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Richard Vinen, "The Last Titians: How Churchill and De Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)
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- [00:01]
Professor Richard Finnan
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Good day. Welcome to New Books Network. My name is Dr. Charles Petito. I'm a host on the Channel Today. We are pleased and indeed honored to have with us Professor Richard Finnan. Professor Finn is a professor of history at King's College London. He has held the visiting positions at such places as Rice University and Winston Churchill College at Cambridge. His book National Service won the Wolfenstein history prize in 2015. And today we're discussing one of his newest books, the Last How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their nations and Transformed the World, published by Simon Schuster. Welcome, Professor Finitan.
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Professor Richard Finnan
Thank you very much.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Professor, why did you write this book?
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Professor Richard Finnan
For lots of reasons. So partly because I'm a historian of Britain and France, so it seemed to make sense to write about these two figures who kind of overshadow history in Britain and France, partly because I thought they both said a lot about their countries, as well as being extraordinary lives in themselves, partly because they are extraordinary lives. So it's very rare that you find a politician where you think their biography would be interesting, even to someone with no interest in politics. But you could read about the life of Winston Churchill, his early life, his participation in the last cavalry charge of the British army, his kind of adventures on the Northwest Frontier Province in India. You could read about all those things even if you actually didn't know anything that happened in Winston Churchill's later life and you didn't realize he became prime minister. And likewise, de Gaulle would be an extraordinary figure, a kind of thinker, a writer. If a Martian came across his memoirs and had no idea who de Gaulle had actually been, he would nonetheless think, this is a very strange and interesting person.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Who were Churchill and de Gaulle by family background?
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Professor Richard Finnan
Their family background's very different. So Churchill is the grandson of a duke, so he's about as grand as you can get in terms of the British aristocracy. He's not himself, except, very briefly, the heir to the title, but he's a member of one of the big British aristocratic families. He's also the son of Randolph Churchill, who is a kind of big politician of the late 19th century, a man who, in the end, fails spectacularly, but fails having risen to a very high level, having been for a time, one of the kind of major players in the Conservative Party. And so Churchill is famous from a very young age. He's really well known, even when he's at school. De Gaulle comes from what he refers to himself as petit noblesse de Compagne, which means kind of small provincial nobility. He's really a kind of country squire in terms of origin, but he's also not from a rich family at all. So he's a man, I think he would always have had to work for his living. His father works for his living. His father is a teacher really. So in that sense, de Gaulle is from a very modest background compared to Churchill. And I think some of the kind of tension between the two men actually springs from the fact that de Gaulle is always a bit suspicious of the French aristocracy especially, although he himself is a conservative and in some respects claims to be a royalist. At times in his life he's rather suspicious of the kind of Parisian aristocracy who he associates with decadence, with wealth, and then during the Second World War, sometimes with collaboration. And he always thinks of himself as an outsider, a kind of man from the country, a man from the provinces. When he leaves Paris in 1969, when he resigns as president, he then doesn't really go back to the capital city again, except just once for the first communion of his granddaughter. So he's a man who's naturally at home in the provinces. And I think when he meets Churchill, it's like the first time he's met someone from that kind of grand aristocracy.
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Dr. Charles Petito
How important was their relationship with their fathers?
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Professor Richard Finnan
So in Churchill's case, very important. So Churchill's father dies when Churchill is young, when he's 21, I think Churchill is incredibly aware of his ancestry, so aware of his father, but also aware of his more distant ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough. So he's aware that he's always living up to a kind of high family example. He has a strange relationship with his father's memory in the sense, of course, eventually he very much overshadows his father. But early on it looks as if he's going to be overshadowed by his father. So Churchill, especially when he's at school, is not very successful. And Churchill's father, because he dies when Churchill is so young, never lives to see his son achieve these extraordinary things. So even the successes of Churchill's early career, even his beginning of his career as a minister in Liberal governments before 1914, I think his father would have found those things surprising. But as I say, he never lives to see that. So Churchill is very haunted by the memory of his father. He writes a biography of his father, talks about his father quite a lot, talks about his father occasionally in slightly double edged ways. So one gets the sense that perhaps he's a bit more critical, a bit more aware of his father's flaws than he sometimes reveals in his public statements. But he also very importantly, writes a book called Great Contemporaries, which he publishes in the interwar period, which is a very revealing book because actually it's not about Churchill's contemporaries at all. It's partly about people outside Britain, people like Roosevelt and indeed, rather disconcertingly, Hitler. But as far as British people are concerned, they're all in fact the contemporaries of his father. And I think that's the kind of group of men he looks to very much for kind of validation and to compare himself with. De Gaulle, by contrast, has a much less problematic relationship with his father because he's never overshadowed by his father. So de Gaulle is a more kind of conventional family man. I think actually he's very happy in his own family. He's a rather private man who likes being among his own relatives. And his father is a kind of stern but affectionate father with whom Charles de Gaulle gets on well. As later on, he has a rather similar relationship with his own children. Again stern but affectionate and remarkably good at doing something which I think Churchill is not very good at doing. De Gaulle is very good at not making it a burden to be part of his family. So he doesn't kind of impose terrible expectations on his own children.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Given the fact that by age Churchill and de Gaulle were 16 years apart, do you regard them as being the same generational cohort?
