NEW SOLIDARITY

June 13, 1980

Pages 6-7

How de Gaulle Saved the French Republic

What Every American Should Know About Nationalism by Garance Phau
"Believe me, I who speak to you with full knowledge and tell you that nothing is lost for France. . . . Because France is not alone! . . . She is not alone! She has a vast Empire behind her. She can, like England, utilize without limits the immense industry of the United States. . . "I, General de Gaulle, presently in London, invite French officers and soldiers, . . . engineers and skilled workers . . . to get in touch with me. Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be put out, will not be put out."

Below: Nazi troops parade on horseback through the streets of Paris; left: Charles de Gaulle at the BBC microphone during his first broadcast to the French nation June 18, 1940.

In front of the frightening gulf of capitulation, my mission appeared to me all of a sudden, a clear and formidable one. At that moment, the worst in her history, it was left to me to take on France. I had to be France. General Charles de Gaulle from his Memoirs, Volume 1 Human civilization depends on those few great individuals, who, amid despair and decadence, fight to awaken their fellow men, and bring them to the next higher level of development. General Charles de Gaulle was such an individual, acting in the tradition of Dante, Rabelais, George Washington, and all great humanist leaders since Plato. In June of 1940, France as a nation was, dead. The German fascists ruled in the north, from a Paris turned into a replica of the cities of degenerate Weimar Germany. The fascist French capitulators managed the south, under the slogan "family and land," from the little resort town of Vichy. With German fascism threatening to overrun the world, de Gaulle undertook to resurrect the republic of France, not only for Frenchmen, but for the world population as a whole. He kindled republican aspirations in the Third World, and confronted the United States and the Soviet Union with their global responsibility to eliminate the immiseration of the 2 billion people of the developing sector. De Gaulle succeeded in recreating the French nationstate as a beacon for the developing sectors aspirations for peace and development. To this day, a Gaullist France has saved mankind from the horrors of a thermonuclear war by leading Europe as a spokesman for detente and East-West cooperation. De Gaulle and the Nation-State The nation is "greater than the sum of its citizens" said de Gaulle, because each nation has a world-historical purpose: to further man's transformation of the universe through technological progress. The individual gives meaning to his or her life by working toward the realization of this national goal. Nationalism in this spirit, the resurgence of the citizen's sense of responsibility for the Republic, comes to the fore today whenever French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing undertakes major initiatives for world peace, such as his recent summit meeting with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. The French citizen's typical response to such a development in

national foreign policy is best characterized by the man on the street who says proudly to his neighbor: "Did you hear what we did today?" De Gaulle's conception of the nation was exactly what the founding fathers of the American republic came to seek in France in the 1770s, and what was brought to fruition in the young United States after the British intelligenceled Jacobins had destroyed the French Revolution. Benjamin Franklin spent most of his later life in France, coordinating with French Republicans such as the Marquis de Lafayette, to ensure the success of the American Revolution. Alexander Hamilton's American System economics were inspired in large part by the French national tradition of political economy, dating from the reign of Louis XI, the great king who defeated the feudal aristocracy, and stretching to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the builder of the navy and the industries of France in the early part of the 18th century. So when Charles de Gaulle spoke of the nation, he understood it as thousand years of humanist republican development that had spread over the earth with the development of the United States and Russia. The General in London When the fat, piggish stuttering Prime Minister Winston Churchill granted de Gaulle asylum in Great Britain in June of 1940, and allowed him access to the British Broadcasting System for his messages to his countrymen across the Channel, Churchill did not know nor could he conceive what a giant he had welcomed. In June of 1940, the Churchill government and the British oligarchy were in full support of Hitler's ravages on the continent, which they hoped would bleed not only France, but Germany and the Soviet Union beyond all hope of economic reconstruction. As International Caucus of Labor Committees leader and historian Carol White documents in her soon-to-be-released book The New Dark Ages: Britain's Plot to Destroy Civilization, Hitler was the creation of Churchill's mentors, the aristocratic Cecils, and their deployed brainwashing experts such as Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells. The Vichy regime of Marshall Petain, which claimed neutrality while implementing Nazi slave labor laws against the French population, was not so much a German creation, but another product of the evil London crowd. Marshall Petain, half senile at 84 years old, understood one thing very well from the behind-the-scenes London controllers of his government.

