CHAPTER 9

Warriors at Odds

The weather was worsening in the North Atlantic when Task Force H of the Royal Navy, led by the battleship HMS Duke of York, turned southward off the coast of Ireland and set course for Gibraltar and the beaches of North Africa.[1] The ship was at the head of a pack of battle cruisers and destroyers guarding a convoy of five hundred and fifty troop carriers. Such a vast armada had not been seen since the days of sail, when the Spanish Armada circumnavigated the British Isles in King Phillip II’s ill-fated attempt to conquer England. The Duke of York’s commander, Sir Neville Syfret, knew his men were accustomed to harsh conditions; they’d come through a frigid three days in pursuit of the German battleship Tirpitz, unable to sink it but successful in forcing it to break off its Atlantic convoy-hunting and retreat to its Norwegian lair. While Task Force H dodged enemy U-boats and patrol planes through the calmer waters of the Bay of Biscay, a second convoy of one hundred ships sailed from a U.S. East Coast port. Following a route that paralleled the horse latitudes across the Atlantic, it made for the beaches of French Morocco. Together, the two armadas were ferrying more than seventy thousand British and American infantry troops, commanded by such colourful figures as General George S. Patton, the irascible head of the U.S. 2nd Armoured Division.

The target was Vichy-controlled French North Africa, where months of intrigue, plotting, and counter-plotting by American agents would, it was hoped, pay off with little or no opposition to the Anglo-American landings. Late on the night of Saturday, November 7, 1942, all ships were at their stations, and by dawn, landings had commenced on the Atlantic coast of Morocco and on Mediterranean beaches near Oran and Algiers in Algeria. General Dwight Eisenhower, in overall command of Operation Torch, felt tension rising in him as he “paced away among Gibraltar’s caverns” while the first great offensive of the Western Allies got underway.[2]

General de Gaulle spent Saturday evening at the Soviet Embassy in London’s Kensington district, where Ambassador Ivan Maisky was hosting a party celebrating the twenty-fourth anniversary of the October Revolution (by the Russian calendar). De Gaulle had heard talk of a possible Allied attack on North Africa for months, but he left the party early, apparently oblivious to rumours that the landings might be only hours away. U.S. military radio beaming into Africa was broadcasting a cryptic message: “Hello Robert, Franklin is coming.”[3] If it was intended as code, it was incredibly naïve, considering that President Roosevelt’s minister in Algiers was Robert Murphy. Colonel Billotte, de Gaulle’s military chief of staff, took a telephone call shortly after midnight from Lord Ismay, the head of Winston Churchill’s office. He was told the landings were to start in three hours. Billotte waited until six o’clock to awaken de Gaulle at his villa in Hampstead in north London, fully aware of the rage he would encounter. Pulling a dressing gown over his white pyjamas, de Gaulle roared “I hope the Vichy people will fling them into the sea! You don’t get France by burglary!”[4]

Winston Churchill had wanted to alert de Gaulle of the landings, worried about “the gravity of the affront which he would have to suffer by being deliberately excluded.”[5]

President Roosevelt, suspicious of the ability of the Fighting French to maintain security, would have none of it. “Inadvisable for you to give de Gaulle any information,” the president wired back, demanding “complete secrecy as a necessary safety precaution.” Roosevelt still hadn’t gotten over the collapse of France or the failure of de Gaulle’s mission to Dakar, where ships and soldiers loyal to Vichy lay ready to repel him. The president had, however, agreed to Churchill’s handing over the French island colony of Madagascar, occupied by the British, to de Gaulle’s control. “It should be sufficient at the present time to maintain his prestige with his followers.”

Much more than security was involved in Roosevelt’s insistence that de Gaulle and the Fighting French be kept out of Operation Torch. Morocco, Algeria, and neighbouring Tunisia made up the heart of France’s colonial Empire, and de Gaulle had been unable to win them from Vichy. Roosevelt was still angling to lure Marshall Pétain to the Allied side and the first draft of his message to him following the landings had been addressed to “My dear old friend.” Roosevelt agreed to drop the phrase when Churchill protested it “seems to me too kind … his stock must be very low now.”[6] Robert Murphy, the American diplomat sent to Algiers as Roosevelt’s personal emissary, had been charged with winning over Vichy’s representatives. His efforts failed to forestall stiff French resistance. Coastal batteries attacked General Patton’s forces on the beaches of Morocco, and a naval battle broke out at Casablanca involving a sortie by French destroyers and cruisers. At Oran, French batteries exchanged gunfire with the invasion fleet.

