The decisions of Tehran had now shifted the entire axis of the Allied European war effort from the south and the east (Italy and the Balkans), where Churchill had made his greatest investment, to the north and the west (the Russian front and Overlord). Despite these crushing disappointments, the British Prime Minister was not a man to mope for long. If the overall strategy had changed, his must too. Now France, a country he knew well and loved deeply, was to be the main stage, not the Balkans. Within days of leaving his sickbed he was meeting members of the French Resistance in North Africa and planning how Britain, which had so far largely ignored French partisans in favour of those of Yugoslavia and Italy when supplying arms, could help foster the growth of the Resistance movement.
It is often said that Churchill was a dewy-eyed romantic when it came to partisans. He was. But his attachment to the fostering of internal resistance had a hard-edged military rationale, too; it was a way to keep occupied countries in a ferment of opposition against the Germans and to prevent them from relapsing into apathetic torpor, as France had done after the Armistice; it was also a means by which the ‘skill, dash and courage’ of British agents behind enemy lines could influence the outcome of events in ways which compensated for the relatively meagre matériel resources the country was able to commit at this stage of the war, compared with those of the US and Russian colossi. There were also those in Whitehall (perhaps even including Churchill himself) who thought that, in terms of blood and loss, France’s sacrifice during the war had so far been small. So it was no great thing to ask her now to risk a greater price for her own liberation.
Churchill had always admired de Gaulle, even if he did not like him. But up to now the French General had been just another leader-in-exile of a conquered European country and these were two to the penny in the London of 1941–3 – though, as Foreign SecretaryAnthony Eden ruefully admitted, de Gaulle stood out from the crowd because he caused ‘us [the British government] more difficulties than all our other European allies put together’. Now, however, with France the main stage for the next phase of the war in the West, de Gaulle, the territory of France and the capabilities of the French Resistance took on new strategic importance.
De Gaulle himself had started 1943 with few assets and even fewer friends. Disliked by Roosevelt, disregarded by the British war leadership and personally irksome to Churchill, he had almost nothing going for him – and very little he could call his own in France or among the Free French either. Like the Pope, of whom Stalin famously asked ‘How many Divisions does he have?’, de Gaulle may have been the spiritual embodiment of the French Resistance, but of actual ‘Divisions’ he had few.
De Gaulle might have expected that Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa and the liberation of the French colony of Algeria (where Eisenhower had now set up his headquarters), would have strengthened his position as the French leader with whom the Allies had to deal. In fact the opposite happened.
The Americans chose instead Henri Giraud, a French general who had been captured at the fall of France, been imprisoned in Königstein Castle, escaped under curious circumstances and made his way to Toulon where an Allied submarine had picked him up and delivered him to Gibraltar. He arrived on the Rock only a few hours before the start of Operation Torch. Eisenhower promptly asked him to assume command of all French troops in North Africa. Giraud at first refused because he was not commanding the whole Allied operation, but eventually relented. When he left Gibraltar for Algiers on 9 November 1942, Giraud remarked, ‘You may have seen something of the large De Gaullist demonstration that was held here last Sunday. Some of the demonstrators sang the Marseillaise. I entirely approve of that! Others sang the Chant du Départ [a military ballad]. Quite satisfactory! Others again shouted “Vive de Gaulle!” No objection. But some of them cried “Death to Giraud!” I don’t approve of that at all.’
Giraud knew perfectly well that de Gaulle was his deadly rival for the leadership of the free and the fighting French. But he also knew who was in the dominant position – he was, and by far. With the personal support of Roosevelt and the practical support of Eisenhower, he was in the place that mattered most – Algiers – and he commanded not only more French troops but also the only formed French units at that time fighting alongside their Allied comrades.
Giraud’s support inside France was less certain. But then so was de Gaulle’s. At the beginning of 1943, the Resistance was quarrelsome, fragmentary, diverse and riven by political rivalry. There were Gaullists to be sure. But also Giraudists. And many whose loyalties were to neither of the above, but to the Communists, the Socialists and even (still) to the Pétainists. The Secret Army was by comparison more Gaullist, but by no means uniformly so. Meanwhile, as de Gaulle understood very well, when it came to the actual government of France the relative position of the potential French leaders was going to be irrelevant, because the American President was planning to impose an Allied Military Government in Occupied Territories – known as an AMGOT. France would be governed for a period at least, as Italy had been, by foreigners. That was Roosevelt’s plan. That was what Giraud was acquiescing in. He, de Gaulle, would not.
But, at the start of 1943, de Gaulle’s chances of fulfilling his aim of being the leader who took his country back to freedom, self-government and eventually great-power status seemed ambitious to say the least. To succeed, he had to make himself the unchallenged leader of the free and fighting French inside and outside France. That meant going head to head with the most powerful man in the world, President Roosevelt, and wresting power from his favourite, Giraud. Then he had to make himself and his supporters so indispensable to the liberation of France that a French government would follow, not a government of transition drawn up in Roosevelt’s back office. And he had to achieve this with limited influence and only few assets to his name. These were the labours of Hercules indeed. But, remarkably, by the end of 1943, de Gaulle had accomplished all of them.
On 30 May 1943, de Gaulle arrived in Algiers, having finally negotiated terms for a partnership with Giraud. Five days after his arrival, on 4 June, de Gaulle took to the airwaves on Radio Algiers: ‘Everything is now in play – our army and our navy are playing a key part in a drama of indescribable importance. Our sacred duty is to show again what great things can be accomplished by the arms of France.’ Not since Lenin had been smuggled into Russia in a sealed train had such an insertion of poison been accomplished with such devastating consequences into the body politic of the ruling (in this case Giraudist) establishment. In a series of moves of cunning and ruthlessness, de Gaulle progressively sidelined and then summarily removed Giraud, leaving himself in sole charge. It would take until the D-Day landings of June 1944 for Roosevelt to come to terms with this reality, but there was little he could do. Giraud was the past. De Gaulle was now the future.
De Gaulle’s success in gaining control of the power structures in Algiers was replicated inside France. Francis Cammaerts, who had a ringside seat in the key months, saw the shift of opinion and remarked on its speed. ‘In March 1943, still, Gaullism was not necessarily the only salvation. By August 1943 it was. No one in the Resistance in France thought that there was any solution to the French future except through de Gaulle …’ This represented an astonishing success for the General for it gave him the means, not just to unseat Giraud, but to play a direct role alongside the Allies in his country’s liberation. No government in France could now be formed without de Gaulle’s consent and active participation. In short, if de Gaulle could build up the political effect of the Resistance and make it a potent military force, then Roosevelt’s plan for a transitional government in France would be a dead letter.
Such a project, however, was not without its complications. On the one hand, the Resistance gave de Gaulle