From a review by R. W. Johnson of Power and Glory: France's Secret Wars with
Britain and America, 1945-2016 by R. T. Howard:
Johnson writes, "In De Gaulle's view of history - a European history -
England and France had struggled for supremacy for the best part of a
thousand years. For most of that time France had been the dominant power,
but now its great empire wasn't just overshadowed but outmatched by the even
greater British Empire. For De Gaulle France was not itself if it was not
the leading power in Europe. By 1941, however, the opponent was no longer
Britain" it was 'les Anglo-Saxons'. Asked what was the most important
international development of recent times, De Gaulle replied: 'The fact that
the Americans speak English.'"
We did have one French fellow in Lit Ideas a long time ago. He owned a
books store, can't remember where, and can't remember his name, but we used
to argue about the relative merits of France and the U.S. He knew English
and was on Lit Ideas, but he despised the U.S. and perhaps England as well,
I don't recall. I had read an interesting article in Foreign Affairs and
recommended it to him, implying that it would provide a more accurate view
of the U.S. than he seemed to have. He rejected the idea. He had no wish
to understand the U.S. more than he did. He didn't quite challenge me to
learn more about France because I was reading quite a lot at the time, but
at some point he became disgusted with Lit-Ideas and perhaps especially me
and disappeared.
The referenced review appears in the March 16, 2017 issue of the London
Review of Books. Johnson entitles his review, "Danger: English Lessons" and
draws attention to De Gaulle's and other's interest in advancing French over
English in the modern world. "Howard quotes Gerard Prunier, an adviser to
the French Government, who claimed that 'the Anglo-Saxons want our death -
that is, our cultural death. They threaten our language and our way of
life, and they plan our ultimate Anglo-Saxonisation."
"When De Gaulle ordered US bases out of France, Lyndon Johnson angrily
demanded to know if that meant digging up the graves of American soldiers
who had died in the liberation." My impression is that many of the French
at the time wouldn't mind digging up the graves and sending the bones back
to us. Many French saw the second front that Stalin had been pleading for,
Operation Overlord, as merely the occupation of France by a new set of
oppressors.
In reading of these events, we perhaps don't want to spend much time
dwelling upon Churchill's sadness over the loss of the British Empire, but
De Gaulle was even more committed to reacquiring the French Empire. I read
histories of France's pitiful efforts at Dien Bien Phu and in Algeria. Many
Americans, probably, would lose all sympathy for the French upon learning
that Algeria after WWII would have been delighted to be considered part of
France as equal citizens, but the Colons would not hear of it and so there
was a war. The Colons were driven out and Algeria eventually became
independent.
Perhaps here the French book seller would take offense at Americans who
blithely assumed that democracy and equality ought to prevail throughout the
world and that Britain and France ought to willingly give up their former
colonies. What right did the U.S. have to insist upon such a thing,
especially when Eisenhower took up in Indo-China where the French left off
not to preserve it as a colony, but to "prevent its becoming a Communist
puppet." "As if," the French scoffed and saw only hypocrisy.
There is plenty of room to build a variety of arguments to support a variety
of opinions. After reading the above article in the LRB, I checked back
through the recent editions of Foreign Affairs to see if there were any
recent Gaullist-type efforts to advance French supremacy in Europe, but
couldn't find any. And yet, I suspect, many of the French, even today are
hostile toward Britain and the U.S. for reasons much like De Gaulle's. They
don't see the Vichy period in the same way we do. De Gaulle, who spent the
bulk of the War in Britain wanted to get past the Vichy period as quickly as
possible. Most Frenchmen, it seemed to be implied, were really in the
resistance. . . but not so much anymore, becoming with Germany the "big two"
in the EU - the EU whose capital is in French-speaking Belgium.
Lawrence