By the time de Gaulle reached No. 10 Downing Street at noon, he had regained his composure. Once in Churchill’s presence, however, he was confronted with fresh surprises. First he was given startling news about General Henri Giraud, the war hero who had been captured in the Ardennes forest during the Battle of France but had escaped from his German prisoner-of-war camp with the help of Britain’s SOE and had made his way back to Vichy France. Giraud, Churchill said, had been taken to Gibraltar in a British submarine and General Eisenhower had invited him to assume command of French troops in North Africa. At first Giraud refused, insisting on being put in command of the entire operation. That morning, with the landings underway, he relented and undertook to rally Vichy troops to the Allied side. Next, Churchill loosed an even more devastating thunderbolt. “Did you know,” Churchill asked de Gaulle, “that Darlan is in Algiers?”[7] Of all the names associated with Vichy, none drew such contempt from de Gaulle as that of François Darlan, admiral of the French navy, deputy to Marshall Pétain, and Vichy’s commander of the French Armed Forces. It was all a coincidence, Churchill maintained, as Darlan had gone to Algiers to see his son, who was seriously ill with poliomyelitis.

De Gaulle struggled to contain his frustration. The invasion, he conceded, was a “highly satisfactory development.” General Giraud was a “great soldier.” It was too bad the initial landings had not included the German base of Bizerte in Tunisia, because the Nazis were sure to “rush in” before the battle was over. But as for co-operating with Darlan? Never. De Gaulle had not forgotten the events of June 1940, and his distress at Darlan’s readiness to collaborate with the Germans. He would have no dealings with the traitor under any circumstance. That evening, de Gaulle spoke on the BBC to the French in North Africa. “Rise up, help our Allies, join them without reservations. Don’t worry about names or formulas — rise up! Now is the great moment.”

It took only a few days for British and American troops — with some help from Admiral Darlan — to put an end to the resistance of 125,000 Vichy French troops. In one of the stranger episodes of the exercise, just past noon on the day of the invasion a gang of French partisans under the direction of Algiers chief of police, Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie — brother of two famous Resistance leaders — swung into action. They occupied key posts in Algiers and arrested Admiral Darlan and French general Alphonse Juin, Vichy commander in North Africa. Robert Murphy was unable to persuade either to join the Allies and they were soon freed by local gendarmerie. The partisans managed to put themselves under the protection of the British invasion force. With U.S. troops ashore in Algiers, General Juin surrendered the city late that afternoon. When other French officers ignored General Giraud’s appeal to stop the fighting — his ill-suited code name, “Kingpin,” lent an ironic twist to the débacle — Eisenhower had little choice but to turn to Admiral Darlan.

Darlan, speaking with the authority of Vichy behind him, commanded the French Armée d’Afrique to lay down arms. His order brought about a ceasefire on November 10. “I assume authority over North Africa in the name of the Marshall,” he declared.[8] In return, General Eisenhower agreed to name Darlan high commissioner for French North Africa. Darlan set up an Imperial Council, announced he would exercise the functions of head of state, and imposed rigid enforcement of anti-Semitic laws (cheerfully supported by Algeria’s Muslim population) while Fighting French résistants were hunted down and jailed. “I shall extract from everybody the strictest obedience and most perfect discipline.”[9] The day after Darlan’s grasp for power — November 11 — German troops invaded the Unoccupied Zone and in defiance of the terms of the French-German Armistice, took full control, with their Italian allies, of all of Metropolitan France. Coincidentally, Marshall Pétain stripped Darlan of the last of his Vichy authority.

While Roosevelt had succeeded in sidestepping de Gaulle, the deal with Admiral Darlan caused great political blowback. It was seen as a betrayal of the Fighting French, leading to public indignation in Britain, Canada, and the United States. The influential American newspaperman Walter Lippmann warned that “Darlan has joined the Allies only to maintain Vichy’s authority in France’s overseas territories.”[10] Columnist Raymond Clapper wrote: “There is some wonder as to how it is we denounce the Vichy regime as a puppet of Hitler and yet at the same time set up Vichy men, like Admiral Darlan, to run North Africa for us.”[11]

Churchill thought Admiral Darlan could have been “a de Gaulle raised to the tenth power” if he had chosen in 1940 to fight on against Nazi Germany.[12] Now, he believed, “Darlan ought to be shot.” He went along with the arrangement to maintain harmony with the United States, but not before warning Roosevelt that “Darlan has an odious record.” The president saw Darlan in a different light: a “temporary expedient,” as he told a press conference in Washington. He explained to Churchill how he had quoted an old Orthodox Church proverb: “My children, it is permitted you in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge.”[13]

The honeymoon that Charles de Gaulle had enjoyed with Churchill in the summer of 1940 was not, in fact, to last very long. By 1941, when de Gaulle found himself frozen out of the Atlantic Charter, his resentment simmered to the surface in an angry interview with Chicago Daily News correspondent George Weller. It took place in Brazzaville in Equatorial Africa where de Gaulle was visiting the Fighting French outpost. Asked by Weller why Britain had not “closed the door” on Vichy by recognizing the Free French as a government, de Gaulle said Britain was afraid of the French fleet and “is carrying on a wartime deal with Hitler in which Vichy serves as go-between.”[14]

