1000 Years of Annoying the French

by Stephen Clarke

  A British cover-up?

  After the war, allegations of collaboration in the Channel Islands were investigated by the British police and even MI5. Doubts about the Bailiff of Jersey, Alexander Coutanche, were dismissed, so one could accuse the British establishment of being as self-protective as the French. But it seems that, like other politicians on the islands, he maintained working relations with the Nazis in order to ensure that the residents did not suffer too much. And not just the native islanders – he went to the Nazi commander to complain about the ill treatment of Russian slave labourers being used to build fortifications. The islanders would often give food to these men, which infuriated the Nazis so much that they put up posters saying that it was not necessary to feed the prisoners because the living skeletons actually received enough to eat.

  In fact, Coutanche waged a constant niggling campaign of resistance against the occupiers, often refusing to sign orders or implement new rules, and photos of him in 1945 show a markedly thinner man than in 1940. Unless self-starvation was a cunning ploy to avoid detection, he was on the same enforced diet as the other islanders.

  After the war, known black marketeers had their profits confiscated, and there were a few attacks on ‘Jerry-bags’. Forty islanders were banished, and twelve were put forward for prosecution, including some paid informers, although all charges were eventually dropped. It seems that the Channel Islands, like France, preferred to put the recent past behind them.

  So things weren’t pearly-white, and the Brits did collaborate. But there was one big difference between Paris and Jersey or Guernsey – almost all the active male Channel Islanders had gone off to fight rather than sitting around in cafés arguing about the true meaning of moral freedom.

  The French ‘liberate themselves’

  The tears of joy and relief that greeted the Allied troops as they advanced through Normandy in June 1944 told the real story of the Liberation. But one man was not there to see them – Charles de Gaulle.

  For security reasons, he was not told about the preparations for D-Day until two days before the invasion. After everything that had gone before, Churchill was afraid that if the French had known earlier, the Nazis would have found out what was going to happen. Not through deliberate treachery, of course – there was just a risk that one of de Gaulle’s aides would go to a London bookshop and order 500 maps of Normandy.

  If you ask a Frenchman today whose troops were on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944, you will probably get the answer ‘mainly Americans’. The Brits were there, he will admit, but not very many of them. And he will almost certainly forget the Canadians completely.

  In fact, though, of the 156,000 or so troops who landed in Normandy on D-Day, 73,000 were American and 83,000 belonged to the British army, although admittedly only 61,700 of them were actually Brits. The rest were mainly Canadian.

  There were also Frenchmen present – marine commandos who had been given diagrams of their targets a few days before the invasion. The maps had no place names, but some of the men were Normans, and recognized the targets. Their British commanders were so worried about a security breach that they had the Frenchmen locked into their camp until D-Day.

  These French troops were led by a man called Philippe Kieffer, who had rallied to the Allied cause right from the start of the war, and they fought bravely, suffering proportionately high losses during the battle for Normandy – a fifth of their unit was killed. This sounds a lot, and statistically it was, but the almost unbelievable fact is that, on D-Day, the French invasion force amounted to only 177. Not 177 brigades or battalions – 177 men, making up just over 0.1 per cent of the total invasion army.

  Why so few? Well, apart from the fact that most of the French army was in German prison camps or French civvie street (la rue civile?), the Allies had major problems getting de Gaulle to support an operation to invade France. The Général was stung by his late inclusion in the plans, and scornful of Churchill’s insistence that, before the landings went ahead, it was vital to discuss how a liberated France would be governed. De Gaulle maintained that he didn’t need to ‘apply to the Americans’ to run his own country. He even refused to let 200 French liaison officers cross the Channel with Allied units because he didn’t want them politically compromised. He was concerned that the Allies might install a temporary regime in liberated zones that he wouldn’t be able to control. The American General George C. Marshall was so furious at this refusal to send in Free French helpers that he made a blasting statement that ‘no sons of Iowa would fight to put up statues of de Gaulle in France’, which rather cleverly symbolized what de Gaulle was actually hoping would happen.

