Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

Myth, memory and policy in France since 1945 61
tenth anniversary of the Liberation a sacred flame lit at Arlington military
ceremony was landed on the Normandy beaches and carried by American
soldiers along a ‘Voie de la Liberté’ which followed the route of the liberating
armies. The presence of American generals and diplomats was
much requested at ceremonies in the towns and cities along the route.
An entirely different narrative of the American role, seeing them less
as liberators than as conquerors, however, was constructed by General
de Gaulle. He deeply resented the way in which President Roosevelt had
demonstrated his personal dislike for him during the war, the prospect
right up to August 1944 of an American deal with the Vichy government
or the subsequent ‘bridge’ government led by Pétain’s prime minister
Laval and Herriot, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and the
threat to impose an Allied Military Government in Occupied Territories
(AMGOT) on France as it had on Italy and was to do in Germany. He was
angered by the strategic plans of Eisenhower, which involved no French
troops in the Normandy landings of June 1944, did not envisage the liberation
of Paris and then required the evacuation of Strasbourg, contested
between France and Germany since the French Revolution, and which
French forces had newly taken. Lastly, he was infuriated that France,
which had joined the war against Germany in 1944, was not invited to
take part in the summits at which the future of Europe was decided.
‘I was not at Yalta’ became a constant, carping, refrain. Neither was de
Gaulle enamoured of the British, who had given him a base in 1940 and
recognised his government-in-exile, but clearly put their special relationship
with the United States before any Anglo-French partnership. He
frequently told the story of the conversation he had had with Churchill in
1944, on the eve of D-Day. Churchill had summoned de Gaulle from
Algiers to tell him that the French would not be taking part in the
Normandy landings. When de Gaulle protested that Churchill was simply
obeying Roosevelt’s orders, Churchill replied that if he had to choose between
Roosevelt and de Gaulle he would always chose Roosevelt, and
if he had to choose between Europe and the wider world he would
always choose the wider world. Perhaps de Gaulle was out of step with
the French people and his memory was individual rather than collective.
Certainly his resentments were expressed more in private than in public,
or took the form of dramatic snubs that were not fully explained. Thus
when it became clear that he would not be invited to Yalta he had a
row in Paris with Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s emissary, telling
him that the United States had let France down in 1920 and 1940, that
‘the return of France to her rank as a great power’ was required for her
internal peace and prosperity, and that the United States ‘did not seem
to appreciate that the very fate of France was tied to her vocation of