![]() Jackson points out that his physical movements were “slow and heavy, like his nose” with a “small head and waxen face. He was a huge man with delicate hands, an unremarkable face, and legs seemingly too fragile to support his body. Undoubtedly, much of de Gaulle’s intransigence and refusal to bend to Yankee power sowed the seeds for modern-day American Francophobia, with its endless jokes about cheese-eating capitulators and bumbling Clouseaus.ĭe Gaulle was, to be fair, a strange and baffling figure, even to his own countrymen. Of course, for many Americans of an older generation, warts might be all they see-or more precisely, ingratitude taken to dizzying heights. Jackson’s droll English style is perfect to convey de Gaulle, warts and all, to us Americans, with a very British mixture of exasperation and admiration. Not only is his name on one of the national airports, not only are his home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises and the towering Cross of Lorraine national shrines, his spirit and name are invoked incessantly by his successors-most recently, in Sarkozy’s attempts at “hyper-presidency” and in Macron’s somewhat unconvincing, Jupiterian efforts.Īll this has occurred as de Gaulle’s personal life has come into fuller view, beginning with his son Phillipe’s account in the early 2000s. As Sudhir Hazareesingh argues in a fine study, In the Shadow of the General (2012), de Gaulle has now reached a transcendent state, with the bitter feelings once held by either communist or far-rightists having largely been overcome. De Gaulle is “everywhere” in France, he points out at the beginning-there, he has apotheosized. Jackson’s biography comes along at the right time for the Anglophone world. To this day, he remains a hero in much of the developing world. As president of the Fifth Republic, he travelled the world, extolling nations and peoples from Quebec to Cambodia to live their own lives, to be unafraid of the hegemonic superpowers that sought to dominate and to control them. ![]() Like Churchill, he initially clung to empire, but ultimately saw decolonization as necessary for France. ![]() He did much of this in a quixotic pursuit to restore France to great power status. Speaking of the idea of “Europe,” he once said, “Dante, Goethe, Chateaubriand all belong to Europe to the extent that they were respectively and eminently Italian, German, and French.” He disdained perfide Albion and the “Anglo-Saxons,” the British and Americans with their special relationship. In pursuit of French grandeur, he removed France from NATO’s military command. De Gaulle formed alliances, but he also antagonized and splintered them. So it was throughout his life-as leader of the Free French, then of the French provisional government, and finally of the Fifth Republic. He arrested and altered history through a singular act of will. It was not only that he had acted, but that he alone had acted. But for many French, on that day and especially in retrospect, de Gaulle became France, the precise objective correlative of its desperate hope.ĭe Gaulle’s first great contact with history was consistent with the pattern of his public life. ![]() De Gaulle acted without any authority whatsoever to the newly formed government, he was a traitor. The Third Republic was soon to be replaced, with dubious legality, by the État Français, better known as Vichy France. Until that point, he was a successful but relatively low-ranking brigadier general in the French army. will not be extinguished.” He became the leader, guiding star, and ultimately redeemer of a nation.ĭe Gaulle had no mandate to do any of this. Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance. ![]() On the following evening of June 18, 1940, a voice came on the radio: “I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who might end up here, with their weapons or without their weapons, to put themselves in contact with me. France had fallen and Marshal Pétain announced he was suing for peace. Julian Jackson begins his massive biography De Gaulle with one of the most dramatic moments of the 20 th century. ![]()
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