  The Général held off till the last minute before he made a speech to the French supporting the D-Day landings, provoking Churchill into accusing him of being ‘consumed by ambition, like a ballerina’. (Churchill obviously knew things about ballerinas that most of us don’t.)

  In the end, de Gaulle came round – as usual, he was just pushing things to the limit, testing Allied resilience and marking his territory – and gave a brilliant speech on the BBC’s French-language service.

  ‘The supreme battle has begun,’ he began. ‘After so much fighting, fury and pain, the decisive blow has been struck. Of course, it is the Battle for France and it is the Battle of France!’ (That repetition is not a misprint. When I say he gave a brilliant speech, I mean by French rhetorical standards.) He went on:

  Immense attacking forces – for us, rescue forces – have begun to burst out from the coast of Old England, the last bastion of Western Europe to stand firm against the tide of German oppression. It is from there that the freedom offensive has been launched. France, downtrodden for four years, but not diminished or beaten, France is on its feet and playing its part. France will battle with all its might. It will fight methodically. That is how, for the past 1,500 years, we have won all our battles.

  In going so far back in history, de Gaulle seems to be referring to the invasion of Attila the Hun, whom France did indeed repel, although according to French legend, this had more to do with the prayers of St Genevieve than fighting ability.

  De Gaulle called on the French to resist the oppressor ‘by means of weapons, destruction or information’, and concluded poetically: ‘The Battle of France has begun. The nation, the empire, the army are united in a single desire, a single hope. From behind the heavy cloud of our blood and tears, at last we can see the sun of our greatness!’

  You would have thought that there were 177,000 Frenchmen crossing the Channel rather than just 177. De Gaulle himself didn’t boost their numbers until 14 June, eight days into the offensive, but as soon as he appeared on his home soil, it was clear that he had won his personal battle. Everywhere he went, the liberated French hailed him as the returning hero and accepted him as their new leader. His determination not to share power and not to let the other Allies interfere in France’s post-war regime had paid off. According to Simon Berthon, author of the book Allies at War, which details the tumultuous relationship between de Gaulle, Churchill and Roosevelt, the Général’s arrival was also very convenient for the French because he was a living embodiment of the myth that France had never been defeated. He made it look as if Liberation was simply a result of his presence in London, and that, contrary to appearances, France had never stopped resisting the enemy.

  Be nice to the French – but not too nice

  Armed with a booklet on how to behave chez les Français, the British contingent of the invasion force arrived in France. Much more respectful than the chat-up phrasebook available to the World War One troops, it was called Instructions for British Servicemen in France, and contained a very astute rundown of the historical hiccups in Anglo-French relations, with laconic phrases like: ‘The long wars with England and the recurrent invasions from our side of the Channel have left the modern Frenchman with no grudge against us, except perhaps for the burning of Joan of Arc.’

  It also recalled more recent history, pointing out
that the French were not too happy about Dunkirk, Mers-el-Kebir, Dakar, Madagascar or the bombing of harbours and factories in France, and made the glorious understatement that ‘it is only natural that these should have caused some resentment’.

  The language section was much less suggestive than its World War One predecessor too. It stuck mainly to hellos, goodbyes and obtaining food and information – the phrase ‘Are the trees in that wood thick?’ was almost certainly not a chat-up line. The soldiers needed to know where Nazi tanks and troops might be hidden.

  In any case, the book was very clear on the need to respecter les femmes. The girls at the Folies Bergère were not typical Frenchwomen, it stressed, and soldiers should not ‘imagine that the first pretty French girl who smiles at you intends to dance the can-can or take you to bed’.

  Not that the troops had much time for dancing and fornicating as they battled their way across the French countryside. Nor were they going to be allowed anywhere near the Folies Bergère. De Gaulle saw to that.

  Who liberated Paris? Moi!

  The French think that Paris was liberated at the end of August 1944 by the legendary Général Leclerc, who linked up with the Resistance to batter the Nazis into surrender. Leclerc, they believe, was accompanied by a few Americans who came along for the ride, but there were no Brits present.