It was an outrageous statement, and de Gaulle regretted making it, especially as it had come on the heels of serious difficulties with Britain over the French protectorate of Syria and Lebanon. On de Gaulle’s return from Africa, Churchill ordered that no British official have any contact with him. When he finally called de Gaulle to Downing Street, the atmosphere was cool. Two interpreters had to be dismissed when they failed to convey what Churchill thought was the true sense of what he was trying to say. Left alone, the two men talked for an hour, their differences eventually evaporating amid Churchill’s cigar smoke and de Gaulle’s cigarette fumes. Churchill told de Gaulle it was time to form a French national committee; such a body would put to rest the charge that de Gaulle was authoritarian. De Gaulle agreed. He thought the meeting “ended well after a bad beginning.”[15]

Despite provocations on both sides, the two men never lost their respect or affection for each other. When one of Churchill’s aides suggested de Gaulle was a great man notwithstanding all the problems he caused, the prime minister responded: “A great man? Why, he’s selfish, he’s arrogant, he thinks he’s the centre of the universe.… You’re right, he’s a great man!”[16]

De Gaulle never had the opportunity to build a personal relationship with President Roosevelt. The president thought de Gaulle had a Joan of Arc complex and that he saw himself as the reincarnation of France’s greatest heroine. He accused him of being a dictator in the making. By trusting the faulty intelligence that Admiral Leahy and Robert Murphy passed on to him, Roosevelt mistakenly concluded that de Gaulle had no real following in France. The president favoured putting a military government in place in France, “run by British and American generals.”[17] It might be all right to make de Gaulle governor of Madagascar, he told Churchill.

Realizing that Roosevelt held him in poor repute, de Gaulle tried in October 1942 to explain himself. In a long letter to the president, he stressed that his Fighting French movement saw itself as only a provisional authority that would disappear when a free election could be held. He explained he had broken with Pétain in 1940 in order “to bring France back into the fight side by side with the Allied nations while at the same time watching over the country’s sensitivities and its unity.” The letter was delivered by two emissaries who got a meeting with the president, but little else. Roosevelt made clear the hand he was playing: in his view, he told them, there no longer was a France. He was already training a group of American political and military specialists who would govern France “until democracy is re-established.” De Gaulle simply had no way to overcome the fact, as biographer Jean Lacouture would write, that in 1940 “the president had decided against de Gaulle and in favour of a Pétain who had considerable authority and a certain amount of room for manoeuvring.” De Gaulle’s letter went unanswered.[18]

The impasse over Operation Torch revealed how uneasy was the partnership between Churchill, Roosevelt, and de Gaulle. They were now warriors at odds with each other. Churchill’s sole objective was to win the war. Roosevelt’s goals went beyond that, to include postwar reconstruction, democratic self-determination, and the end of colonialism. De Gaulle, lacking the forces to significantly tip the balance of the battle and convinced that with the United States and the Soviet Union in the conflict the Allies were assured of winning the war, was locked onto an entirely different goal: to shape the future of France and his role in it. He was determined to win recognition for France and secure for his country and himself a full measure of influence in the postwar world.

While Admiral Darlan settled himself into the Palais d’Été (Summer Palace), events unfolded much as de Gaulle had forecast. It rained steadily in Tunisia, but that did not stop the Germans from rushing troops into the colony. Ahead lay six months of fierce fighting against General Rommel’s combined German and Italian forces. With General Leclerc’s Fighting French units fighting on the British left flank, UK troops occupied Tunis while American regiments took Bizerte. In Algiers, Darlan enjoyed the full support of General Eisenhower — so instructed by President Roosevelt — despite growing apprehension in both British and American quarters over the admiral’s Vichy-like behaviour. Police chief Henri d’Astier, by now a member of Darlan’s Cabinet, was compelled to organize round-ups of anti-Vichy figures, who were sent to vermin-ridden camps in the desert. The Algerian press was filled with anti-Semitic tirades. De Gaulle issued an official statement that there would be no Fighting French co-operation with Darlan. In London, an emissary arrived from France with a proclamation recognizing General de Gaulle as “the uncontested leader of the Resistance movement.”

On November 11, de Gaulle gave a stirring speech at Albert Hall in London. “The cement of French unity,” he declared, “is the blood of the Frenchmen who have never recognized the Armistice, of those who have died for France.…”[19] A lone heckler — a retired French general who had taken refuge in London — was dragged from his seat in the balcony when he shouted that de Gaulle should submit to the orders of General Giraud.

