stressed the illegitimacy of the Vichy regime, he refused to use the word democracy, despite the encouragement of his colleagues, which earned him the insult that he was a fascist. And indeed, it could hardly be said that he was a democrat at heart. In the first year and a half, he did not utter the words democracy and republic even once.

It was precisely because of his difficult personality that many people did not join Free France, which he administered as his own property. He often upset the British so much that they were on the verge of replacing him – one very concrete alternative, for example, was General Giraud. But this was just wishful thinking on the part of those who did not know the General well enough.

Forced friendships

With Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the US entry into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the war took on new international dimensions. For the French, it meant two things in particular – on the one hand, it risked France further losing its great power status, and on the other, the extension of the war to the Pacific gave France and its territories there a new strategic importance. De Gaulle immediately saw the potential of international diplomacy to increase his influence, and he embarked on it with great vigour.

First, of course, he expressed his unequivocal support for the Soviet Union and immediately sought to establish direct relations with it, above all as a counterbalance to the constant bickering with Great Britain. Friendship with the Soviet Union was of great geopolitical importance to the French, since it limited their power by creating an armour around Germany, and above all forced the Germans to redeploy their forces on a new eastern front, thus easing the pressure on the western front.

The most problematic of the relations with the Allies for the Free French turned out to be the one with the USA, or rather with its President, Franklin Roosevelt. The latter was even more hostile to de Gaulle than the British, mainly because his suspicions were constantly fuelled by powerful Frenchmen living in the USA.

But de Gaulle was aware of the strategic role that the US would play by entering the war, and he had already predicted it visionarily in his famous first speech on 18 June 1940. American industrial strength and human and material resources became a key lifeline for the Allies with each new day of the continuation of the war.

Roosevelt, while deeply shocked by France’s defeat, distrusted de Gaulle, convinced that he was some kind of artificial creature of British policy. Moreover, the pragmatist in him was prepared to work with Vichy if it would benefit the Americans. He did not give up on the Pétain regime for much longer than the British, thus keeping more irons in the fire. The French empire, which they wanted to neutralise rather than further strengthen with a view to post-war settlement, was also in the American calculations.

But eventually, even Roosevelt reluctantly realised that the Vichy regime was a lost cause for the Allies and recognised the Free French forces as military partners. They began to send them military equipment and, like the British, they also tried to portray de Gaulle to the domestic public as an important actor in the fight against Nazism and fascism.

In 1942, at Roosevelt’s urging and from a script by the distinguished writer William Faulkner, Warner Bros even conceived a feature film about him, but the project fell through as relations between the Allies remained volatile and de Gaulle remained true to his reputation as an enfant terrible.

At last, the French rebels could stop relying exclusively on Britain for help, which of course had been a burden for de Gaulle from the start. His over-dependence on Britain even went so far as to make him literally their prisoner – he was not allowed to leave the country, all his correspondence was scrutinised, he was watched at every turn and, above all, his daily material survival depended on them.

He felt like a wild animal in a cage, and when the Soviets entered the war on the side of the Allies, he toyed with the idea of moving to Moscow.

Preparing for victory

As the war progressed, everyone slowly accepted that de Gaulle would remain the main actor in the French struggle against the occupier and thus a constant on the world stage. Support for him grew, both among the French around the world and among resistance movements at home. The latter despised the old political parties that had let France down at the beginning of the war. They therefore aligned themselves with de Gaulle, the internationally recognised symbol of the French resistance against Hitler.

After Hitler’s defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, it became clear that the scales of victory would tip in favour of the Allies, and preparations began for talks on a post-war settlement. These were led by the leaders of the three Great Powers, the USA, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Although de Gaulle was excluded from the direct talks, much to his chagrin and during his characteristic rampage, French interests were not completely ignored.

The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, warned that de Gaulle would be crucial to France’s future and that he should at least be consulted on matters that directly affected France. All three major Allied powers also recognised de Gaulle’s Committee for National Liberation in August 1943.