  Actually, this is pretty close to the truth, but not for the reasons that are usually given.

  Churchill had arranged for a larger French force under Leclerc (full name Philippe Leclerc de Hautecloque – the last name is usually omitted, probably because it could be translated as ‘tall blister’) to come to Normandy at the beginning of August. Leclerc’s Second Armoured Division consisted of just over 14,000 men, including 3,600 North Africans and 3,200 Spanish Republicans, and was nominally under the command of the American General Patton – though it would soon be clear that its real commander was de Gaulle.

  The Allied push towards Germany was, for obvious geographical reasons, centred quite a way north of Paris.* If the Allies could make a thrust across the Seine and up to the Belgian border, the theory went, they might cut off Hitler’s army of occupation and win the race to Berlin against Stalin and the Communists (the Cold War had already started in all but name).

  This, though, did not suit de Gaulle at all. He knew that he had to get to Paris as soon as possible after D-Day if he wanted to run the whole of France. Things were hotting up in the city – a general strike began on 15August, followed by an uprising four days later by the FFI – the Forces françaises de l’intérieur, a raggle-taggle civilian army led by a Communist called Henri Rol-Tanguy, alias Colonel Rol.

  The last thing de Gaulle wanted was to let Rol take the credit, and the capital – the gratitude of a few flag-waving Normans meant nothing if Paris was liberated by the Communists. So once again, the overall strategy of the Allies was shoved into second place behind de Gaulle’s and (he claimed) France’s interests.

  General Eisenhower, meanwhile, had his hands rather full dealing with the ferocious Nazi resistance that his men were meeting across northern France, so de Gaulle threatened to send Leclerc’s small army into Paris alone unless the Allies agreed to sidetrack their advance and liberate the city. De Gaulle’s daring but ill-advised scheme might well have meant destruction for Leclerc’s valuable tanks (which were actually American machines), so Eisenhower agreed to support the French with a large force of American infantry, and, sportingly, to let Leclerc enter the city first.

  The race was on. De Gaulle ordered his men to advance as quickly as possible into Paris to steal the Communists’ thunder. Accordingly, Leclerc struck prematurely in the south of the city, inadvertently choosing to do so precisely where the Germans had set up their strongest defence. This not only got Leclerc bogged down but also alerted the Germans that a bigger attack was about to happen.

  The French pulled back and tried a more westerly route, but got held up again when the inhabitants of the western suburbs came out and began to bombard the tanks with flowers, wine and hugs. Losing their patience with Leclerc, the American troops announced that they were going to hit the Germans in the south with everything they had got and march straight on into the city, and tough luck if a Frenchman wasn’t at the head of the liberators. This ultimatum came on the evening of 24 August.

  Afraid to let de Gaulle down, Leclerc told a captain called Raymond Dronne to take a small detachment of three armoured cars and three tanks and use their local knowledge to zig-zag through the back streets of the southwestern suburbs. They had, they were told, to get to the centre of Paris that very night.

  This they did, although local knowledge didn’t play much of a part in their progress – Dronne wasn’t a Parisian and most of his men were Spanish. But they arrived safely at the Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall) just before midnight, and the bells of Notre-Dame Cathedral set off a welcoming chorus across the whole of Paris. All the inhabitants knew what this meant, including the Germans who had been defending the outskirts of the city – they retreated during the night, allowing Leclerc’s main force of tanks to make their triumphant arrival.

  The Nazi governor of Paris, Dietrich von Choltitz,* surrendered to Colonel Rol and General Leclerc on 25 August at Montparnasse Station and told his 17,000 men to stop fighting.

  The victorious de Gaulle arrived on the twenty-fifth and declared himself the head of the Gouvernement provisoire de la République française. He also objected to Colonel Rol’s name appearing on the official German surrender document. The Général took possession of his old office at the War Ministry and then walked to the Hôtel de Ville, where he formally assumed military control of the city. He was invited to go on to the balcony to proclaim the return of the Republic, but refused, saying he had been leader of the French for four years and didn’t need to proclaim anything.

