French internal affairs ought not to be manipulated "with a view to treating France as an Anglo-American protectorate". If De Gaulle were removed, Churchill's cabinet colleagues argued, the ranks of the French resistance "would consider that the Anglo-Saxons had betrayed their leader, and a further swing towards Russia would be inevitable". They were both considered to be mediocre students. Both of their fathers fought in wars which inspired both of them to pursue the military in school and in the years following.
In an accompanying telegram to Eden, Churchill referred to a French source in Washington who described De Gaulle as "thoroughly unfriendly both to Britain and to the United States and while affecting communist sympathies he had fascist tendencies".Ĭhurchill added: "This again tallies with my own feelings." Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle are thought to be two of the greatest military leaders during the time of World War II. Roosevelt said he did not know what to do with De Gaulle, telling Churchill: "Possibly you would like to make him governor of Madagascar!" Available as an art print on canvas, photo paper, watercolor board. 3 Charles de Gaulle, War memoirs (3 vols., with companion Documents vols. Portrait of General Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill by Alessandro Lonati. The US president added: "He has the idea that the people of France itself are strongly behind him personally. Churchill, The second world war (6 vols., London I948-54). The man's removal was necessary, given Britain's "absolutely vital interest in preserving good relations with the United States".Ĭhurchill sent his cabinet colleagues a personal memo he received from Roosevelt describing De Gaulle as having a "messianic complex" with "dictatorial" tendencies. In a furious dispute with his war cabinet in May 1943, Churchill told Clement Attlee, his deputy prime minister, and Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary: "I ask my colleagues to consider urgently whether we should not now eliminate De Gaulle as a political force."ĭe Gaulle, said Churchill in this May 21 cable, "hates England and has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him everywhere".
Charles de gaulle and winston churchill series#
The documents consist mainly of a series of coded telegrams between London and Washington, where Churchill was holding talks with Roosevelt. The mutual antipathy between Churchill and De Gaulle, who spent most of the war in London, is well documented, but the lengths to which Britain's wartime leader was ready to go to get rid of the man who was to be France's greatest postwar statesman has never been disclosed until now.īritish diplomats in Paris were uneasy when they were told recently about the decision to release the papers at the public records office.
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