Anyone But Charles de Gaulle: U.S. WWII Policy toward France

Abstract

In summing up his main argument, Michael Neiberg writes that the U.S. relationship with France during the Second World War began with a “bad policy based on flawed assumptions.” U.S. officials had “too much faith in the flattery of ostensibly pro-American French officials and they took far too long to realize that despite the obnoxious and difficult behavior of Charles de Gaulle, British support of his movement gave the Allies the best option both for winning the war and rebuilding France after it.” Instead, the United States supported “a succession of anti-democratic French officials” (7–8). This well-researched, written, and fascinating account of U.S. decision-making drives home the point that French capitulation to the Nazis in June 1940 and fear of losing all of France led U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration to cling to one horrific French leader after another, which resulted in an “anyone but de Gaulle” policy. Neiberg begins by depicting the United States as a free rider during the interwar period, underscoring how limited U.S. military budgets and a policy of political isolation derived “in large part [from] its faith in the French military, which served as a protective barrier” (9). This unwavering faith made France’s collapse all the more cataclysmic. Indeed, the day Paris fell, according to Neiberg, was the day World War II became real for ordinary Americans. Chapters 1–4 detail this reality as U.S. officials struggled to develop a coherent policy toward the Vichy France government led by World War I hero Philippe Pétain and former prime minister Pierre Laval. Intriguingly, Neiberg also suggests that the fall of France led to some major domestic consequences, with the pro-rearmament and anti-isolationist Wendell Willkie securing the Republican nomination, FDR running for an unprecedented third term, and a massive rearmament program being instituted (56–60). Neiberg then focuses on various U.S. attempts to work with the supposedly pro-American commander of the French Army, General Maxime Weygand, and the significance of FDR sending the highly respected Admiral William Leahy as his ambassador to France. Here, Neiberg provides an excellent accounting of the reasoning behind formally recognizing Vichy and the sending of such a prominent ambassador. The Americans sought to keep the French fleet as well as Martinique and Guadalupe in the Caribbean, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon on the St. Lawrence River from falling into Nazi hands. They also wanted to maintain open lines of communication and non-communist leaders in power (97–101). As Vichy moved ever closer to full collaboration with the Germans, evidenced by the Paris Protocols that allowed German access to French military bases in Syria, Tunisia, and Senegal, in return for a reduction in occupation costs, the release of thousands of WWI veterans from POW camps, and promises of Vichy “unfettered authority” of domestic issues, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and FDR still stayed the course (120). Even the Franco-Japanese agreement to allow access to French bases in Indochina, which prompted a furor in U.S. public opinion and led the FDR administration to embrace the idea of an international trusteeship for Indochina, was not enough to lead to a break with Pétain.