Citizens of London

by Lynne Olson

  For his part, Roosevelt never shared Churchill’s view of de Gaulle as a great man. Unlike the prime minister, the president felt nothing but disdain for the general and his defeated country. By capitulating to Germany, he believed, France had lost its place among the Western powers. In the president’s mind, “France had failed, and failure had to be punished,” wrote Ted Morgan, an FDR biographer. Roosevelt had little understanding of the complexity of the situation in France and scant sympathy for its dazed, traumatized citizens. “There is no France,” he declared, insisting that the country would not really exist again until after its liberation. As for de Gaulle, Roosevelt considered him insignificant and absurd, a British puppet with grandiose ambitions as a dictator but little support among his own countrymen. “He takes himself for Joan of Arc, for Napoleon, for Clemenceau,” the president snorted. Roosevelt was “convinced,” Wallace Carroll wrote, “that de Gaulle’s ambitions were a threat to Allied harmony and a menace to French democracy. Accordingly, he made up his mind—and once it was made up, it was never changed—that the U.S. would make no concession which would help de Gaulle to achieve his ambitions.”

  Even when the OSS dispatched a French underground leader to Washington in late 1942 to make clear that France’s resistance movements accepted de Gaulle as their leader, Roosevelt refused to budge. The general and his followers, he told Churchill, must be given no role in the liberation and governance of North Africa and France. De Gaulle later remarked: “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.” According to the journalist and author John Gunther, the president “talked about the French empire as if it were his personal possession and would say things like ‘I haven’t quite decided what to do about Tunis.’ ”

  By the end of the North Africa campaign, however, it was clear that the president was fighting a losing battle where de Gaulle was concerned. Thousands of Vichy French soldiers in North Africa had switched sides, joining the Free French (now called the Fighting French) and making de Gaulle’s movement a much more potent military force. In France, opposition to Pétain had mushroomed, as had the size of the resistance movements and their support for de Gaulle. The general was also backed by the European governments-in-exile, as well as by most of the British public, press, and Parliament, and a large segment of American public opinion besides. By contrast, General Giraud, named by the Americans to replace Darlan as the French leader of North Africa, had virtually no support except within the Roosevelt administration. “Between Giraud and de Gaulle, there is no real choice,” a French resistance leader told Harold Nicolson. “Giraud is not a name at all in France. De Gaulle is more than a name, he is a legend.”

  Finally bowing a bit to what most people saw as inevitable, Roosevelt acknowledged that de Gaulle could not be wholly excluded from the North Africa government and authorized his association with Giraud. In June 1943, the French Committee of National Liberation was formed in Algiers, with Giraud and de Gaulle as co-chairmen. Within weeks, however, it became apparent that a struggle for power was taking place within the committee and that de Gaulle was winning it.

  Determined to prevent his bête noir from taking control, Roosevelt, who long had chided Churchill for failing to restrain his “problem child,” now pressed the prime minister to withdraw all British support from de Gaulle. Passing on documents that portrayed the general as sabotaging his allies, the president declared to Churchill that de Gaulle “has been and is now injuring our war effort and … is a very dangerous threat to us.”

  The prime minister found himself in an exceedingly difficult position. Having pledged to support de Gaulle as the leader of free Frenchmen everywhere, he could hardly go back on his word. If he did what Roosevelt wanted, he would face stiff resistance from the British people and many officials in his own government. While the United States, tucked away on the North American continent, could easily afford to write off France as a postwar power, Britain regarded it as essential that its closest European neighbor be as strong as possible after the war to help balance a renascent Germany and increasingly powerful Soviet Union. Yet there also was no question that, in June 1943, Churchill needed the United States far more than he did France. The prime minister would later declare to de Gaulle: “Every time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea. Every time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.”

  Swayed by Roosevelt’s anti-de Gaulle arguments, Churchill, describing the general as “this vain and even malignant man,” urged his cabinet to consider “whether we should not now eliminate de Gaulle as a political force.” Cabinet members, strongly influenced by Anthony Eden, rejected the idea, declaring that “we would not only make him a national martyr but would find ourselves accused … of interfering improperly in French international affairs with a view to treating France as an Anglo-American protectorate.” In 1940, the Foreign Office, under Lord Halifax, had taken the lead in opposing Churchill’s recognition of de Gaulle; now, it was the Foreign Office, under Eden, that spearheaded the effort to shield the general from the wrath of both Churchill and Roosevelt.

  ROOSEVELT’S ADAMANT opposition to de Gaulle and his movement was a source of frustration not only for the British but also for U.S. officials and military leaders in London and Algiers. It certainly made life more difficult for Eisenhower, who, through painful experience, now knew considerably more about the tangled complexity of European and North African politics than did FDR. In his memoirs, Eisenhower noted that Roosevelt referred to French North Africa and its inhabitants “in terms of orders, instructions, and compulsion…. He continued, perhaps subconsciously, to discuss local problems from the viewpoint of a conqueror. It would have been so much easier for us if we could have done the same!”

