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CHARLES DE GAULLE.   Term Paper ID:28371 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: His leadership & importance as a French political figure. Free French & WWII; retirement in post-war era & re-emergence in 1958 as founder of the Fifth Republic; his foreign policy; views on European integration, Algeria, Cold War.... More...

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Paper Abstract: His leadership & importance as a French political figure. Free French & WWII; retirement in post-war era & re-emergence in 1958 as founder of the Fifth Republic; his foreign policy; views on European integration, Algeria, Cold War. Paper Introduction: Charles de Gaulle: The Accidental European Introduction Charles de Gaulle has a strong claim to be the most important French political figure of the 20th century, and arguably the most important Western European political figure in the second half of that century. Indeed, de Gaulle might reasonably be called the Father of Europe, in its contemporary form, for no one -- not even Konrad Adenauer -- did more to create a sensibility of Europe as an independent force in world affairs, a sensibility that began to emerge well before the end of the Cold War, and which has taken on new force and definition with the end of the East-West division across the center of Europe. The irony of this role is that "Father of Europe" is by no means a rol Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Moreover, at least so long as the Cold War endured and Germanyremained divided, France was the natural leader of Europe. The force de frappe, annoying and even unnervingthough it was to American policymakers -- since it represented a potentialnuclear flashpoint that was not under even indirect American control, andmight conceivably draw the US into a confrontation it wished to avoid; seeGordon, 1993, p. On the one hand, the existence of the Free Frenchrestored the symbolic integrity of the Western Allies: it was not Britainalone holding out against Nazi-controlled Europe, but Britain and Francestanding side by side as in 1914-1918 -- even if France itself wasphysically under the German thumb. Thus the Communists would be positioned to play a major, perhapspredominant role in any post-liberation French government. Ina future Europe-wide high-speed rail system, the primary connection pointswill inevitably be mostly in France, an outcome that would surely pleaseCharles de Gaulle.De Gaulle and the Fifth Republic As important as any of de Gaulle's international contributions toEurope is his internal contribution to the French political system. In his view the United States had noclaim to be more than at most first among equals. (This was not really the case in Vichy's earlydays, though it became increasingly so as time went on, and especiallyafter the Germans extended their military occupation to all of France.)The movie Casablanca, possibly the best wartime propaganda film ever made,aptly displays the symbolic value to the Allied public of the Free Frenchmovement and identity. The former outcome was narrowly averted in favor of the latter; acoup attempt was already underway when de Gaulle was granted authority, andby sheer force of will got the soldiers to return to their barracks. While he favored good relationswith West Germany, his perspective was centered entirely on France, not onEurope as an entity in its own right. 355ff). DorothyAlbertyn, trans. Even when he came back to power in 1958 and went to Algeria, hisstatement to the French hardline settlers and officers was "I haveunderstood you" (Crawley, 1969, p. WesternEurope is, broadly speaking, X-shaped, with Britain, Germany, Italy, andSpain at the four corners -- and France in the middle. De Gaulle originally viewed European integrationism with considerableskepticism (Mahoney, 1996, pp. De Gaulle. In this respect,the conservative de Gaulle was a powerful counterweight-in-waiting to aCommunist-dominated Resistance. Algeria,once one of the Barbary States against which the United States fought oneof its earliest overseas wars, had been conquered by France in the 183 s.Subsequently a large number of French colonists settled there permanently,becoming known as pieds-noirs, "black feet." Juridicially, Algeria, ratherthan being retained as a distinct colonial entity, was formallyincorporated into metropolitan France, divided into departments andregarded officially as though it were as French as Provence or Normandy. In the postwar world, however, none of these powers had anyrealistic prospect of remaining on a par with the two emergent superpowers. Nevertheless, tensions between de Gaulle and the British andAmerican leaders were considerable, and required delicate personalnegotiations between de Gaulle and Allied supreme commander Eisenhower toresolve (de Launey, 1968, pp. (Italy had also been regarded as aprewar Great Power, but only marginally so, and postwar Italy cheerfullyabandoned all pretentions to grandeur.) For Britain and France, however,both among the victorious powers in the war -- if only symbolically so inthe case of France -- the political and diplomatic challenge of