"Whatever I may do," Petain, a supposed Nazi puppet, said, "I shall never declare war on Great Britain." For the record, the British adopted the posture of a proud nation that, alone, continued resistance against the Nazis. The history of British sabotage of de Gaulle's efforts to rally the Free French against Petain and the Germans, totally gives the lie to this posing. In early June of 1940, however, Churchill did not yet clearly recognize de Gaulle as the massive threat to Britain's war aims he was shortly to become. By the same token, the French leader in exile in England did not fully understand the extent of Britain's responsibility for the creation of the Nazi movement and German fascism. De Gaulle did understand, however, that he must conquer all that stood between him and the revival of the French nation, and that this task was left by history to him alone. As he said in the first volume of his Memoirs: To pursue the war? Yes of course! but for what aim and within what limits? Many, though they approved of the undertaking did not want it to be something other than help being given by a handful of Frenchmen to the British Empire. Not a second did I envision an undertaking on that level. For me what was at stake, what was to be served and saved was the Nation and the State. I who ventured to climb such a steep hill, I had nothing to start with. On my side, not the shadow of a force nor of an organization. In France, no backer and no notoriety. Abroad, no credit and no justification. But this destitution itself laid out my line of conduct. It is by embracing fully the cause of national salvation that I could find the authority. It was by acting as an inflexible champion of the nation and the state that it would be possible to rally consenting and enthusiastic Frenchmen, and to obtain respect and consideration from foreigners. Though many people got offended at my intransigence, I remained firm, repulsing innumerable pressures, for the least bending would have led to collapse. In short, however solitary and limited I was, and precisely because I was so, I had to climb on the summits never to descend.

A Humanist Military Tradition Philosophically and morally, de Gaulle had been prepared for the tasks he was to face by a mother and father devoted to the nation. Charles de Gaulle was born in 1890 into an old family from the industrialized northern region of France, which took pride in a line of descendants that served the country as military officers or civil servants. It was the de Gaulles' custom to debate and discuss French history at the dinner table, and historian Henri de Gaulle, Charles's father, was passionate in his defense of France against that "perfidious Albion," Great Britain. Henri mistrusted in particular the British-inspired French leftists who made their mark as the Jacobins of the French Revolution, and hated the Jacobins' mentors of the so-called Enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. Charles de Gaulle, by an early age, developed a passion for the military arts, in the best tradition of the Ecole Polytechnique that had been created by the great French mathematician and republican leader Lazare Carnot. This was the basis of de Gaulle's lifelong unshakeable belief in technological progress, which his 30 year battle for France's nuclear development epitomized. From the same font sprang de Gaulle's commitment to mobilize other industrial nations to join with France in developing the Third World and lifting its populations out of bestiality. It was de Gaulle's view that the republican form of government could be instituted in the developing nations, with the guidance of the elites of those nations, as soon as the necessary levels of industrial growth could be attained. To make the republic the universal form of government was de Gaulle's goal, and he recognized a unique French responsibility for the creation of an international detente among sovereign republics. As de Gaulle put it in a 1960 speech on the occasion of the piercing of the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy: Our era, because it is that of machinery, opens an immense carrier to technological audacity and power. Henceforth, initiatives penetrate mountains, pierce isthmuses, bar rivers, capture the thermic, hydraulic, and atomic sources of energy, explore space, install men under the seas. . . Who knows if one day entente and cooperation, established not only in the western part of Europe but on all the continent and naturally marked by technical realizations at the level of such an achievement, will

not make of Europe the key element in the development of nations, in the peaceful balance of the world and the progress of all men? In France's footstepsif we do not agree that our species be condemned to catastrophessuch is today the raison d'tre and tomorrow the ambition of the European Europe!

Pictures courtesy of the French Embassy Press and Information Division.

De Gaulle on board a Free French naval vessel in 1941.

As a colonel in the French army during World War I, de Gaulle was captured by the Germans, and spent months in a prisoner of war camp. There, in the company of the young Tukachevsky, the brilliant Russian military strategist, de Gaulle completed his education by reading every thing he could find, from Clausewitz to Plato. De Gaulle's early determination to make up his own mind and never to bow to authority for its own sakein short, to fight for his ideasearned him decades of persecution from grammar school, to the military academy of Saint-Cyr, and into the French army. For most of the 20 years between World War I and World War II, de Gaulle was under fierce attack and prevented from advancements in the officer corps because of his belief that modern warfare required the use of the mobile, motorized armored battalion.

