France: De Gaulle

Christopher Jones wrote : Guy Mollet was Prime Minister of France during the Suez crisis, and he was a socialist, and a marxist.  The SFIO (the old socialist party before Mitterrand changed it into the PS) was in coalition with the radical left party of Pierre Mendès France.  De Gaulle's old RPF (Rassemblement pour le Peuple Français) dissolved the year before. Istvan Simon comments: De Gaulle was very well informed about everything, and even if he was not part of the Government, I would still think that he had considerable influence. Just knowing De Gaulle's personality thinking of himself as being essentially "France" and not being the shy type, and knowing of his hero status in France,we can be fairly sure that  he exerted great influence in or out of government. De Gaulle in large measure  owed this to the United States and Britain, who  endured his arrogance during  World War II, though by the same arrogance he would never recognize it. He did not disagree with the Suez Policy, so it does not matter  whether he had a hand or not in  the decision process.

De Gaulle was right in concluding that it is better for France to have its own independent force and decisions, but it does not follow that he was then also right in his foreign policy and in fact I think that  he was not.  De Gaulle was an arrogant irritant while he was in power.  His arrogance could be seen from huge gaffes that  he committed, like declaring "Vive Quebec libre" while a guest of Canada, which only a colossally arrogant person would ever do.

Indeed this pronouncement lead to total disaster -- it totally poisoned his Canadian visit, and he haughtily left
Canada.  It's hard to see how we can conclude then that his decisions were supposedly  clairvoyant. Quebec is still part of Canada, and the faction that de Gaulle so grossly and insensitively supported lost all  power.  Further he set back Franco-Canadian relations by decades by his arrogant posture, so I think that it would be safe to conclude that this was a total disaster from France's point of view.

Then there was his decision to retire the French military from NATO.  This was another disaster for  France. It did really nothing much to weaken NATO, which was feared at the time, but it isolated France, and does not seem to have brought any lasting benefit to France. So it seems like this was another bad decision from France's point of view. This decision that was  partly reversed by Mitterrand later.  The Force de Frappe would have done precious little for France, had the Soviet Union decided to invade Western Europe.  In that eventuality France would be speaking Russian without the United States and NATO. The Force de Frappe would have done nothing to stop it.

De Gaulle did some things right.  In 1968 during the general student unrest in Europe, De Gaulle seemed paralyzed at first. For a couple of  weeks the situation seemed to deteriorate into total chaos and out of control. But then DeGaulle decided to act. And when he did, he acted decisively and correctly. He finished with the whole thing in a few hours. He also took the correct decisions in Algeria, which I think was the main reason why he came to power. I also agree with his promotion of Franco -German relations, though they were not a problem anymore. So he solved a problem that no longer was a problem. What kept the peace in Europe is not de Gaulle -- it was NATO that he seemed to despise.


An official visit to Canada by de Gaulle was cut short when he shouted "Vive le Québec libre!  Adriana Pena reports: After he retired he went to Ireland. There he found an Irish ancestor (which probably explains his hatred of the "Anglo-Saxons"...) At an official function, he rose and said something like "Vive le Ulster irlandais" or some such. But his hosts had made sure that the microphone did not work....

De Gaulle was a Francomegalomniac   Ross Rogers, Jr. reports:   After de Gaulle's famous "Vive le Quebec libre!", he visited Louisiana that is, "Cajun Louisiana" , perhaps Lafayette, La., the heart of French or Cajun Louisiana, and in similar fashion tried  to promote their liberation.

RH: Similarly, Chirac toured "la Francophonie", which included places like St Pierre et Miquelon, but he was not as crude as de Gaulle,  He simply wanted a union of French´speaking peoples. Since then France has recognized the supremacy of English as the world language, and we have not heard of "la Francophonie" recently.            

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