Allies at War: The Bitter Rivalry Among Churchill, Roosevelt, and De Gaulle - Softcover

Berthon's narrative accompanies his forthcoming PBS telecast about Charles de Gaulle's struggles once France fell to the Nazis in 1940 to play the modern Joan of Arc. Aged 49 and a one-star general for only three weeks, he had flown to London five days before Paris was surrendered. Legally, Marshal P‚tain's collaborationist regime at Vichy represented France, but de Gaulle almost singlehandedly established the exile "Free French" to continue the war from England and some of the colonies. In Berthon's view, de Gaulle had four enemies Germany, Vichy, a skeptical Churchill and a hostile Roosevelt. This hostility, fed by at best half-truths from Roosevelt's rightist links to P‚tain ambassador Admiral Leahy, State Department adviser Charles Murphy and Secretary of State Cordell Hull more than by Churchill, shackled and even undermined de Gaulle. Berthon describes vividly the wartime climate of duplicity and distrust: Churchill tried to "straddle the two Frances"; de Gaulle compensated for his powerlessness with haughty pride; Roosevelt (for whom "France had lost all right to...respect by her abject failure in 1940") excluded de Gaulle from all decisions affecting France. Relations worsened in victory, when the French embraced de Gaulle and reality forced British/U.S. recognition of his legitimacy. In Berthon's opinion, Churchill equivocated, and U.S. players were villainous. Though he makes little of de Gaulle's postwar promotion of the myth of mass French resistance to fascism, his wartime de Gaulle is convincingly heroic. None of the three leaders comes off well which may give the book a controversial edge. 8 pages of b&w illus. (Oct.)Forecast: The three-part TV series is scheduled to run in 2002; in the meantime, the book is a History Book Club selection and should have broad appeal to readers of WWII titles.

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Living in France, I bought this book to try to discover why de Gaulle seemed so resentful of Churchill and Roosevelt and so ungracious to a country (UK) who had sheltered and protected him and played the lead role in liberating his own country. The book itself is tremendously interesting and well written, though I was still left wondering about de Gaulle, and can only glean he was exceedingly difficult to deal with and that perhaps his attitude was down to a huge dose of Gallic pride. I realise the books objective was not solely about de Gaulles attitude, but nevertheless (from my perspective) an excellent book --By M. G. Lavender

Simon Berthon's fine overview of General De Gaulle and his complex relationships with Churchill and Roosevelt raises more questions than it answers. I couldn't help but wonder whether a more concilliatory attitude towards De Gaulle by Churchill, and especially, Roosevelt, might have led to a more harmonious postwar relationship between the United States and France during the Cold War. Certainly France's independent foreign policy seems at times designed to be spiteful of U. S. interests; no doubt this is part of a bitter legacy stemming from De Gaulle's difficult relationships with the wartime leaders of Britain and America. Berthon does a fine job portraying De Gaulle as a stern man of principle motivated solely by what he thought was in France's best interest, not his own. Despite flaws in pacing and occasional typos, "Allies at War" is a revealing look at a largely overlooked saga of World War Two, and hence deserves my strong recommendation to those interested in Allied politics during the course of the war. --By John Kwok