coming togrips with their new status as middle-ranking powers was acute. Under the Fourth Republic, France hadalready fought one costly and unsuccessful war in attempting to hold ontoFrench Indochina, present-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos -- a war thatended with the disastrous loss at Dien Binh Phu. However adrift the British might feel athome, they withdrew from the empire rather gracefully for the most part.Their only substantial counterinsurgency war -- a successful one, inMalaya, was fought after the British had already promised eventualwithdrawal. "He was a partisan of Europe precisely because hewas a partisan of France and her greatness" (Mahoney, 1996, p. 4 -41). The sequence of events is too complicated to recount here, but itis sufficient to say that simultaneous plots were going forward for anoutright military coup, and for a sort of quasi-coup in which the NationalAssembly would be pressured to accept de Gaulle as premier, with temporarypower to rule by decree. So manycabals were in progress that one book recounting the events was entitledLes 13 Complots du 13 Mai -- "The 13 Conspiracies of May 13" (Cook, 1983,p. There could be noclearer indication of where, if worse came to worst, de Gaulle's Franceexpected to stand. 78-79).Weighed down by obsolete doctrine, the French army was quickly overwhelmedby the German blitzkrieg invasion of 194 . Indeed, while France was anything but a Third World countryin the modern sense of that phrase, the original 196 s concept of a "thirdworld" -- with interests distinct from those of either the American-dominated "first" or Soviet-dominated "second" worlds -- was embraced earlyand enthusiastically by Gaullist France. While the military forces loyal to de Gaulle wereinsignificant in the context of the war, the political advantages to theAllies were enormous. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.DePorte, A. As already noted, de Gaulle was highly critical of Americanpolicy in Vietnam; in hindsight it is clear that the Americans would havedone well to take his criticism to heart. While France hadfaced the humiliation of military defeat in 194 , Britain had achieved itsfinest hour, and had gone on to share fully in the Allied victory. Gaullist France thus became the promoter and leading participant insuch enterprises as the European space agency (ESA) -- for all practicalpurposes a French space agency with other European participation, as shownby the French name of its principal achievement, the Ariane space booster.The TGV (tren a grande vitesse) high-speed rail system, though its actualtechnical development postdates de Gaulle, is a thoroughly Gaullistachievement. In Hollifield, James F.; and Ross, George,eds., Searching for the New France. In this respect, the politicalpsychology involved may have worked in a direction opposite to its moregeneral effect as outlined above. Charles de Gaulle: The Accidental EuropeanIntroduction Charles de Gaulle has a strong claim to be the most important Frenchpolitical figure of the 2 th century, and arguably the most importantWestern European political figure in the second half of that century.Indeed, de Gaulle might reasonably be called the Father of Europe, in itscontemporary form, for no one -- not even Konrad Adenauer -- did more tocreate a sensibility of Europe as an independent force in world affairs, asensibility that began to emerge well before the end of the Cold War, andwhich has taken on new force and definition with the end of the East-Westdivision across the center of Europe. De Gaulle's later adviceto the Americans not to get involved in a war in Vietnam was unwelcome toAmerican policymakers, and the United States paid dearly for their failureto listen to him. Nevertheless, by the late 193 s he was a leading Frenchsupporter of the new doctrine. While de Gaulle withdrew France from the combined (andAmerican-dominated) military structure of NATO, France remained a politicalmember of the alliance. In the generation since de Gaulle leftoffice (in 1968, amid considerable turmoil), the Fifth Republic has provento be the most stable and effective government modern France has ever had.This in turn has solidified France's position as a pillar of a new Europe -- a Europe which Charles de Gaulle, as much as any human being, helped tobring about. France, shattered on thebattlefield in 194 and prostrate in 1945, could have no illusions ofdirectly resuming the Great Powerhood it had formerly enjoyed. 316). Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University.