As de Gaulle spoke, German forces were moving south toward the great French naval base of Toulon, once commanded by Admiral Darlan. They occupied the heights overlooking the harbour. Not wishing to allow the Germans to take the base, on November 27 the French commander, Admiral de Laborde, ordered the scuttling of the fleet. Three battleships, eight cruisers, and more than one hundred other vessels went to the bottom. The act deprived the Germans of the glittering naval prize they had sought since 1940. To de Gaulle, it was “the most pitiful and sterile suicide imaginable.”[20]

The unease the British felt over Admiral Darlan became more pronounced as President Roosevelt began to shift responsibility for American policy from himself to General Eisenhower. Roosevelt told a press conference that he had accepted Eisenhower’s “political arrangements” as a “temporary expedient” in order to save lives.[21] On November 16, Churchill told de Gaulle that “Darlan has no future” and assured him, “yours is the true path, you alone will remain.”[22]

Some people were in favour of drastic action. Sir Alexander Cadogan, the British undersecretary for foreign affairs, noted in his diary: “We shall do no good until we have killed Darlan.” W.H.B. Mack, head of the British political section in Algiers, signalled London that “Darlan must be got rid of; the question is when.” Another British officer noted in his diary, “It is difficult to lay on an efficient assassination.”[23]

The young French partisans who had been welcomed by the British army after their brief uprising took easily to the loose military discipline that prevailed in Algiers throughout November and December.[24] They enjoyed their training in the use of firearms and some looked for opportunities to design new adventures. On the night of November 20, in a barn on Cape Matifou outside Algiers, four of them reached a fateful decision. Philippe Ragueneau, their twenty-five-year-old leader, handed out straws. It was agreed that the one who drew the short straw would assassinate Admiral Darlan. It would all be carefully arranged — they surely had support for this action — and the man who did the act could be assured of a safe escape. One after another, Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, Bernard Pauphilet, and Mario Faivre took their turns, followed by Ragueneau. The youngest, Bonnier, a mere twenty, drew the short straw. Ragueneau, more experienced and tougher, offered to take his place. Bonnier, not one to admit to lacking courage, insisted he would do the deed.[25]

A few days later, Bonnier, who was known to have Royalist sentiments, was taken to the shooting range at Le Club des Pins where he was instructed in the use of a .38 Webley pistol. After receiving encouragement from his confessor Abbé Cordier (a lieutenant of the reserve), it was decided to replace the Webley with a more effective killing machine. A Colt .45 was tried out but discarded as too bulky and clumsy. Better to use a 7.65 pistol, Cordier decided, as it was a neat and accurate weapon. Bonnier is known to have met over the next month with a number of important figures: police head Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, the banker Alfred Pose, and possibly an emissary of the Comte de Paris, Henri d’Orléans, the pretender to the French throne.

Christmas Eve dawned sunny and cold. Admiral Darlan spent the morning with Robert Murphy in discussing such questions as what to do about political prisoners and the Jews. Henri d’Astier’s brother, General François d’Astier, caught a plane out of Algiers that morning to return to London. He had been sent to Algiers by General de Gaulle with the approval of General Eisenhower, ostensibly to see if the Fighting French could reach an accommodation with Admiral Darlan. D’Astier had met with Darlan, but no agreement was forthcoming.

Fernand Bonnier began the day by taking confession with Abbé Cordier. Sometime around noon he got into a black Peugeot and was driven by Mario Faivre to the Summer Palace. Along with his gun, he carried a pass in the name of Morand. At the Palace, he was told that Darlan had gone out but would be back in the afternoon. When Bonnier returned a little before three o’clock, he was recognized by the orderly and taken to a waiting room where he was asked to fill out a form. Admiral Darlan would not be long, he was told. Bonnier would be able to see him after the admiral finished meeting with another visitor.

A warm spell enveloped London in mid-December, but by Christmas Eve the weather had turned misty and cold. On the morning of December 24, General de Gaulle boarded a plane for an unexpected — and never explained — flight to Greenock, Scotland, a heavily bombed River Clyde port that was home to the Fighting French Navy. In contrast to the careful planning de Gaulle normally demanded for his travels, Greenock had been given only twenty-fours notice of his coming. When his motorcade climbed the hill above the town to visit Knockderry Castle, converted into a convalescent home for wounded French sailors, Dr. A.B. Walker had to apologize for the absence of welcoming officials. There had been no time to bring in the Secretary of State for Scotland. De Gaulle affected to be unconcerned at the lack of protocol.[26] He charmed the nurses, insisting on being introduced to each of the thirteen on duty. Schoolgirl Joan Baird, wearing the maroon tunic and white blouse mandatory at Greenock Academy, was on her way home from school when she saw de Gaulle emerge from a building that flew the French Tricolour. She was struck by the sight of “this very tall man in a strange uniform.”[27] De Gaulle had lunch with Provost Morrison and the Greenock council members and inspected a French warship moored in the harbour. By four o’clock he was at the French Canteen in Martyrs’ Church Hall where an orchestra struck up “La Marseillaise” as he entered the room. De Gaulle decorated a Christmas tree and accepted a bouquet of roses, white heather, and daffodils from six-year-old Françoise Langlais, daughter of the French naval commander. He presented gifts of cigarettes, candies, and socks to the French sailors, chatting easily with them. The occasion called for a speech and the general, clearly in an optimistic mood, spoke of his confidence that France “will rise again and become [once more] a great nation.”[28]

