With de Gaulle in North Africa

...I did not take this too seriously, but ventured to observe that, as a soldier, he would understand the need for secrecy...

...He bad held French Equatorial Africa...

...Reviewed by DAVID BERNSTEIN Editor, the Binghamton "Sun-Bulletin" The unintended hero of Harold Macmillan's book is not Harold Macmillan, not even Winston Churchill, and certainly not Franklin D. Roosevelt...

...Then they had a nice little supper at the inn with the excited patron...

...Perhaps this, as much as the asinine contempt with which he was treated by the Americans, was the genesis of the great grudge he holds against the Anglo-Saxons—including the British, because they acquiesced in the naive American approach to the War when they knew better...

...If President Roosevelt or anyone close to him had held a similar opinion of de Gaulle in the early 1940s, the past 20 years—right up to our troubles in Vietnam—would certainly have been different, and might have been better...

...It is a mistake France will not understand, why you politicians are against me...

...Macmillan bathed naked in the sea...

...David Ben-Gurion recently said of Charles de Gaulle (see NL, January 29): "He is never ordinary or banal either in his actions or his thought, because his actions always follow his thinking, and he thinks deeply and from first principles...

...What faults should de Gaulle have confessed...

...11.95...

...But the account comes to life in North Africa...

...By early 1943, it was obvious that somehow these two men had to be brought together to lead the French...

...The British tended to take a more sophisticated view...

...In the end, de Gaulle arrived...

...A few days after this conversation, de Gaulle asked to accompany Macmillan, alone, to bathe on an Algerian beach...

...What other national leader at that point had so clear an idea of what he would do in the years after a war that was far from won...

...With a certain sardonic humor," Macmillan reports, "he congratulated us that the war between our countries and Italy was at an end...

...Murphy and Macmillan called on the General on the eve of the public announcement to give him the news, for the French had not 5een privy to the negotiations leading up to the military armistice...

...He landed, characteristically, in a French aircraft on a small landing ground under French control...

...The same might be said of Macmillan's behavior in North Africa...

...That he recognized Churchill's brilliant mind but realized—as Macmillan himself realized years later—that in putting Hitler down Britain would ultimately lose everything and gain nothing...

...De Gaulle sat on a rock, dignified in his military cap, his uniform and his belt...

...De Gaulle was no doubt taken aback, too, at the outset...

...De Gaulle could not quite believe any such decision was being carried out...

...I represent future France, and it will be better for us all if you support me.' " Macmillan did his best to comprehend this strange man...

...We talked on every conceivable subject—politics, religion, philosophy, the Classics, history (ancient and modern), and so on...

...De Gaulle also understood the British concept, for it was not alien to his own...

...The President, who thought himself a connoisseur of French politics and politicians, saw de Gaulle as a vain, strutting man who had nothing to back up his hauteur...

...The only alternative, as the Britishers saw long before the Americans, was this strange, authoritarian man...

...Within a few weeks after de Gaulle fled to England in June 1940, the trouble began...

...623 pp...

...This difference underlay the long struggle between the President [Roosevelt] and the Prime Minister...

...France, of course, was still at war with Italy, as his government was not a party to the armistice...

...In any event, General Giraud lost his nerve on these fatal nights after the disembarking of the Allied forces...

...He would seize on any excuse to overthrow them and restore Giraud...

...So I had," Macmillan told his wife, "three and a half hours of driving, walking in the ruins and continuous talk with this strange—attractive and yet impossible—character...

...What the Frenchman could not understand was the superficiality, the football-stadium enthusiasm of the Americans...

...The British reserve was nothing compared to the American position —or, more specifically, Roosevelt's attitude...

...Not that Macmillan, for all his criticism of the Americans, totally understood the French frame of mind after their humiliating defeat by the Germans...

...As he warmed to his work in North Africa, Macmillan developed a quietly assertive self-assurance...

...Eisenhower is a pleasant mediocrity with an admirable capacity for getting along with Englishmen...

...Macmillan the unflappable reveals himself as a man of considerable charm and patience, with a Byzantine gift for winding through a labyrinth of British, American and French conniving...

...A new uniform had to be procured of five-star general rank, and a precious day lost...

...He even believed that without such a government the liberation of France would merely mean exchanging German domination for Anglo-Saxon...

...In the course of conversation, he observed that the Anglo-Saxon domination of Europe was a mounting threat, and that if it continued France after the War would have to lean towards Germany and Russia...

...I replied that de Gaulle had stood by us when we had not a friend in the world...

...That the small-minded Giraud should be given top billing among the French...

...and acceptance of the principle that there must be an election based on universal suffrage after the liberation of France...

...That he was wrong and Roosevelt right about the future of France...

...The chapters leading up to North Africa are flat and at times weirdly pompous...

...It is not exactly 'Fascist' (an overworked word), it is authoritarian...

...The British would not unconditionally guarantee the postwar integrity of France and its empire...

...Finally, his great assignment came: to go to the Mediterranean as Churchill's deputy, where he was to work with Murphy as co-advisor to Eisenhower and plunge into the politics of French North Africa...