----------------------- 17 WhileFrance had been granted a seat at the table of the victorious power,Britain had won a seat by the might of its arms. It fell to de Gaulle to realize that this was an impossible fictionto sustain. One aspect of postwarforeign policy which France found far more difficult than Britain did wasabandonment of its colonial empire. Eventhen, the three years that followed were tense, with repeated assassinationattempts against de Gaulle and another abortive military coup (Crawley,1969, pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.de Launey, Jacques (1968). Richard Howard, trans. France, de Gaulle, and Europe. For Britain, middle-powerhood was a step down in the postwarworld; for France -- however glorious its past -- it was a step up. In part this contrary outcome might be attributedto their respective wartime experiences. In the late 194 s and early 195 s, de Gaulle was firmly opposedboth to NATO and to European Coal and Steel Community, ancestor of theEuropean Union (Cook, 1978, p. An integrated (orat least coordinated) Western European Community would thus be in somedegree inherently Francocentric. As noted above, by 1958 the tensions of the Algerian war had broughtFrance to the brink of military coup and possible civil war. This idea centered on a particular conceptof grandeur -- not merely military power, though that was part of it, butmost fundamentally a concept of pride in leadership. Indeed, though he later did become an advocate of mobile tankwarfare, "in the creation of Gaullist legend, the picture of de Gaulle as afirst apostle of armor was vastly overblown" (Cook, 1983, p. That he would do so was not obvious inadvance. The end of the ThirdRepublic and the establishment of the Vichy government under MarshallPetain was, in international law, a purely internal affair: Vichy was thelawful government of France, and the Allies formally had no business to berecognizing a rebel general who controlled no part of France itself, andonly a few scraps of French overseas territory. Britain, triumphant in the war ifeconomically exhausted afterwards, did not feel compelled to go to war tohold onto the British Empire. The postwar Fourth Republic followed the same pattern. The new Fourth Republic resumed the indecisivetradition of the prewar Third Republic, and de Gaulle went into retirement. The essential problem facing France in the postwar era, so far asconcerned its international relations, was essentially comparable to thatfacing Britain, and ultimately facing defeated Germany and Japan as well.All had been Great Powers in the era before 1939, regarded as broadly on apar not only with one another but with the United States and the SovietUnion. (Bypeculiar historical accident, his very name embodied the ancient name forwhat now is France.) His objective throughout his career was not thecreation of a new Europe but the restoration of the greatness of France.Initially he opposed European integrationism (Mahoney, 1996, p. De Gaulle and His France. The Alliescheerfully supported resistance movements across Nazi-held Europe, withouteven the fig leaf of legitimacy provided by the Free French movement or theexile Polish government, and without regard to the technical status ofthose movements as traitors to collaborationist governments. The British andAmericans, however, had no intention of liberating western Europe fromHitler only to see it delivered into the hands of Stalin. As the war went on, and eventual Allied victory became likely, deGaulle and the Free French movement acquired a further value to Britain andthe United States. The president of France, formerly a ceremonial figure,now has powers roughly comparable to those of an American president, and asGeorge Washington gave substance to the powers granted in the Americanconstitution, so de Gaulle from 1958 to 1968 gave substance to the powersgranted in the French Constitution. Yet at the end of the war de Gaulleemerged as the symbol of a France defiant in defeat and ultimatelytriumphant.De Gaulle in the Postwar Era There proved to be little place for him in the postwar Frenchpolitical scene, however. After the war, however, he rose steadily through the officer ranks,propelled by his intellectual power and moral self-assurance. By 1958, the war had brought France to the verge of a militarycoup, with "ultras" in the army prepared to overthrow the government lestit attempt to withdraw from Algeria. 377ff). Britain, incommand of victorious armies, fleets, and air forces, found it much harderto be disabused of the notion that it could go into the future as one of aBig Three. Substantial though these tensions were, however, they did not alterthe fundamental reality that de Gaulle's France was and remained one of theWestern allies. By the late 195 s, however, France found itself involved in an evenmore intractable colonial war, much closer to home, in Algeria. De Gaulle also rejected the assumption of Americanleadership of the Western alliance. the Free French movement andspecifically de Gaulle. 36). 25 -74.Gordon, Philip H. France, however independent its foreign policy, could not alone hopeto be a force in the world on a scale comparable to the United States andthe Soviet Union (DePorte, 1991, p. The decision to hold back American andBritish forces, and allow Paris to be liberated by the Free French under deGaulle, thus had a significance that was practical and political as well assymbolic. Theevents which brought this about will be dealt with below. Throughout his life, de Gaulle had what he called "a certain idea ofFrance" (Mahoney, 1996, p. GardenCity, NY: Doubleday.Serfaty, Simon (1968). While the Third Republic endured from the 187 s till 194 ,it was never a strong political system, almost continually under threat ofoverthrow. Britain was after all victorious inmilitary reality as well as in diplomatic symbolism. Officer evaluation forms hadsuch comments as "a very intelligent officer ... 