De Gaulle returned to the Martyrs’ Hall that evening for a dance; the Greenock Telegraph called it “a bright affair.” He was chatting with a group of sailors when he was told he was wanted on the telephone. The caller was Michel Saint-Denis, otherwise known as “Jacques Duchesne” (after a popular character of the French Revolution) who was in charge of Fighting French broadcasts on the BBC. He was on the line from London, excited to be conveying “Ça pour une nouvelle, c’est une nouvelle.”[29] His news was that Admiral Darlan had been assassinated; a young royalist by the name of Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle had barged into the Summer Palace and fired two shots, hitting Darlan in the stomach. The admiral died a couple of hours later. Guards jumped Bonnier and he was being held by the Algiers police.

De Gaulle reacted calmly to the news. His Mémoires de guerre would record how “this young man, this child overwhelmed by the spectacle of odious events, thought his action would be a service to his lacerated country.” No man, de Gaulle conceded, “has the right to kill save on the field of battle.” Yet, “the very fact that he (Darlan) was forced from the stage seemed to be in accord with the harsh logic of events.”[30] Digesting the news, de Gaulle realized there was no good reason to rush back that night to London where the British Foreign Office might wish some answers from him.

Did the elimination of Darlan have anything to do with this inexplicable trip? It seemed so trivial in comparison to everything else on de Gaulle’s schedule — including a visit to the White House for which he was supposed to depart from London the day after Christmas. Why would a man so committed to his family and to the religious significance of Christmas steal these precious few days from home and hearth?

At this time, the de Gaulles were living in Hampstead, in a handsome house at 65 Frognal. This location allowed the general to come home most nights. Elisabeth visited often, and Anne felt comfortable in this quiet neighbourhood. The de Gaulles worshipped every Sunday at the Church of St. Mary, Holly Place, and it is there they would have gone for Christmas Eve mass had de Gaulle been home. As it was, Yvonne de Gaulle awoke without her husband on Christmas morning. She noticed the garden was white; it had snowed all night. When she tuned the radio to the BBC, she heard an announcer read the news: “Good morning — and a very happy Christmas to you all. Last night Admiral Darlan was assassinated.” The killer, Fernand Bonnier, was to be shot the next day at dawn. President Roosevelt said “the cowardly assassination of Darlan is an unforgivable crime.”[31]

De Gaulle arrived home late on Christmas Day. The next day, Saturday — before much was stirring at Whitehall — he was on his way to the airport to fly to Washington via Ireland and Newfoundland. A radio call came through telling him that President Roosevelt had cancelled his visit. De Gaulle returned home and on Sunday, Yvonne and Charles found themselves in the small Church of St. Mary. “She felt her husband by her side, buried in his thoughts. He too was alone with his God.”[32]

Was the assassination of Admiral Darlan a British plot in which the Fighting French were complicit? Or was it a Fighting French conspiracy carried out with or without the clandestine support of the British? General de Gaulle’s absence from London — a suspicious coincidence freeing him from the need to answer embarrassing questions — fits either scenario. Years later, according to CBS Paris correspondent David Schoenbrun, de Gaulle would blame Robert Murphy and the Americans for Darlan’s death. “Murphy arranged the assassination of Darlan and the hasty execution of Bonnier de la Chapelle,” Schoenbrun quoted de Gaulle. “Darlan had become an embarrassment to American policy and had to be disposed of.”[33]

The claim seems implausible, in light of consistent United States sympathy toward Vichy personalities, including Darlan, General Giraud, and others. Immediately after Bonnier’s execution, Murphy pressured the Imperial Council into appointing General Giraud as Darlan’s successor. General Giraud blamed police chief Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie for Darlan’s murder and launched a crackdown on Fighting French sympathizers. D’Astier, warned that his own police had orders to shoot him on sight, went into hiding. He was later arrested, to be released only after de Gaulle gained control of Algeria.

General Giraud may have been correct in his presumption that Henri d’Astier had a connection to Darlan’s murder. D’Astier’s position as head of the police as well as being the brother of General de Gaulle’s Algiers emissary, General François d’Astier, would have facilitated his involvement. It is known that Bonnier was in possession of $2,000 when he was arrested, apparently given to him by Henri d’Astier. The money had presumably been drawn from the $38,000 that François d’Astier had brought with him to fund Fighting French activities. Bonnier was also found to be carrying a business card of Henri d’Astier, on the back of which he had written a few last words. In view of the prominent Resistance roles of both of Henri d’Astier’s brothers — and his own later work with the Resistance in France in preparation for D-Day — it is difficult to cast Henri d’Astier in any other light than as an active supporter. More central to the question may be who had the most to gain from the death of Admiral Darlan? Darlan’s demise left one less player at the table. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the leader of the Free French would have had some involvement in Darlan’s death. Whatever else may be said, Darlan’s removal was hugely beneficial to Charles de Gaulle as he played out his “cautious game.”