To the consternation of the majority of the senior officers around him, de Gaulle espoused the Clausewitzian theory of the offensive against the British-inspired Maginot Line outlook. Had de Gaulle's conception of the armored battalion been adopted by the French military in the years between the wars, this new capacity would have provided France with the ability to crush Hitler's war machine in several decisive battles and could have saved humanity the horrors of the years of Nazism. Despite the abuses hurled at him, de Gaulle pressed ahead with organizing for his military strategy writing several books and pamphlets on the need to modernize the French army. In Edge of the Sword, de Gaulle addresses not only the need for a military revolution, but to develop anew in France the qualities of humanist leadership required in the army and the government: Those who aspire to command, those who are strong, make themselves ready. Destined to make their mark rather than submit to someone else's, they build in the secrecy of an inner life the structure of their attitude, their belief, their will. This is why in times of tragedy when the winds blow down convention and habit, they alone remain standing and consequently they alone matter. Nothing is more important to the State than to keep those exceptional persons at their post for they will be its last resort. In the face of crisis, the man of character turns to himself his instinctive response is to impose his stamp on events; to submit them to his control to make them his responsibility far from seeking shelter within the hierarchy from hiding in the rule books, from covering himself with reports, he chooses to stand straight, assume a fighting stance, and look ahead. Not that he willingly disregards orders or rejects advice but he has a passion to impose his will, a jealousy to reach his own decision. Not that he isn't aware of consequences, but he assesses them carefully, and accepts them honestly, even better he embraces action with the pride of the master for if he commits himself to it it becomes part of him. Joyful of success, even when he reaps no reward; bearing the full weight of his failures, but not without bitter satisfaction. In short, a fighter will fight his ardor and his sustenance. The man of character gives nobility to

action; without him it is the dreary task of the slave; thanks to him it is the divine game of the hero. The Free French Arriving in London in June of 1940, de Gaulle was seemingly isolated and powerless. Yet he laid out the boldest of strategies to resurrect France and bring the war to an end. First, he set about implementing the plan he had proposed to no avail to the last democratic government of France; to relocate the legitimate government of the nation into the Empire, and to rally the French army to continue the fight on the side of the Allies. This, de Gaulle outlined to the French nation during his historic first broadcast over the BBC, on June 18, 1940, calling on French officers, soldiers, engineers, and armaments workers to join him in London and rally to the cause of the French Resistance. The struggle engulfing France was a world war, General de Gaulle told his audience, and the Nazis would crumble once America entered it. Thus he told Frenchmen to continue to fight the fascists, to earn the right to rebuild the French republic when the war was at an end. De Gaulle's June 18 speech, and his subsequent BBC broadcasts, carried the message that France would once again flourish as a free industrial, scientific, and philosophical power, and take a leadership role in ensuring a "world revolution" in which the relations among states would be premised on the need for the global development of man's powers of reason and the transformation of nature. In metropolitan France, de Gaulle's underground Resistance, under the leadership of strategists such as Jean Moulin, was able to bring all the different political tendencies under one roof, even the British-manipulated Combat. The aim of de Gaulle's Resistance leaders was to create a republican "workers party" that would provide the basis for peace-time republican rule. Had de Gaulle's message been heard as clearly in Washington, D.C. as it was by the tens of thousands of patriots who flocked to join with his Free French movement, American action could have ended World War II in 1942, and saved the lives of millions who died in Nazi concentration camps and on the Russian front. But British influence over Washington succeeded in delaying the opening of a second front and the landing of the Allies in northern France for two years.

De Gaulle Hails Marshall Foch What the British pragmatists and their American followers have yet to understand about Charles de Gaulle is his commitment to the power of ideas in mobilizing populations and transforming the world. De Gaulle began his campaign to save France with only one instrument in hand, the BBC. But with a few minutes a day to address the French nation, this tool became the most powerful of weapons in rallying his countrymen for battle. De Gaulle knew that men are moved, albeit often unconsciously, by that which addresses their higher sense of identity, their self-conscious self. This form of address, he understood, can move men to accomplish things of which they never dreamed themselves capable. Many of de Gaulle's speeches are similar to short poems in their power to heighten and transform the listeners' mental powers. These speeches embody a theme, which, as it repeats itself in a slightly altered way, conveys a motion of development. De Gaulle's speech on Radio Brazzaville in November 1940 after his Free French forces had recaptured the capital of French Equatorial Africa, demonstrates his oratorical powers. Here de Gaulle addressed himself primarily to the French military and civil servants who managed the French Empire. His intent was to break through the French tradition of duty and obedience which bound these people to the Vichy government as their "legal" superiors. The specific theme of de Gaulle's speech, delivered on All Saints Day, was the World War I hero Marshal Foch. Note that de Gaulle's speech downplays the womanizer Marshall Petain, who traditionally shared Foch's glory for the Wold War I victory, thereby delivering a personal insult to Vichyite Petain. Marechal Foch! You whose body lies In the Grave of the Invalids But whose soul still lingers In the soul of French soldiers, Today November 11th A French soldier comes Respectfully to give you his report. Marechal Foch!