  Perhaps the most outspoken American critic of Roosevelt’s policy was Wallace Carroll, London’s Office of War Information director, who claimed that the president’s directives had resulted in a serious propaganda and political defeat for the United States. “It seemed,” Carroll observed, “that we were showing a kind of arrogance, an attitude that denied the right of smaller and less fortunate nations to question American actions.” David Bruce agreed, telling Gil Winant that preparations for the invasion of France, which were heavily dependent on information from the French underground, might be put in jeopardy if the man regarded by the resistance as its leader was shunned by the Americans and British.

  For their part, OSS operatives, who worked closely with resistance members in the captive countries of Europe and knew what risks they were taking to help the Allies, had no patience for what they saw as Machiavellian political power games that “were being played at the expense of smaller nations and powerless people.” Like a number of other American officials in London, they felt estranged from their superiors in Washington, who, safe and remote from the war’s dangers, moved people around like pawns on a chessboard and issued orders without seeming to understand or care what their effects would be.

  Gil Winant shared those concerns. While remaining “at all times the devoted servitor of the President,” the ambassador also “saw the cost to the United States of its emotional attitude toward de Gaulle,” Wallace Carroll noted. Even though the United States had no official ties with the Fighting French, Winant established a close informal relationship with de Gaulle, who, putting aside his waspishness for a moment, later praised the American as “a diplomat of great intelligence and feeling” and a “splendid ambassador.” Winant played peacemaker on several occasions when disputes arose between the general and American officials in London and North Africa. He was well aware that, like it or not, de Gaulle would have a major role to play in liberated France.

  In one of his many conversations with Carroll on the subject, Winant asked rhetorically: “
Who is it who is saving our flyers when they bail out over France?” As he paced back and forth in his office, he answered his own question: “It’s the people who recognize de Gaulle as their leader. Who gives us most of the intelligence we get from France? It’s de Gaulle’s men, isn’t it? When we go into France, we will have to come to terms with de Gaulle…. There isn’t anybody else who can take over the civil administration.”

  In midsummer 1943, Winant worked with Eden to try to persuade Churchill and Roosevelt to recognize the French Committee of National Liberation as the main governing body of North Africa and other liberated French colonies, as well as the sole voice of free France. The European governments-in-exile had all granted recognition to the committee, as had Canada, Australia, and South Africa; the Soviet Union was poised to do the same. Eisenhower and most members of Britain’s Parliament had also advocated recognition. Winant joined the chorus, sending a note to FDR urging him to take official notice of the committee. Of the ambassador’s message, Carroll said: “I do not think it increased his popularity in Washington, and it produced no notable effect.” Winant himself told British officials that he “was in the dog kennel” for pushing for recognition. Roosevelt continued to resist all pressure, even when Churchill finally succumbed to it and told the president he might have to break with him over the issue: “I am reaching the point where it may be necessary for me to take this step so far as Great Britain and the Anglo-French interests … are concerned.”

  Finally, faced with the opposition of virtually every other country in the Great Alliance, FDR agreed in late August 1943 to a severely limited U.S. recognition of the French Committee. (On the same day, the British government issued its own, less restrained statement of recognition.) At the same time, however, the president refused to halt his efforts to get rid of de Gaulle, to the general’s intense anger and resentment. FDR continued to try to boost the standing of Giraud, inviting him to the United States and receiving him with full honors at the White House. The campaign had no effect. In November, Giraud was forced out as the committee’s co-chairman, and de Gaulle took full control.

  OVERSHADOWED BY THE Sturm und Drang of the controversy over France, another captive European nation—Poland—also found itself at odds with its larger, more powerful allies. Until the Soviet Union was catapulted into the war in June 1941, Poland had contributed more to Britain’s survival than any other declared ally. The two countries also had strong official ties: Britain, committed by treaty to defend Polish sovereignty and independence, had gone to war with Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939.

  But Germany was not the only country to attack the Poles that September. The Soviets, given carte blanche by Hitler under the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact to invade Poland from the east, occupied almost half of its territory and deported over a million Poles to labor and prison camps in Siberia and other remote reaches of the Soviet Union.

  From the first days of his abrupt and reluctant alliance with the West, Stalin made clear he planned to retain the Polish territory he had taken in 1939 and hinted of his interest in controlling the rest of the country after the war. For its part, the Polish government-in-exile unsurprisingly opposed any Soviet designs on Poland’s territory or independence. Although he sympathized with the Poles, Churchill needed Stalin far more, and he and Eden pressed Sikorski to sign a treaty with the Soviets in the summer of 1941 that left open the question of Poland’s postwar borders. Eden, who later would express such deep concern about U.S. and British interference in France’s internal affairs, told the Polish prime minister: “Whether you wish it or not, a treaty must be signed.”

  The reality was that while Britain’s own political and military interests were inextricably tied to the future of France and the rest of Western Europe, the British had no such interests in Eastern European countries like Poland. Count Edward Raczynski, the Polish ambassador to Britain, pointed out that de Gaulle “could afford to irritate British … statesmen and tell them unpleasant truths to their faces. They might not like it, but they could not afford to abandon either him or France. However they could and did treat the Polish cause and that of the whole of eastern Europe as something secondary, not as a vital interest of their own, but as a debt of honour to be discharged, if possible without excessive risk or effort.”