Despite his frequent recriminations with the Americans, de Gaulle was allowed to use the facilities of the United States Embassy in London to cable General Giraud in Algiers on December 27. “The assassination at Algiers is an indication and a warning,” de Gaulle wrote. It was an indication of the exasperation the French were feeling and a warning about the consequences of the lack of “a national authority in the midst of the greatest national crisis of our history.” De Gaulle proposed a meeting “as soon as possible … in order to study the means of grouping under a provisional central authority all French forces inside and outside the country.…”[34] Giraud, now firmly ensconced as head of the Imperial Council, ignored de Gaulle’s appeal.

Churchill was vexed at the standoff and put the question of de Gaulle versus Giraud on the agenda for a conference he was to have with President Roosevelt in Casablanca. Winston Churchill landed there on January 13 and joined Roosevelt at a group of luxurious villas in the Casablanca suburb of Anfa. Roosevelt’s attitude hardly helped to settle matters. He referred to Giraud as “the bridegroom” and offered up as “the bride the temperamental lady de Gaulle.” All that was needed was to bring the two together in a “shotgun marriage.”[35] Giraud arrived at Anfa on schedule, but de Gaulle, resentful of these foreign powers meeting on French soil without so much as a by your leave, resisted. He agreed to come only after Churchill warned him that his absence could lead to him “being replaced by someone else as the head of the French Liberation Committee in London.”[36]

When de Gaulle finally arrived, he had an inconclusive lunch meeting with General Giraud and later met with Winston Churchill for “a very stony interview.” Surprisingly, at a later meeting with President Roosevelt, the two got on “unexpectedly well.”[37] Two days later, the president brought forth a proposal to set up a triumvirate to carry France forward in the war. It would be presided over by General Giraud, who would exercise military powers under General Eisenhower, assisted by de Gaulle and by Churchill’s friend, General Georges, who bore much of the blame for the French defeat of 1940.[38] A draft communiqué noted that “the French commander-in-chief [Giraud] whose headquarters are at Algiers, has the right and the duty to act as director of the French military, economic and financial interests.…” De Gaulle refused to have any part of it. He did allow — at Roosevelt’s request — a photograph to be taken of him shaking hands with General Giraud.

By refusing to accede to the demands of Roosevelt and Churchill, de Gaulle won, in the opinion of Robert Murphy, an “unproclaimed victory” at Casablanca. “The miscalculation which all of us at Casablanca made about de Gaulle was belief that winning the war had top priority with him, as it did with us. His thoughts were two jumps ahead of everybody else’s.”[39] The outcome also hardened Roosevelt’s objections to de Gaulle. He let it be known that the postwar map of Europe would look different. There would be room for a new state, to be called Wallonia, consisting of the Walloon (French) part of Belgium plus Luxembourg and parts of northern France, including Alsace-Lorraine.

Churchill, meanwhile, grew more apprehensive of de Gaulle’s intransigent attitude. He told the official at the Foreign Office in charge of relations with the Fighting French to keep de Gaulle in England. “I hold you responsible that the Monster of Hampstead does not escape!”[40]

While Charles de Gaulle struggled to improve his position in North Africa, his delegate to the French Resistance, Jean Moulin, grappled with rivalries — sometimes bitter — among the underground leaders whose groups he was supposed to unite. Moulin argued for abolition of the distinction between northern and southern zones in order that he be accepted as leader of the unified Resistance in all of France. Others, especially the left-wing journalist Pierre Brossolette, who had run a bookstore in Paris as a cover for Resistance intelligence, sought to maintain their independence.[41] In an effort to settle these differences, Jean Moulin was picked up by a Royal Air Force Lysander on February 13, 1943, and flown to London, along with General Charles Delestraint, commander of the Armée secrète, for meetings with General de Gaulle.

Few of de Gaulle’s wartime associates were ever invited to the general’s home. De Gaulle made an exception for Jean Moulin and in a ceremony at Frognal House he decorated his Resistance chief with the Order of the Liberation. It was the highest honour of the Fighting French. Those who were there saw tears roll down Moulin’s cheeks as de Gaulle, addressing him in his code name of Joseph Mercier, recognized him as “our companion in honour and victory for the liberation of France.” De Gaulle found it “a most moving ceremony,” and gave Moulin fresh orders. The distinction between the two zones would remain, but Moulin would be in charge of both. More important, he was to set up a national council — the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR) — with himself as its head. Moulin’s new mission, far from settling differences in France, brought on fresh friction. Emannuel d’Astier accused him of abuse of power and of treating Resistance leaders as a colonial officer would treat “native chieftains.”[42]

Before departing for London, Moulin had achieved his “cover goal” of becoming the proprietor of an art gallery. He’d worked hard at finding a location in Nice, settling on an abandoned bookstore at 22 rue de France that he outfitted for the display of works by such artists as Picasso, Utrillo, Dufy, and Matisse. He no longer had Antoinette Sachs at his side; unable to cope with police harassment, she’d fled to Switzerland to spend the rest of the war with her sister. Colette Pons, the girlfriend he’d taken skiing when he’d first arrived back in France, agreed to become the manager of Galerie Romanin.[43]