255). 61) was designed and equipped entirely to provide Francewith a nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union. If pressed,they might have pointed to Hitler's many violations of international law asjustification, but in practice they hardly bothered to do so. Sincethe Revolution, France had had a long history of instability; between 1789and 1948 it had four republics, two monarchies, two empires, and the Vichydictatorship. The Fifth Republic, based on a constitution drafted under de Gaulle'ssupervision and passed by referendum in late 1958, differed from previousFrench republican constitutions in having a strong executive (Mahoney,1996, pp. This writer has been told anecdotally that anAmerican comedy show of the 196 s (possibly the "Smothers Brothers" show)once featured the following ditty: I love Paris in the springtime, I love Paris in the fall; I love Paris any time of year -- But I can't stand Charles de Gaulle.To Americans of that time, then, de Gaulle embodied everything they foundannoying about not only the French but Europeans in general. (1991). 313). He proceeded to found the Free French movement, rallying Frenchcolonial troops to reject the authority of the Vichy government and fighton. Thus de Gaulle removedFrance from participation in the American-dominated military structure ofNATO, built a separate French nuclear strike capability (the force defrappe), frequently disagreed with the American position in the UnitedNations, and readily sought friendly relations with neutralist movementsand states in the Third World that were viewed with great suspicion by theUnited States. The wartime Resistance within France itself was heavily-- even predominantly -- under the influence of the French Communist Party. De Gaulle's "certainidea of France" resonated with that of a great many of the French people,including many who disagreed with him on specific political issues, and asense that he embodied an essential France was a wellspring of hisleadership and enduring influence.De Gaulle and the Free French A career officer, de Gaulle had an honorable but not distinguishedcareer in World War I, cut short when he was taken prisoner by the Germans. It lacked the population andsheer economic mass to compete with the superpowers on terms of equality.Western Europe as a whole, however, was comparable in population andeconomic potential to the two superpowers; thus, if its policies werecoordinated, it could aspire to a standing as peer of the superpowers. Amid total war with Nazi Germany, of course, such arguments carriedno weight whatever with Churchill or the other Allied leaders. DuringWorld War II, Winston Churchill once said that "everyone has his cross tobear, and mine is the Cross of Lorraine," i.e. 357), a statement received withdelirious enthusiasm, though it actually said nothing. As the crisis built, de Gaulle wascareful not to commit himself on the Algerian question; almost everyonecould read into his elliptical statements whatever they wanted to hear(Crawley, 1969, pp. However, French success in finding its footing in the postwar era canalso be substantially attributed to Charles de Gaulle. The early stages of Europeanintegration were thus carried out, so far as France was concerned, with deGaulle in disagreement and on the sidelines. ReferencesCook, Don (1983). As theGerman armies rolled through France he advocated continuing the war fromFrench colonies, and by good luck found himself in London as Francecollapsed. De Gaulle. But by the time de Gaulle was given commandof an armored division it was too late (de Launey, 1968, pp. Westport, CN: Praeger, 1996.Mauriac, Francois (1966). Yet, paradoxically, it was France that adjusted more quickly and evenmore gracefully to middle-power status, and by the 196 s was energeticallyasserting a new role in the world at a time when Britain was still adriftand unsure of its place. The foreign policy of the Fifth Republic: Betweenthe nation and the world. Not until over a decade later, in 1958, as the founder of the FifthRepublic, did he re-emerge as the leading political figure in France. Charles de Gaulle. 16). However de Gaulle was a realist --as his policy in Algeria showed -- and the political realities of the ColdWar-era balance of power gradually and reluctantly pushed him toward adegree of Europeanism. De Gaulle: Statesmanship, Grandeur, andModern Democracy. In practical terms the problem facing France should have been muchgreater than that facing Britain. Although its ultra-high-speed tracks remain confined toFrance, TVG technology allows its trains to run on conventional tracksbeyond the French border, including now through the Chunnel to Britain. For unlike Adenauer, who pursued Europeanismdeliberately, as an alternative to the German nationalism that had producedsuch catastrophic results for Germany itself and all its neighbors, deGaulle identified himself as a Frenchman first, last, and always. "Of all the services de Gaulle rendered to France, extractionfrom the Algerian War was the most difficult and decisive" (Cook, 1983, pp.327-28). 