...Macmillan observes: "He was determined to see a strong and independent French government in being when liberation came...

...Perhaps his sneaking affection for de Gaulle stemmed from similarities between the two men—not in style, for Macmillan is not haughty, but in their peculiar ability to combine a steadfast theory of diplomacy and warfare with a natural aptitude for applying theory to practice...

...and, if the Americans had any better understanding, they didn't relish what they knew...

...The Germans had been defeated in Tunisia, but still dominated virtually all of Europe...

...There was a frantic interchange of nitpicking telegrams...

...Since Americans hate throwing good money after bad," Macmillan explains (ignoring our present behavior in Vietnam), "they were preparing to abandon him...

...If Giraud could not rally the French, neither could de Gaulle...

...He set out his deep feelings in a powerful and even noble way...

...It seemed that the consummation of French union must depend upon some happy moment when he was both invited to the feast, willing to attend it, and complaisant about the rendezvous...

...The p.m.'s sentiments are more complex...

...He will cut him off without a shilling But (in his heart) he would kill the fatted calf if only the prodigal would confess his faults...

...We failed to grasp the curious sense of discipline which requires absolute obedience to an immediate commander...

...It is to Harold Macmillan's credit that he did have some inkling of the nature and mind of this most peculiar of great men...

...All was more or less related to the things which fill his mind...

...It is difficult to know how to handle him...

...By drawing the Hero of History to more human scale in War and Peace, Tolstoy sheared him of much glory and showed him to be no more nor less than a mortal among mortals...

...With great skill, free of the ten-dentiousness which the art of Tolstoy itself had to fight through, Henri Troyat does the same for one of the Heroes of Literature...

...Macmillan complained to his wife: "General de Gaulle is one of those horses which either refuse to come to the starting gate at all, or insist on careening down the course before the signal is given, or suddenly elect to run on a racecourse different from the one appointed by the Stewards of the Jockey Club...

...Why was de Gaulle thought a traitor and not a savior...

...There followed months of maneuvering and name-calling, with Macmillan working to bring the two men together...

...He feels about de Gaulle like a man who has quarreled with his son...

...and Macmillan recalls: "We were frankly disturbed and astonished at the hostility clearly shown to de Gaulle by so many Frenchmen...

...Naturally there were some harsh phrases...

...This attitude, which we had maintained in every other case of an ally overrun by Germany or Italy," says Macmillan, "seems to have sown, quite unnecessarily, the dark seeds of suspicion in de Gaulle's mind...

...Macmillan also learned in time, as it became apparent that de Gaulle was generally right on the big issues while the Americans and their puppet, Giraud, were generally wrong...

...It was equally clear to me that in spite of Roosevelt and the State Department nothing could prevent him from becoming the leader of at any rate the first phase of post-liberation France...

...Macmillan noted: "The President hated de Gaulle and the French Committee...

...Why do you always interfere with me...

...He was clearly very hostile to the Americans and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to the British...

...He was quite quiet and rather pleasant throughout...

...Edward Stettinius, something of a fool...

...Though he later was given even greater responsibilities (in Italy, and in dealing with the initial Communist effort to take over Greece), North Africa was the high point of Macmillan's war effort...

...This was in May 1943...

...Giraud was weak, not very bright, and the only power he exercised came from the fact that the Allies supported him—the Americans with enthusiasm, the British with reluctance...

...He proposed to bring about a degree of national unity that would make a solution of France's social and economic problems possible without disorder or extremism...

...This is the natural and perhaps the understandable refuge of a people who have suffered one change of regime after another, with constantly changing loyalties...

...Macmillan adds one last brush stroke to fill out the portrait of de Gaule in North Africa...

...It is Charles de Gaulle...

...Roosevelt, Admiral Leahy and Cor-dell Hull all distrusted de Gaulle and chose to put their money on a carefully chosen puppet, General Henri Giraud, who was spirited out of southern France and brought to North Africa as a French savior...

...At last, in late April, Giraud invited de Gaulle to a quiet meeting in an out-of-the-way place...

...On leaving, he took Murphy by the arm and said, 'Why do you not understand me...

...With de Gaulle in North Africa THE BLAST OF WAR 1939-1945 By Harold Macmillan Harper & Row...

...That he saw, all too clearly, the naive, simplistic American view of the postwar world...

...Roosevelt is kissed off as light of heart and mind, a wanton conniver...

...It is significant that de Gaulle, not Giraud, laid down the conditions for an accommodation...

...This may not have been Macmillan's intention, but it is the fact...

...His "Provisional French Committee" was recognized by the British as representative of "independent French elements determined on the prosecution of the War," though not quite a government-in-exile...

...He] was at his best, and my colleague was much impressed...

...He is much too pro-French...

...From this event springs all the timidity, the wobbling, the whoring after the false gods of Vichy, the right-wing political flavor of the Administration, the pathetic cry for 'order' (always the refuge of the weak man) and the hesitating, vacillating, double-faced policy which has lasted now since Darlan's elevation and assassination...

...In September 1943, the Italian surrender was arranged...

...He thinks in his heart that he should command and all others should obey him...