After his return from London, Moulin found himself under increasing pressure from the Gestapo. Betrayals and leaks had led to the arrest of many members of the underground. Moulin went to Paris at the end of March, taking Colette Pons with him. On April 1, he met with Colonel Passy and Pierre Brossolette in a clearing in the Bois de Boulogne, and the next day in an apartment in the avenue des Ternes. Everyone was feeling tense when Brossolette enraged Moulin by accusing him of “personal ambition.” Moulin turned his back on Brossolette and lowered his trousers, yelling “Now, you can see my opinion of you!”[44] Less turbulent meetings followed, at which Moulin explained the need to unify the Resistance. He was finally able to send word to de Gaulle on May 15 confirming that the new body about to take form would recognize the general as “the sole leader of the French Resistance.”[45]

The new Conseil was secretly launched at a meeting in a first-floor apartment overlooking the courtyard of 47 rue du Four on May 27. In was in a neighbourhood familiar to Moulin, not many metres from the intersection of rue de Rennes and boulevard Saint-Germain. Seventeen men took part, representing Resistance movements, political parties, and trade unions. Moulin chaired the meeting and after clearing away the preliminaries he called on Georges Bidault, representative of the Christian Democrats, to read a declaration of support for General de Gaulle “as the sole leader of French Resistance whatever the result of the negotiation” with General Giraud.[46] There could be no stronger assertion that the French were ready to fall in behind General de Gaulle. Neither a Communist coup d’état nor an American military government would be allowed to trump France’s determination to shape its own destiny.

At the next meeting, held at the home of Dr. Frédéric Dugoujon in the Lyon suburb of Caluire on the afternoon of Monday, June 21, Moulin arrived wearing his habitual dark glasses, brown trilby, and a scarf that covered the scar on his neck, to which he added a grey suit that gave him an exceptionally well-turned-out appearance. It was a simple stone house overlooking Place Castellane, serving as both a home and an office for the doctor’s practice. Seven other well-known leaders of the Resistance were to join Moulin that day. They included Henri Aubry and René Hardy of the right-wing Combat movement, Colonel Albert Lacaze of the independent France d’Abord, André Lassagne, a member of the pro-Communist Libération and a friend of Dr. Dugoujon, and Bruno Larat, who organized parachute drops for the Resistance. The men sat in a first-floor room — one up from the ground floor — waiting for Moulin. Forty-five minutes after the meeting was to have started, Moulin arrived with Raymond Aubrac of Libération and Lieutenant-Colonel Raymond Schwartzfield, also of France d’Abord.

Rather than being taken upstairs, they were shown into the ground-floor waiting room. Moulin — or Max — must have realized they were in the wrong room, but before he was able to straighten out the mix-up, a sudden loud banging was heard on the front door, followed by a crash. A half-dozen men armed with pistols, including the head of the Lyon Gestapo, Klaus Barbie, burst into the house. The Sonderkommando, a special anti-Resistance police unit, had arrived to break up the meeting. All seven men as well as Dr. Dugoujon were arrested. As they were being loaded into police cars, René Hardy broke loose from his captors and ran across the square and into some trees. Several shots were fired, one wounding Hardy, but the police made no real attempt to capture him.

Moulin and the others were questioned at the Gestapo headquarters in the École de Santé Militaire and then transferred to the central prison at Fort Montluc. For the next several days, Moulin was viciously interrogated, undergoing what is known today as waterboarding. He was seen being dragged back to his cell, heavily bandaged. Christian Pineau, the co-founder of Libération-Nord, was being held at the prison and had become the prison barber. He identified the man he had been told to shave as Jean Moulin. All Moulin could do was open his eyes and ask for water.

Klaus Barbie suspected the man he was torturing was Moulin, but he was not sure until he gave him a piece of paper and a pencil. Moulin drew a cruel caricature of Barbie and handed it back. Barbie or one of his accomplices wrote the name “Jean Moulins” on the sheet and returned it to him.[47] Moulin, unable to hear and barely able to see, crossed out the “s.”[48] According to Barbie, Moulin used the last of his strength to repeatedly throw himself headfirst against the wall of his cell. He was determined not to survive questioning. There would be no betrayal of fellow résistants, but again he had failed to kill himself. On July 4, Moulin was driven to Paris by Barbie and turned over to Gestapo officers at 84 avenue Foch. Prisoners there testified he was heavily bandaged and looked as if he had been drugged. Sometime later, he was put on a train for Germany. The Germans would eventually issue a death certificate attesting that Moulin had died en route, at Metz, near the German border, at 2:00 a.m. on July 8.[49]