You who won the war By strength of will Know that those Who were our leaders Have given up victory, have ordered us to submit to the enemy. Marechal Foch! You . . . who were chosen to command All the Armies of the Allies and People associated with France . . . Know that those Who were our leaders have ordered us to betray our Allies In the midst of battle. . . But I will not just give you a report On those infamous things, For there are Frenchmen There are soldiers Who did not subscribe to them. There are Frenchmen There are soldiers Who will wipe out the infamy. We are those Frenchmen Those soldiers We, the Free French soldiers And since those Who were our leaders Have abandoned their duty Out of panic, old age or despair, We have decided In shame and pain Not to recognize them any longer. We have also decided Monsieur le Marechal, Immortal leader that you are, That we will follow your example and that, We will obey you, just you. We follow your example... By continuing to fight

Where and as we can, Reclimbing little by little From the pit of disaster. If we wrest bit by bit, The French Empire From the enemy's collaborators So as to keep it For France And find there The means of combat, If we already brought back Into the war, Chad, Cameroon, Oubangjui, Congo, Our colonies of the Pacific And just yesterday Gabon It is to follow your example And execute your orders. . . We will bring back To the Motherland Her share of victory It is us who will restore Her Honor, Her Grandeur, Her Happiness, Monsieur le Marechal We will simply do What you ordered soldiers should do: Our duty! Churchill's Treachery Within 48 hours after de Gaulle had delivered his historic call to Frenchmen on June 18, 1940, the Churchill government was seized with the horrible realization of what the General's success could mean for their war policy. Thus, Great Britain set about to sabotage and harass the Free French movement to the full extent that its antifascist cover would allow. The British forbade de Gaulle to publicly address French soldiers and workers in England, and began to jail French refugees who had crossed the Channel to join de Gaulle's movement. Those who were not jailed were subject to lengthy brainwashing stints at British intelligence's "Patriotic School."

Within a month of de Gaulle's first radio address, the Churchill government carried out the heinous crime of surrounding and blowing up the entire Vichy French fleet at anchor off the African coast at Mers-El Kebir. This destruction was planned and executed without either consultation with de Gaulle, who could doubtless have won over a large portion of the fleet to the cause of the Free French, or an offer to Vichy officers to surrender to the British.

A Petain poster in downtown Vichy. "They are all his children"

Only months later, the British, cooperating covertly with the Vichy regime, entrapped de Gaulle's Free French forces in the murderous Dakar expedition, which cost the General ground and time in French Equatorial Africa. Both incidents were grist to feed the mill of Vichy and British press propaganda against de Gaulle as a military incompetent with "a leaky organization" that "the United States should not trust." Meanwhile, British intelligence Mideast kingpin John Glubb Pasha organized anti-Gaullist riots in Syria and Lebanon; Churchill connived with the United States dumb giant for the installation of Petain ally Admiral

Darlan as the governor of Northern Africa; and, possibly most bloodthirsty, the British informed on Resistance leaders underground in France, setting them up to be murdered by the Gestapo. Indeed, the piggish Winston Churchill deployed every asset of British intelligence and his government against de Gaulle's effort to on behalf of France and the fight against Nazism. But Churchill, in the end, proved impotent to stop de Gaulle. By August of 1940, de Gaulle had rallied around him a few of the French military brass, but these represented the finest of the nation's military thinkers. Among them were General de Hauteclocque, better known as General Leclerc, his nom de guerre, and General Larminat, the men who were to lead the Free French forces to capture Equatorial Africa and, in time, to march on Paris. With a force of several thousand men, and the organized complicity of Gaullists in the local administrators, the Free French were able to seize Chad, Cameroon, Bas Congo, Oubangui, and Brazzaville between August 26 and August 28, just 69 days after de Gaulle's first appeal to Frenchmen over the BBC. Gabon was seized a few months later. Chad was particularly important. It had been rallied without a fight because of the leadership of the great Feliz Ebou, governor of the country and one of the first to rally to de Gaulle. De Gaulle entrusted Ebou with the gigantic task of organizing the country to become the base of operations for Leclerc and Larminat's army, from which the Free French would move into the Middle East and Libya. Chad had to provide the resources to feed a growing army, and above that to organize its economy to provide a surplus for export to get the necessary income to purchase military equipment and supplies. A third requirement was a new infrastructure, railroad, roads, and bridges, etc., that had to be built with the cooperation of labor from neighboring countries. De Gaulle believed that the war, although destructive, opened for Africa prospects for progress by placing these great demands on the nations of the continent. Always in diametrical opposition to the British notion of ruling an empire by fomenting tribal dissension and promoting backwardness, de Gaulle conceived of himself as the spokesman for Africa's right to the same cultural and technological levels that prevailed in the advanced sector.

In three months time, de Gaulle had reached his first goal. He had established himself as the legitimate spokesman for the French Republic, as the leader of the Free French Army that fought alongside the Allies in every major battle of the war. His integrity and his commitment to the development of man had earned him the support of all, Frenchmen and Africans, who were not committed Nazis. As the General put it, many years later, "everyone has been, is, or will be a Gaullist." (to be continued)