  In early 1942, Stalin pressed Britain to sign a secret agreement recognizing Soviet claims to eastern Poland and the Baltic states. At first, Churchill rejected the idea, but under the strains of repeated British military defeats and the Russian leader’s intensified demands for a second front, he decided to give in. “The increasing gravity of the war has led me to feel that the principles of the Atlantic Charter ought not to be construed so as to deny Russia the frontiers she occupied when Germany attacked her,” the prime minister wrote to Roosevelt.

  Although the United States initially opposed such a deal, Roosevelt changed his mind less than a year later. Poland had much less of a claim on U.S. loyalties and interests than on Britain’s allegiance: there were no U.S.-Polish treaties to be concerned about, no U.S. debt to Polish pilots or troops for helping the country survive. To Roosevelt, who was intent on keeping Stalin happy, Poland was a peripheral problem. He told Eden in March 1943 that it was up to the Americans, Soviets, and British to decide Poland’s borders; he, for one, had no intention of “go[ing] to the peace conference and bargain[ing] with Poland or the other small states.” Poland was to be organized “in a way that will maintain the peace of the world.” In other words, he would not stand in the way of Soviet demands.

  For the two Western leaders, the alliance with Stalin posed a peculiar moral dilemma. Roosevelt and Churchill, the British military historian Max Hastings noted, “found it convenient, perhaps essential, to allow Stalin’s citizens to bear a scale of human sacrifice which was necessary to destroy the Nazi armies, but which their own nations’ sensibilities rendered them unwilling to accept.” As a result, they traded “dependence upon one tyranny”—the Soviet Union—for “the destruction of another”—Nazi Germany.

  In doing so, they traded away Poland’s future.

  * The U.S. provided more than $50 billion in Lend-Lease aid to forty-four countries during the war. Britain and its commonwealth received the largest amount of aid, with the Soviet Union coming in second.

  ONE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR, TIME-LIFE CORRESPONDENT Mary Welsh strolled down Piccadilly holding an orange, a gift from American friends who had just arrived in Britain. Her fellow pedestrians stared at the orange in astonishment, reacting to it, she later said, as if it were “a human head.” More than two years had passed since most Londoners had seen an orange, or for that matter, a lemon or banana. By the end of the war, many British children, having never set eyes on a banana or forgotten what they looked like, had no idea how to eat one. Onions were another rare commodity, so scarce they were offered as prizes in raffles.

  Although London had taken on a cosmopolitan air, thanks to the foreign exiles in temporary residence, it also had become increasingly shabby and bedraggled. For most of its residents, austerity and deprivation were the norm. Severe shortages of food and consumer items meant long hours of standing in queues for just about anything Londoners wanted to purchase, from drinking glasses to toothbrushes to sewing needles. Spying a queue of about seventy people lined up outside one store, a man asked another bystander what they were waiting to buy. “I don’t suppose they know what they are queuing for,” he was told. “It is a hysteria with some people—whenever they see a queue, they just join on the end.” A London housewife remarked: “Many a time we waited over an hour for just one pound of potatoes or half a pound of liver.”

  Next to the war and politics, food was the most popular topic of conversation among the Britons Mary Welsh knew. “The whole island sounded like a club of dieting women,” she observed, “the emphasis of chat being on the acquisition of nourishment other than that in potatoes and Brussels sprouts and cabbage.” After the war, Theodora FitzGibbon, an artist’s
model living in Chelsea, wrote: “It is difficult to realize now that we were always hungry. There simply wasn’t enough to eat.” The novelist and foreign correspondent Derek Lambert, who was a teenager during the conflict, recalled how, for his mother, “every day was a fight to provide calories, vitamins, carbohydrates and warmth for my father and I…. We ate in the kitchen because there was not enough coal to light the fire and shivered in unison. My mother was left to fight and forage, to save and improvise, to cajole the butcher and berate the grocer.” Faced with drastic reductions in coal supplies and electrical service, families went to bed early to keep warm; during the day, women pushing prams and carrying market baskets lined up at emergency coal dumps to try to obtain a few precious lumps.

  For most Londoners, buying new clothes was just as difficult as obtaining enough food and fuel. Mary Welsh was proud of her foresight in acquiring several dozen pairs of stockings for herself and her English friends during a visit to New York in 1942, but she neglected to stockpile underwear. By 1944, her lack of undergarments had become “a crucial problem;” when her garter belt gave out, she was forced to resort to rubber bands to hold up her prized stockings. In a letter to her parents in May 1943, Janet Murrow described the drab, threadbare clothes worn by the onlookers at a Home Guard parade outside Buckingham Palace. “It’s a case of summer wardrobes being almost nonexistent … so that old skirts are worn with old jackets that don’t belong. It can make a crowd look sad despite smiling faces.”