Moulin’s arrest came at a time when the Gestapo was enjoying remarkable success against the Resistance. Between June 9 and 21, seven networks across France were cracked. General Delastraint, the top military figure in the Resistance, had been arrested in Paris on June 9 as he arrived for a rendezvous with René Hardy, who never showed up. Hardy thus lived to be present, and escape, from the Caluire meeting. Another victim was Pierre Brossolette, betrayed while making his way back to Paris from Brittany after the small boat he had been travelling in to England capsized during a storm. The Gestapo successes came mainly from betrayals.[50]

The arrest of Jean Moulin was another example of the horrendous deceptions that plagued the Resistence. Hardy was captured not long after Moulin’s arrest but managed to escape and reach Algeria in 1944. After the war, he was charged with treason and tried twice in connection with Moulin’s death, but was acquitted in both trials. If Hardy did not betray Moulin, who did? Was it a rival Resistance leader determined to get even for Moulin’s seizure of power? Was it the Communists? Or perhaps it was someone from a right-wing group who suspected that Moulin, a known radical, was actually a Communist? Or did the Caluire raid result from a lucky break by the Gestapo, perhaps a chance overheard remark of the upcoming meeting? An unlikely possibility. Whatever the cause of Moulin’s death, his loss deprived France of a man who might have some day challenged Charles de Gaulle for the leadership of the Républic.[51]

The death of Jean Moulin was but one indication of the fact the German Occupation became more brutal in response to the targeting of Gestapo leaders and important officers in the German army by the Resistance. After the assassination in Paris on September 28, 1943, of SS Colonel Julius Ritter, the Nazis unleashed a fierce search for his assailants. The shooting of Ritter, head of the hated Service du travail obligatoire (STO), which shipped thousands of French workers to Germany between 1941 and 1944, was the work of a group of Communist members of Francs Tireurs et Partisans, who came to be known as the Manouchian Group after their leader, Missak Manouchian. Within two months, probably aided by informers, the Gestapo was able to arrest twenty-three of its members. After torture, all twenty-three men (twenty of them foreigners, eleven Jews) were shot at Fort Mont Valerian in the Paris suburb of Suresnes on February 21, 1944. Due to a French law preventing the shooting of women, the sole woman in the group, Olga Bancic, was sent to Germany where she was decapitated with an axe.[52]

In Algeria, the rivalry between General Giraud and General de Gaulle became as bitter, in its own way, as the struggle of the Resistance against the Germans. Giraud soon came to realize he would have to accommodate de Gaulle, but it was de Gaulle’s old London adversary, Jean Monnet, who cleared the way for a solution. Monnet drafted a set of proposals for a new National Committee to which the military would be accountable. The breakthrough came when Giraud conceded he would no longer insist on his “preponderance” and invited de Gaulle to come to Algiers “at once” to join him in a new central power. Yet to be overcome were the usual roadblocks: President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

The prime minister was becoming exhausted with the constant hectoring he was receiving from the president over their French ally. “Not a day passed that the President did not mention the subject to me.”[53] En route to America aboard the Queen Elizabeth, Churchill drafted a message to his War Cabinet on May 22: “I must ask my colleagues to consider urgently whether we should not now eliminate de Gaulle as a political force and face Parliament and France upon the issues.”[54] His colleagues unanimously rejected this abortive coup de main.

De Gaulle reached Algiers on May 30, and on June 4, he and General Giraud agreed to the proposal of the Monnet group to form the Comité français de Libération nationale (CFLN) with he and General Giraud as rotating co-presidents. It was at this point that Giraud’s role began its steady decline into irrelevance. He was a man, in the words of General Eisenhower, whose “complete lack of interest in political matters … disqualified him for any political post.”[55] At a meeting of de Gaulle and Giraud with Eisenhower on June 19, de Gaulle arrived late and spoke first, declaring, “I am here in my capacity as President of the French Government.”[56] To Yvonne in England he wrote, “Here, as expected, I find myself in front of America and alone.” [57] On October 2, the committee named de Gaulle to the new position of head of government, with Giraud, outmanoeuvred and outwitted, relegated to commissariat of defense. Giraud, who the Americans had hoped would fill the vacuum left by the death of Admiral Darlan, was no longer a factor.[58]

De Gaulle had moved his family to Algiers in July, setting up house in a large Moorish villa called Les Oliviers. Yvonne appreciated the spontaneity and warmth of the people she dealt with: the fleuriste from whom she bought big bouquets of pale blue jacarandas; the pharmacien in rue d’Isly who mixed potions of citronelle to ward off mosquitoes; the cloth merchants of rue Bab Azoun who sold her their best wool. In the heat of Algiers, she continued to dress as a conservative northern French woman in severe black dresses and a black hat. They flew in powdered milk for Anne, whose condition was deteriorating, and Elisabeth arrived to take up work in the foreign press office. With his family about him, de Gaulle now held all the cards. He was the undisputed leader of all the French forces opposed to Vichy and the German Occupation.[59]