Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [181]
Throughout Churchill’s life, he displayed a fierce commitment to France. He cherished a belief in its greatness which contrasted with American contempt. Roosevelt perceived France as a decadent imperial power which had lacked British resolution in 1940. Entirely mistakenly, given the stormy relationship between de Gaulle and Churchill, the president thought the general a British puppet. He was determined to frustrate any attempt to elevate de Gaulle to power when the Allies liberated France. The Americans had none of the visceral hatred for Vichy that prevailed in London. Since 1940 they had sustained diplomatic relations with Pétain’s regime, which in their eyes retained significant legitimacy. Here was a further manifestation of British sensitivities born of suffering and proximity, while the United States displayed a detachment rooted in comfortable inviolability.
In November 1942, British political and public opinion reacted violently to Darlan’s appointment. Just as the country was denied knowledge of Stalin’s excesses, so it had been told nothing of de Gaulle’s intransigence. British people knew only that the general was a patriot who had chosen honourable exile in London, while Darlan was a notorious Anglophobe and lackey of the Nazis. When Churchill addressed a secret session of the Commons about the North African crisis on December 10, the mood of MPs was angry and uncomprehending. In private, since Darlan’s appointment on November 8, Churchill had wavered. He disliked the admiral intensely. But he was also weary of de Gaulle’s tantrums. He deemed the solidarity of the Anglo-American alliance to transcend all other considerations. He spoke to the House with remarkable frankness—such frankness, indeed, that after the war much of what he said was omitted from the published record of his speeches to the Commons’ secret sessions.
“In war,681” he said, “it is not always possible to have everything go exactly as one likes. In working with Allies it sometimes happens that they develop opinions of their own … I cannot feel that de Gaulle is France, still less that Darlan and Vichy are France. France is something greater, more complex, more formidable than any of the sectional manifestations … The House must not be left to believe that General de Gaulle is an unfaltering friend of Britain. On the contrary, I think he is one of those good Frenchmen who have a traditional antagonism ingrained in French hearts by centuries of war against the English … I could not recommend you to base all your hopes and confidence upon him.”
He went on to explain to the Commons that Gen. Henri Giraud, whom the Americans thought a more suitable prospective national leader than de Gaulle, had been smuggled out of France by the Allies with the explicit intention that he should assume authority in North Africa. This purpose was confounded only when Giraud was rebuffed by senior French officers on the spot. Averell Harriman wrote: “I have always deemed it tragic that the British682 picked De Gaulle and even more tragic that we picked Giraud.” On December 10 MPs, perhaps impressed by how fully Churchill confided in them, were placated by his arguments. In private, the British government redoubled its efforts to get Darlan removed from office. The Americans rejected London’s proposal—an implausible one—that Harold Macmillan, British resident minister in the Mediterranean, should assume temporary authority in Algiers. Anglo-American relations were still steeped in acrimony on this issue when it was unexpectedly resolved. On December 24, a young French royalist burst into Darlan’s office at the Summer Palace and shot him dead.
Responsibility for the assassination remains one of the last significant mysteries of the Second World War. The immediate perpetrator, one Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, was hurried before a firing squad two days later. Oliver Harvey, Eden’s private secretary, expressed most undiplomatic dismay about the execution: “It shows how wrong you get