...In time, Murphy, General Eisenhower and General Walter Bedell Smith realized Giraud was hopeless...

...There is something almost comical in the alternation between his refusal to accept an invitation to come to North Africa and his insistence upon arriving as an uninvited guest...

...What a problem...

...There was no problem of uniforms or bowler hats...

...Macmillan had a glimpse of this, and as a reward he overheard Churchill say on the phone: "Keep Harold up to the mark...

...When Macmillan reproved him, he replied, "One must be suspicious when one is surrounded by troubles...

...Hinc Mae lacrimae...

...The chapters on Italy and Greece, too, seem tired and overdetailed...

...Giraud] demanded...

...Macmillan wrote to his wife: "How to make a coup d'etat in a bowler hat...

...nullification of all Nazi-influenced laws...

...According to his adjutant, Giraud's initial failure to rally support when he landed in North Africa was caused by the fact that the full general's uniform he had sent ahead was mislaid, and he was forced to arrive in plain clothes...

...He demanded a repudiation of the armistice...

...Macmillan's opinion of the French leader at the end of the North African adventure was this: "I had no doubt at all of his greatness or of the opportunities which lay before him...

...But he learned the lesson before anyone else, and has made good use of it ever since...

...We could not understand why the Free French had been greeted with bullets and shells instead of with cheers wherever they had gone, at Dakar or Syria...

...restoration of freedom in all French territory, including freedom of thought, free meeting of trade unions, and the equality of all citizens before the law...

...To this de Gaulle replied, T am not a soldier.' I was tempted to ask why he dressed himself up in a peculiar and rather obsolete costume which surely no one would choose to wear unless it was imposed upon him by military necessity...

...Murphy and I" writes Macmillan, "called upon de Gaulle...

...Cordell Hull is senile, and his half-forgotten successor...

...If de Gaulle is equally a stickler for the amenities, the difference is that in Giraud's place he would have been wearing his uniform, and not a bowler hat...

...Still, it is de Gaulle who dominates the book...

...There is a delightful candor here, and one wonders what the security people would have said had they intercepted the engaging, gossipy and somewhat indiscreet letters he wrote to his wife, from which he quotes copiously...

...When the War ended," Macmillan writes, "the tragedy of Poland was to be one of the blots on the fair face of victory...

...Roosevelt, at about the same time, was expressing the opinion in Cairo that France could not recover from the War...

...For Harold Macmillan the War was a blast...

...For de Gaulle had, in spite of many faults, real genius...

...Passionately devoted to France, ruthless where French interests were concerned, insular, half revolutionary, half reactionary, he showed then the first signs of the great career which clearly now places him in the front rank of French statesmen...

...the President wished to fight and defeat the Germans in France and later in western Germany, while the Prime Minister hoped to achieve victory not merely by the liberation of French metropolitan territory but by a rapid advance through northern Italy and Austria, and thus end the War in positions far more favorable to the Western Allies in the situation which was likely to develop...

...His policies and even his purposes could fluctuate and change—as they eventually did on Vietnam and Algeria—without betraying his basic goals...

...Jean Monnet, the wise and temperate French statesman, informed Macmillan that the General's mood "seemed to vary from comparative calm to extreme excitability...

...Why were we such Gaullists in Britain...

...Ambassador Robert Murphy—Macmillan's American counterpart in North Africa—rates well...

...To begin with, he understood the fundamental difference between the American and the British concept of war: "Broadly, the Americans felt that you should find a convenient place to fight the main forces of your enemy of the moment, and regarded a battle as somewhat in the nature of an athletic contest, without much regard as to what would happen afterwards...

...Nearly half his book is devoted to it—the half that matters...

...Back in 1943, de Gaulle was explaining that the French crisis had really begun in 1789 and had lasted until the outbreak of World War II with varying temporary systems but no permanent solutions...

...war is a continuation of policy, and policies and purposes may fluctuate and change...

...But it was clear to us that here was a more powerful character than any other Frenchman in or outside France...

...No, the truth was that Charles de Gaulle understood the implications of the Great War, the possibilities of its aftermath, and the future he could reasonably (or unreasonably) carve out for his own nation...

...Churchill comes off as Jehovah, or at worst one of his angels, whom the Israelites (represented by Macmillan) had to wrestle with occasionally for his own good...

...It is a cliche to observe that most of the men who have made a profound impression on our time?Lenin, Hitler, Churchill, Mao, de Gaulle—drew their blueprints in advance, and took no trouble to conceal them...

...Anyone over 45 remembers World War II his own way—with poignancy, excitement, horror, or personal drama—a way that must be incomprehensible to the Vietnam generation...

...If Boisson had done the same, we could have been in North Africa a year earlier...

...And Field Marshall Alexander draws great admiration from Macmillan...

...speedy release of those improperly imprisoned...

...Gi-raud, of course, did not have the slightest notion of what de Gaulle was driving at...

...or so it became after a futile adventure in Finland and 20 dreary, hard-working months in the Ministry of Supply...

...Moreover, Giraud made a disagreeable fetish of protocol and appearances...