But when, for example, the preparations for the landings in North Africa, nominally under Vichy rule, had begun the previous year, the Allies had not seen fit to inform de Gaulle’s rebels. He wanted, above all, to open a second front in western Europe, but this fell through because of the North African manoeuvres. However, it was because of them that the Germans occupied the rest of free France in retaliation. This time de Gaulle was more than justified in his fury.

In 1943, however, de Gaulle moved his headquarters out of London and settled in Algeria, where he was well received. He also managed to get rid of rivals such as Giraud, who had long been supported by the Americans.

Roosevelt also suggested that the French should unite under Giraud in the post-war French settlement, but since Churchill remained sympathetic to de Gaulle, despite warnings that he had fascist tendencies, the great general remained firmly in the saddle.

But he was still worried lest his volatile allies should change their minds and open negotiations with the Vichy regime, especially after they had signed a very hasty armistice with the new Italian leader, General Badoglio, in September, after two days of negotiations. The French, of course, were not informed of this.

The trend just continued, de Gaulle was not invited to Moscow, not to the Teheran conference where D-Day was decided, not to Potsdam, not to Yalta. But this time, surprisingly, he swallowed his pride and bowed to the new political reality. He wanted the Free French troops to take part in the liberation of France, and he was prepared to sacrifice some honour to do so.

He also drafted a memorandum on the subject and sent his men to London to negotiate, but the final decision was taken in Washington. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Europe, was in favour of the idea, and in the end Roosevelt agreed.

Shortly before the famous landing on the west coast of France, de Gaulle returned to London and delivered one of his most spectacular speeches, which gave no indication of the existing tension between the Allies: “A unique battle has begun, a battle for France, for the sons of France, wherever they are, whoever they are, and it is their sacred duty to fight for France. /…/ behind the heavy clouds of our blood and tears, the sunbeams of our greatness are again.”

New Horizons

The Second World War was drawing to a close. On 26 August 1944, the day after the liberation of Paris, de Gaulle showed the world how much he had learned during the years of war, including the importance of marketing and propaganda. He organised a military parade on the famous Champs-Elysées in Paris, walking slowly among the cheering crowds and holding his hand high in the air and writing out the letter V for victory, a gesture that became his trademark.

Never in the history of France had so many people gathered – waving tricolour banners and the slogans Vive la France!, Vive la République!, Vive de Gaulle! (Long Live France!, Long Live the Republic!, Long Live de Gaulle!). The French have a new national hero around whom an eternal cult of personality has been created.

Once the initial euphoria had passed, both France and the other participants in the war had to face the consequences of a conflict that had so radically changed the world without hesitation. Had it been de Gaulle’s way, France would of course have regained its great power status, but the reality was different. Two ideological poles emerged, dominated by two superpowers, leaving only crumbs for the smaller ones at the tables where the most important decisions were taken.

At the same time, the process of decolonisation was accelerating and a weakened France was losing territory after territory. Its greatest nightmare took place in Algeria, which finally gained its independence in 1962 after a long and bloody civil war. On the road to independence, it was helped by none other than de Gaulle, who returned to the helm of state after years of absence from the political arena precisely because of the Algerian crisis.

But even before that, de Gaulle, immediately after the war at the head of a new provisional government made up of supporters of the Free French and various other rebel movements, ex-politicians, exiles, civil servants and professionals, had once again proved himself a cunning politician. He began to look towards Europe.

Although he had been sceptical about its unification during the war – in particular, he did not believe that France and Germany could so quickly find themselves within the same community – he saw great potential in the unification of Europe after it.

But the new community, in his view, would have to be a collection of sovereign states, not a federalist union in which states would give up part of their sovereignty. They should cooperate primarily in the economic sphere and thus be better able to cope with the challenges of globalisation.

Such a vision of Europe was, of course, the opposite of the one that has taken hold today after decades of ever closer integration. But in France in particular, de Gaulle’s ideas on the need to limit the powers of common institutions have been revived in recent years.