Three titans
Between 1940 and 1945 three titans of the twentieth century, who became the leaders of the free world at its moment of greatest crisis, fought an extraordinary war within a war. To the outside world they were allies united in the fight against Hitler. Behind the scenes, their relationship was very different.
'In June 1940, as France fell to the Nazis, Churchill recognised de Gaulle as "the man of destiny".'
Two of the three were the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and the Free French leader, General, later President, Charles de Gaulle. In June 1940, as France fell to the Nazis, Churchill recognised de Gaulle as 'the man of destiny'. But their relationship would turn into a roller coaster of mutual admiration, suspicion and, on Churchill's part, loathing.
The third man was the American President, Franklin Roosevelt. De Gaulle caused Roosevelt more trouble and more infuriation than any other person in the Second World War. To his extreme embarrassment, Churchill found himself caught in the middle of an extraordinary arms length duel between the President, who was the most powerful man in the world, and the French general who put saving the honour of his devastated country above everything else.
The story of this tangled, triangular relationship began in June 1940. The Nazi Blitzkrieg had crushed Belgium and Holland. German forces had forced the withdrawal of nearly half a million British and French troops from Dunkirk. Now Hitler's spearheads were rolling towards Paris.
The French government was divided but its Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, remained determined to resist the Nazis. On 5 June 1940 he appointed to his cabinet a recently promoted and junior brigadier-general, Charles de Gaulle, as Under Secretary for Defence. Reynaud knew that de Gaulle was an unequivocal fighter, and he dispatched him to London to plead with Churchill to send the full might of the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command across the Channel to help in the battle to save France.
Bookmark with:
What are these?