De Gaulle

Nearly 50 years after his death the book brings to the fore an exhaustive biography and reassessment of Charles de Gaulle political career. He was a maverick by all accounts and was rated as an egotist par excellence. De Gaulle was not easy to peg politically as his background compelled him to find a middle way between capitalism and socialism. He undoubtedly became synonymous with the French cause during the forced occupation of France during the Second World War. During World War I, he had been a junior officer under Marshal Pétain, whom he would oppose when France capitulated to the Germans at the beginning of World War II; Pétain’s role, de Gaulle categorised as treasonous and vowed to fight him tooth and nail. De Gaulle evacuated to London and set up a Free French government in exile and he was so much of a thorn in the side of the Allies in demanding an equal place at the table that Churchill said something along the lines of, “Each time I have to choose between you and Roosevelt, I will choose Roosevelt.” Yet, because of de Gaulle, France did have an equal part as an occupying power of Germany after the war. During the stress of war De Gaulle developed the art of maneuvering to play both sides against the middle in such instances as the near civil war that broke out in France over the anti-colonial war in Algeria, which nearly led to a modern coup d’état and of de Gaulle’s elaborate efforts to calve the European powers away from American influence and into the French sphere. De Gaulle, though often considered conservative, was a modernizer who “celebrated scientific progress, economic and social reforms and the modernization of the armed forces.” Though the biography is long but it captures the spirit of the French struggle and throws ample light on contemporary European affairs. It also reflects on the incidents leading to the Cold War. TW