The Inconsistent, Consistent de Gaulle

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 4

The Inconsistent, Consistent de Gaulle

The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle: a Biography. By David Schoenbrun. Hamish Hamilton. With Index. 365 pp. Last of Second World War leaders to survive in office, President de Gaulle looms large on the world stage as a controversial figure: but he has always been a controversial figure. Long before those dramatic days of 1940 when he decided his loyalty was to Gaul rather than to Petain, de Gaulle had been a man apart from his fellows, aloof, walking alone with a vision splendid of the glory of France and her destiny. In this book Mr Schoenbrun, an American radio journalist of high repute, has served history by presenting a critical study of this amazing man who has been called an enigma, the saviour of France, a dictator, and sundry other things ranging from the complimentary to the severely condemnatory. Long an observer of the Parisian scene, Mr Schoenbrun has based this biography on personal observations, documents and interviews, and what he has written has been checked and rechecked. One feels, therefore, that what he says is the truth, as far as truth can be ascertained among a welter of personal and political complexities.

Charles de Gaulle is revealed from his imaginative childhood onwards, from a time of paternally-encouraged interest in classical subjects and, especially, in France and her history. France became for him a kind of chosen race

predestined for the glory of world leadership. Then came training as an army officer, service in the First World War, far-sighted theories of tank warfare—ignored by the French but adopted enthusiastically by the Germans. In the Second World War again this singular man with a singular brand of patriotism was largely ignored or frustrated by senior colleagues and politicians.

His warnings went unheeded until too late. He did not like the Maginot Line complex. He did not like the way things were going in his beloved France, either in the army or in politics. He did not like the attitudes. And eventually when his mechanical warfare ideas were adopted, he employed them gallantly and effectively—but it was too late and the armour he was given was not enough. Then in 1940 came the French surrender to the Nazis, and de Gaulle’s decision to break with the Petain regime which he despised. A lone figure in London without material resources, he sought to rally Frenchmen to his Free French standard. It was a long and discouraging recruitment among the disputations of Frenchmen of varying allegiances reluctant to accept him as their leader. It was at this time that the intransigence of de Gaulle impressed itself on the Allied leaders. They could not understand this extraordinary man who could be so difficult and so. inflexible. It seems that Churchill and Eisenhower understood him best, but they

fared with him no better than the rest. Roosevelt and his envoy Robert Murphy openly disliked him, Macmillan, Truman, Kennedy (in a brief President-to-President communion), Lyndon Johnson — all of them came up against de Gaulle’S intransigence and were baffled. Some of them mistrusted him. Mr Schoenbrun reviews de Gaulle’s return to France, his resolution of the Algerian crisis and other colonial issues, the coup-d’etat, the hatreds he engendered among Frenchmen and the intense loyalties—“de Gaulle versus the Gauls”—and, a very significant war—“de Gaulle versus the Anglo-Saxons” (Americans and British) which Mr Schoenbrun suggests is a continuing conflict and the explanation of much that has happened in recent years respecting British and United States interests. For the Americans the conflict began in that unhappy relationship between Roosevelt and de Gaulle and his exclusion from the higher councils. It began early for Britain too, perhaps before the landings in North Africa and Normandy. For the British the conflict was given an ominous complexion in 1943 when British troops intervened against the French in Syria.

Summoning the British Ambassador, de Gaulle said: “We are not, I acknowledge, in a position to make war on you at present. But you have outraged France and betrayed the Occident. This cannot be forgotten.” Then when the British withdrew from the Suez adventure on the insistence of the Americans the French considered they had been deserted. The cold, uncivil war against the Anglo-Saxons is still on, Mr Schoenbrun claims. De Gaulle insists on nothing less than the publicly proclaimed admission of France to global counsels and decisions on an equal basis with America and Britain. Summing up the man and his attitudes, Mr Schoenbrun writes that there is “no single truth but rather many truths

as seen by different men, the whole truth being, therefore, vast, complex and difficult to ascertain. . . . One of the essential truths is that Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policies are as inconsistent and contradictory as his objective IS consistent and coherent. His fixed, immutable purpose is to achieve for France a leadership role in the world without sacrificing any parcel of French sovereignty to achieve it. This explains the otherwise confusing pattern of his many shifts of policy in the Fourth and Fifth Republics.”