132). 51), he inadvertently but necessarily pointedFrance toward a Europeanist future. For the defeated Axis powers, Germany and Japan, this issue waseffectively deferred; defeated and under occupation they had no prospect ofundertaking an independent world role. More generally de Gaulle and the French rejected the Americans'Manichean conception of the Cold War as an all-enveloping conflict in whichall other international questions must be subsumed, and in which therecould be no neutrals. 49); bothGerman and British military theorists had developed more comprehensivedoctrines of armored warfare before de Gaulle became active in itsadvocacy. New York: Putnam.Crawley, Aidan (1969). The latter,however, also threatened to hold him back. Ironically, in view of de Gaulle's laterreputation as a champion of armored warfare and the offensive, underPetain's influence de Gaulle in 1925 wrote an article for a French militaryjournal that provided arguments for a defensive posture, a posture thatwould soon lead the French to build the Maginot Line (Cook, 1983, pp. By the mid-192 s, however, he had come to the notice of MarshallPetain, hero of World War I -- and later disgraced leader of the Vichyregime of World War II. For all hisprofound emotional commitment to la gloire, he showed a clearer grasp ofhis country's limitations -- and potential strengths -- in the new worldthan did any of his British contemporaries (including Churchill, when hereturned to office in the 195 s). 89-93). The disaster of France, however, was the making of de Gaulle. In contrast, the French, militarily humiliated in World War II, werefar more reluctant to accede to anticolonialist pressure; the Frenchmilitary in particular seemed determined to restore its self-image byforcefully holding onto colonies. On de Gaulle'sresumption of leadership, however, he found it necessary to come to gripswith the question of France's place in a new world. The irony of this role is that "Father of Europe" is by no means arole Charles de Gaulle ever aspired to, and he might well be aghast atbeing so identified. New York: Julian Press.Mahoney, Daniel J. Nevertheless, in defining an independent rolefor France at the height of the Cold War era, and for reasons essentiallypragmatic (Serfaty, 1968, p. unfortunately, spoils hisincontestable qualities by his excessive assurance [and] his severitytoward the opinions of others" (Cook, 1983, p. De Gaulle and the Free French were, however, a case of specialsignificance. 131ff). De Gaulle had often been a difficult ally. The de Gaulle revolution of May 1958 ranks with the storming of theBastille in 1789 and the cataclysmic events of the Paris Commune in1871 as one of the decisive turning-point dramas of France that produceda complete change in its system of government and the way the countryis run (Cook, 1983, p. It was a foreign policy question left over from an earlier periodthat brought de Gaulle's return to center stage. Evenwhen, reluctantly, he embraced Europeanism, it was a "Europe des patries,"i.e., of national states, with the individual states -- and particularlyFrance -- remaining primary. At last he gave in and allowed Algeria itsindependence -- nearly braving another coup attempt in the process.Gaullism The most striking feature of Gaullist foreign policy -- certainly thefeature that attracted the most attention, uniformly unfavorable, in theUnited States -- was its insistance on taking an independent line in theCold War. 1 1). New York: Routledge, pp. De Gaulle grasped that by activelysupporting Europeanism, France would become, if not a superpower in its ownright, at least the leading participant in a sort of latent quasi-superpower. It had thelargest population, a long tradition of continental leadership andprestige, and geographically it occupied a central position. W. By the same token, the existence of the Free French movementdelegitimized the Vichy government of France, which could be treated not asthe rightful government of a now-neutral France, but as a mere Nazi puppet(Mauriac, 1966, p. The establishment of a Free French movement, with de Gaulle as itsleader, was thoroughly contrary to the traditional usage of internationallaw as it was understood in 194 . 115-17). 31 ). Anti-Americanism was widespread inFrance, and Americans responded with a jaundiced view of France and of deGaulle in particular. 131). (The movie "Day of the Jackel" is a fictionalizedversion of one such assassination attempt.) Not until 1962 was thesituation fully stabilized. Relations between the United States and de Gaulle's France were thusfrequently strained, and the tensions went beyond diplomatic notes to enterthe popular culture of both countries. It wasthe great achievement of de Gaulle, then, to give France for the first timea strong democratic system. A Certain Idea of France: French SecurityPolicy and the Gaullist Legacy. (1993). (1996). France had gone to war with Germany, hadbeen defeated, and had signed a separate Armistice. For another threeyears, in fact, de Gaulle pursued the war, while increasingly realizingthat it was unwinnable. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.