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By Root 2092 0

shipping lanes in the Mediterranean, menace Italy, and had the virtue that it could be mounted immediately. The British case was compelling. Even General Marshall recognized that the preconditions for a successful landing on the coast of France did not yet exist. The Battle of the Atlantic had not been won; the Luftwaffe remained formidable; the logistical base to support an invasion was not in place; and the U.S. Army had still to prove its combat effectiveness.* When Eisenhower, who had firsthand experience landing in North Africa, noted that the forces to invade Europe could not be assembled until 1944, the decision to attack Sicily was settled. Churchill and Roosevelt, who monitored the meetings of the Combined Chiefs but did not attend, formally approved the choice on January 23, 1943.86

A second pressing issue at Casablanca was the future of France—or, more precisely, the determination of who was to represent France. The matter was given added urgency by the fall of Algeria and Morocco. These were departments of metropolitan France and could not simply be occupied by the Allies as conquered enemy territory. The problem was exacerbated by the historic division of French society. Neither London nor Washington fully appreciated the extent to which France was at war with itself. Large segments of the French population, much of the officer corps, and central elements of the Church had never accepted the French Revolution or the Republic. Unlike in Great Britain or the United States there was no consensus on the rules of the constitutional game. Since 1789 France had experienced three republics, three monarchies, two Napoleonic empires, two provisional regimes, a Directory, and the Paris Commune. Vichy was not an entirely German import, and Marshal Pétain spoke to and for those who rejected Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.87

Roosevelt’s preference was to postpone thinking about postwar France until hostilities were over. In the interim Washington supported General Henri Giraud, a senior but obscure French general whom diplomat Robert Murphy had discovered rusticating in the Loire. Giraud had no following in France or North Africa, no public persona, and little political insight. Simply put, he was an American puppet invented by the State Department to avoid having to deal with the recognized leader of the French resistance, Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle.

The British supported de Gaulle, as did most of antifascist France. Although de Gaulle was under a death sentence from Vichy, his Free French movement had become the rallying point of the liberation. His roster read like a who’s who of France’s future political and military leadership including Jean Monnet, Maurice Schuman, René Pleven, Michel Debré, François Mitterrand, André Malraux, and generals Philippe Leclerc, Alphonse Juin, Pierre Koenig, and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. The Free French movement spanned the political spectrum from left to right and transcended the division between the Republic and its enemies. The symbol de Gaulle chose, the republican tricolor with the cross of Lorraine superimposed, reflected (for one of the few times in French history) the union of Christianity and the Revolution. Obstinate, difficult, impossible in many respects, de Gaulle personified French independence.

Roosevelt wished to create a power-sharing coalition between de Gaulle and Giraud, but de Gaulle was not interested. He posed for a photograph with Giraud but tore up a press release Robert Murphy had written and composed his own asserting the independence of the Free French movement. Later de Gaulle said, “Roosevelt meant the peace to be an American peace, convinced that he must be the one to dictate its structure, and that France in particular should recognize him as its savior and its arbiter.… Like any star performer he was touchy as to the roles that fell to other actors. In short, beneath his patrician mask of courtesy, Roosevelt regarded me without benevolence.”88

After the picture taking ceremony with de Gaulle and Giraud, Roosevelt and Churchill met the press