Churchill & Roosevelt

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1943: Churchill and Roosevelt in Casablanca to draw up a blueprint for the defeat of the Axis powers.
1962: France vetoes Britain joining the European Common Market, believing the UK will act for US interests.
2002: Britain is declared free of 'Foot and Mouth' disease after the slaughter of four million animals.

Three titans
Between 1940 and 1945 three titans of the twentieth century, who became the leaders of the free world at its moment of greatest crisis, fought an extraordinary war within a war. To the outside world they were allies united in the fight against Hitler. Behind the scenes, their relationship was very different.


In June 1940, as France fell to the Nazis, Churchill recognised de Gaulle as "the man of destiny".
Two of the three were the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and the Free French leader, General, later President, Charles de Gaulle. In June 1940, as France fell to the Nazis, Churchill recognised de Gaulle as 'the man of destiny'. But their relationship would turn into a roller coaster of mutual admiration, suspicion and, on Churchill's part, loathing.

The third man was the American President, Franklin Roosevelt. De Gaulle caused Roosevelt more trouble and more infuriation than any other person in the Second World War. To his extreme embarrassment, Churchill found himself caught in the middle of an extraordinary arms length duel between the President, who was the most powerful man in the world, and the French general who put saving the honour of his devastated country above everything else.

The story of this tangled, triangular relationship began in June 1940. The Nazi Blitzkrieg had crushed Belgium and Holland. German forces had forced the withdrawal of nearly half a million British and French troops from Dunkirk. Now Hitler's spearheads were rolling towards Paris.

The French government was divided but its Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, remained determined to resist the Nazis. On 5 June 1940 he appointed to his cabinet a recently promoted and junior brigadier-general, Charles de Gaulle, as Under Secretary for Defence. Reynaud knew that de Gaulle was an unequivocal fighter, and he dispatched him to London to plead with Churchill to send the full might of the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command across the Channel to help in the battle to save France.

Free France
Churchill refused; in his heart, he knew that France was lost. However, de Gaulle immediately impressed him as a welcome contrast to the defeatist High Command of the French Army. During the vital week of 10 to 17 June, de Gaulle and Churchill tried to stiffen resistance in the French government and army. At the same time Churchill and Reynaud pleaded with Roosevelt to make a public commitment to support Britain and France.

However Roosevelt would only give private assurances and any prospect of France staying in the fight was removed. On 17 June, the aged Marshal Phillippe Petain succeeded Reynaud and France sought an armistice with Hitler. De Gaulle escaped to London and Churchill recognised him as the "leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to him in support of the allied cause". Free France was born.

During the late summer of 1940, de Gaulle raised a fledgling Free French army and navy of some four thousand men. But all he had was an office in London, Churchill's backing and hope. What he needed was territory and a base of his own.


All de Gaulle had was an office in London, Churchill's backing and hope.
De Gaulle turned his eyes to the French Empire in Africa. In late August a small Free French expedition rallied the French Central African territories of Chad and the French Congo and Cameroons to de Gaulle's cause. He and Churchill next targeted the strategic port of Dakar in French West Africa. The British chiefs of staff were ordered to organise an expedition, code named 'Menace'.

'Menace' turned into a fiasco. The plan was based on the hope that local French forces in Dakar would rally to de Gaulle as soon as they saw the combined British and Free French fleet draw near. Instead they stayed loyal to the regime of Vichy France which Petain had now established in the unoccupied zone of France. A civil war between Frenchmen was the last thing de Gaulle wanted and the expedition withdrew.

'Menace' hugely damaged de Gaulle, particularly in the eyes of Roosevelt. The President was determined to stop American troops becoming embroiled in a European war and believed that the best way to achieve that was to help other countries to fight Hitler. He sent supplies to Britain and also began to cultivate Petain's Vichy state. Even though Vichy was collaborating with the Nazis, it still possessed substantial armed forces, in particular a powerful navy, and Roosevelt hoped that it could be encouraged to resist.

 

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America enters the war
Churchill also flirted briefly with Vichy but by the spring of 1941 he realised that Petain and the Vichy leaders in the French empire had no intention of resuming the fight. He and de Gaulle decided on a joint British and Free French invasion of the Vichy controlled countries of Syria and Lebanon.

However, after local Vichy forces surrendered and an armistice was concluded, de Gaulle believed that he had been double-crossed by the British commanders on the spot who rode roughshod over commitments made to the Free French. He thought that Britain had secret designs on French territories in the Middle East and his suspicions led to his first row with Churchill.

By the end of 1941, the two men had resolved their differences and seemed once again united. Then, on 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbour finally forced the United States into the war. Churchill's prayers were answered. At last Roosevelt was a fighting ally. Amidst the Anglo-American harmony between the two leaders, there was only one immediate note of discord - the problem of France.


Roosevelt began to see de Gaulle as an untrustworthy nuisance.
While Churchill had stayed loyal to de Gaulle and the Free French, Roosevelt had continued to cultivate Vichy and ignore de Gaulle. A fortnight after Pearl Harbour de Gaulle launched a Free French coup against the tiny, Vichy controlled islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland. His unauthorised action infuriated the American government and Roosevelt began to see de Gaulle as an untrustworthy nuisance. The dispute deepened during the British and French invasion of French North and West Africa in late 1942, Operation 'Torch', from which Roosevelt insisted that de Gaulle be excluded. Roosevelt hoped that as soon as allied forces arrived on French African soil, the local Vichy commanders would switch from collaboration with the Nazis to collaboration with the British and French.

Roosevelt alighted on another French General, Henri Giraud, whom he intended to promote as a rival leader to de Gaulle. Giraud had been captured by the Nazis in May 1940. In early 1942 he dramatically escaped from the German fortress in which he was held prisoner of war. He was brave, high ranking, untainted by Vichy collaborationism, and, most important of all from Roosevelt's point of view, had no connection with de Gaulle. He seemed the ideal figurehead. Roosevelt received assurances from American emissaries in Algeria that, as soon as Giraud appeared on the scene, the local Vichy leaders, both civilian and military, would instantly accept his command.