JULY 8, 1943
WASHINGTON, D.C.
2:20 P.M.
General Charles de Gaulle’s archrival wants to be that hero.
Four thousand miles west of the Metz railway yard, General Henri Giraud poses for an Oval Office photo with President Franklin Roosevelt. Giraud in white dress uniform with black tie, a perfect mirror to the light suit and dark tie worn by Roosevelt. The French high commissioner for North Africa stays close to the president on the right, just like in Casablanca, the perfect ventriloquist’s dummy.
This photograph will soon grace a full page in next week’s Life magazine, a step toward fulfilling Roosevelt’s hope that the American people will come to see Giraud as the future of France. The president plans for Allied troops to occupy France after the war rather than allow national independence. Roosevelt is grooming Giraud as his chosen leader, in spite of—or perhaps because of—the five-star general’s dismal administrative skills.
An hour-long lunch just took place in the White House space known as the small dining room. Giraud has come to Washington for three days of meetings. Lunch today, meetings tomorrow, late-night cocktails on Saturday before saying goodbye to the most powerful man on earth.
The general’s landing in America coincides with the final moments of Jean Moulin’s life in that faraway boxcar. Both Frenchmen, in their own ways, seek a free nation. But there are no full military honors or seventeen-gun salute for Moulin. No White House reception.
Giraud receives all this acclaim and more.
But Roosevelt well knows this is a last-gasp effort. De Gaulle has skillfully tightened his hold on France—at the expense of Giraud’s personal authority and even the reputation of the United States. General de Gaulle expands his wide base of support by thoughtfully articulating disdain for Vichy sympathizers and a defiant belief in the future of a Free France. The less articulate and less passionate Giraud, in the words of British secretary of foreign affairs Anthony Eden, has “no position at all.”
In March, Giraud poked at General de Gaulle during a speech in Algiers, parroting President Roosevelt’s argument against de Gaulle’s claims of authority. “I am the servant of the people of France. I am not their master,” Giraud stated. “The free will of the people alone forms a basis of law.”
The New York Times ran the full text of the speech alongside a separate article with a Washington dateline stating that “officials” were pleased with the contents of the oratory, which also included Giraud making a connection between the French struggle and the American people by quoting Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
The presence of Life—bastion of all things American—today in the Oval Office would seem to be a boon to Roosevelt. But the magazine is instead taking a defiant stance in favor of Charles de Gaulle.
“Those who understand France are profoundly disturbed by General Giraud’s visit,” reads a lengthy editorial that runs alongside today’s photograph of the president and his presumed ruler of France. “The White House and the State Department are up to their ears in French politics, and their persistent aim has been to build up General Giraud at the expense of the other great French leader of our time, General de Gaulle.”
The editorial continues:
“The result is that U.S. foreign policy toward France is now a matter of personalities, based on Mr. Roosevelt’s dislike of a single man . . .
“De Gaulle has become a living symbol of freedom for millions of Frenchmen. Many of them never heard of him before. But for them ‘de Gaullism’ represents the only possible creed that can redeem France from the shame of her defeat.”
Advantage, de Gaulle.