  It was at the Hôtel de Ville that he made another of his famous speeches, the ‘Paris libéré’ declaration, in which, ignoring the fact that Churchill, Roosevelt and all their men were still battling their way to liberate less strategic parts of France, he announced that Paris had been liberated ‘by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and help of all France, of fighting France, the only France, the real France, of France alone’.

  The Général then went even further – when he came across members of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the men who had been co-ordinating so many of the Resistance’s activities, he told them to leave Paris: ‘This is no place for you.’ In other words, goodbye and thanks for all the cups of tea.

  Next day, de Gaulle led a procession down the Champs-Élysées and across the place de la Concorde (now the route of the annual Bastille Day parades), followed by Leclerc and a host of Resistance fighters. Leclerc’s tanks were kept out of the way – de Gaulle didn’t want a full-scale military parade – and were parked near the Arc de Triomphe. In fact, they shouldn’t have been anywhere near the procession at all, because Eisenhower had ordered them to rejoin the main Allied army now that their job in Paris was done. De Gaulle told Leclerc to ignore the order, and also decreed that the Americans could not join his victory parade.

  This was de Gaulle’s big day, and he engraved it indelibly on the public memory when sniper shots rang out as he crossed Concorde and, later, when he was walking towards Notre-Dame Cathedral. On both occasions, practically everyone, soldiers and civilians alike, dived for cover except de Gaulle. Cynics have suggested that the shots were pre-arranged, but it is far more likely that de Gaulle simply felt totally invulnerable. This was what he had lived for since the day in June 1940 when Winston Churchill had pushed him in front of a BBC microphone, and no cowardly sniper was going to spoil it.

  All over bar the slapping

  As soon as Paris was liberated, de Gaulle went into action to tighten his hold on the reins of power. He reformed the disbanded Première Armée and sent it to join the Allies who were liberating the rest of France. Supported as usual by the Americans, it then made a punitive t
hrust across the Rhine and the Danube into the heart of Germany.

  De Gaulle also sent out troops to re-establish French control over its colonies in Asia and Africa, inadvertently committing France to a series of hideous colonial wars in the 1950s and 60s, but for the time being ensuring that the Anglo-Saxons didn’t dip their sticky fingers into France’s empire.

  And that was about it, really – the war was over and France had won.

  There were two final slaps in the face coming de Gaulle’s way, however. And, surprisingly, neither came from the Brits or the Americans.

  The photos of the Yalta Conference in February 1945 are singularly lacking in Frenchmen. The meeting of the ‘big three’ (not the ‘grand quatre’) to discuss the post-war rule of Germany involved only Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. Roosevelt had vetoed de Gaulle’s presence, saying that it would be an ‘undesirable factor’, and Stalin was even blunter, declaring that he didn’t see what the French had done to warrant a place at the conference table. It was therefore largely thanks to Churchill that France was invited to join in the carve-up of post-war Germany into Allied sectors.

  Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin have been keeping a chair free for France’s wartime leader-in-exile, Charles de Gaulle. If the Frenchman is looking suspicious, it’s probably because he suspects that his ‘Allies’ have sawn through the chair legs.

  Even so, this wasn’t too painful a slap, because apart from being absent from history’s photo album, it was an acceptable result for de Gaulle: after May 1945, France got its old 1918 borders back, and was even allowed to drive its tanks around large bits of Germany. Honour had been restored.

  The second put-down was much more hurtful because it came from France itself. Just like Churchill, who was voted out of office by the war-tired Brits in 1945, de Gaulle couldn’t hold on to power. His newly liberated nation decided that it didn’t want the Général as its supreme leader, and, fed up of trying to govern alongside the Communists and Socialists, de Gaulle withdrew from the coalition, casting a Macbeth-like spell on the country as he left: ‘You will regret the path you have chosen.’