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Professor Richard Finnan
Absolutely not, no. So I think they're very different generational cohort. I think a key difference is the age at which they hit the First World War. So in lots of ways, for de Gaulle, the First World was a kind of formative experience which blows away all sorts of youthful romanticism about war, about chivalry, things like that. So de Gaulle is always quite a kind of cold blooded realist about things. And I think that comes partly from having been a frontline junior officer in the First World War and then captured and spending crucial part of his youth in a German prisoner of war camp, where he has a fair amount of time to think. By contrast, Churchill, his early life is lived on the frontiers of the British Empire in a much more kind of freebooting world, in a world where I suppose you can still think of war as something glamorous and chivalrous. As I say, he rides in the last great cavalry charge of the British army. And by the time he gets to the First World War, he's a politician. And I think he's slightly uncomfortable with that because, of course, after the First World War in Britain, there's a very strong distinction really between the idea of being young officers who did the fighting and being politicians who sent them to fight. And I think Churchill is sometimes feels a bit awkward about belonging to the group of men who sent young men to fight rather than those who fought themselves.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Why do you say.
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Professor Richard Finnan
I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, go on, please.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Why do you say that? There was something of a samurai about much of de Gaulle's alive.
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Professor Richard Finnan
Sorry, something of a what?
- [08:32]
Dr. Charles Petito
Samurai.
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Professor Richard Finnan
Oh, a samurai. I think I was referring particularly to a particular quote, in fact, from a man called Alfred Farber Luce, who describes de Gaulle's death, which is so kind of apparently perfectly timed. So it happens, you know, while he's in full possession of his faculties and so on. And Fabre Luz says, well, this is like the ritual suicide of the Japanese poet Mishima. But I think there's something of the samurai about de Gaulle's life in the sense that it feels very kind of simple, as if it's drawn in very kind of straightforward traits. So that it reads almost like. I suppose. I mean, it's not really my kind of generational references, but I suspect a magna Manga manga comic book reads a bit like that. And it contrasts very much with Churchill, who has a much more sort of complicated, baroque life.
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Dr. Charles Petito
What explains Churchill's exceedingly rapid rise to ministerial office up to 1914?
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Professor Richard Finnan
I think partly the fact that he's a man of extraordinary ability, extraordinary eloquence, extraordinary energy, and partly, as with all rapid rises in politics, good luck. But so that he switches from the Conservatives, which is his kind of ancestral party, and of course, the party that he later returns to, from the Conservatives to the Liberals. And he does so at a very good moment because the Liberals are about to win a landslide election. So that he goes in with the winning party. I think he very much fits in with the kind of climate of a certain kind of English reforming liberalism before 1914. And he also gets on well with the kind of most dominant charismatic figure of the Liberal Party at that time, David Lloyd George, who in some ways, I think, is the only person that Churchill really thinks might overshadow him in some ways, but who he admires for a lot as a young man. And Lloyd George to some extent becomes a kind of patron for him.
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Dr. Charles Petito
How was he. How. I'm sorry, how much of Churchill was at fault with the DarDanelles debacle in 1915?
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Professor Richard Finnan
How much is he responsible for it and how much does he take the fall? I think the answer is he is responsible for it, really. So he is very kind of Damaged by it, damaged in terms of his reputation, but I think also damaged in terms of his personal confidence. So I think he knows, really, although he tries to justify it, that he's made a mistake. And I think he's very, very bruised by the criticism that he receives and by the sense that this is something that's gone wrong. And I think it's something that haunts him for a lot of the rest of his life. So I think things like his very close attention to the need to justify himself in certain circumstances. He's very good at keeping a documentary audit trail of what he does, and I think that's part of the legacy of the Dardanelles. He's always thinking, I made this mistake. I then had to explain myself. And therefore he's very keen subsequently to be able to explain himself with regard to later events.
- [11:50]
Dr. Charles Petito
Going back a little bit, isn't it the case that Churchill, in a very different fashion from de Gaulle, viewed war, in particular the Great War, in a sort of romantic haze, which would be very foreign and was very foreign as Portugal?
- [12:05]
Professor Richard Finnan
Yeah, so I think that's certainly true. So I think both men obviously, in some ways experienced the First World War. And one should say that Churchill is briefly a commander, I, a frontline commander, rather than just a politician during the First World War. So they both do see the First World War. I think they both recognize the First World War is something new and something terrible. I think Churchill in some ways reacts against that, and he always slightly likes to get back to the idea of a more chivalrous kind of warfare. And in some ways, of course, the Second World War, certainly Churchill's presentation of it, and perhaps the British experience of it, although probably not the experience of most other countries, is one that you can present as the last chivalrous war. So, first of all, obviously, if there's ever a justified war in human history, it's the war against Nazi Germany. And secondly, there are aspects of the British story and Churchill story that fit in to a romantic conception. So the idea of a country that stands alone in hopeless circumstances, apparently hopeless circumstances in 1940, obviously fits in with that and the way in which the British sometimes fight the war so that the Spitfire pilot, a pilot piloted by an airplane, piloted by a single individual, always has this slight idea of being a kind of a knight of the air. And, of course, these men are fighting to defend their country, actually over British airspace in the summer of 1940. And the air war is a war which involves a adult men fighting each other, in which civilian casualties are Actually relatively low, and in which both sides are kind of taking the same risks and have a degree of respect for each other. So I think the fact that the Royal Air Force matters a lot to Churchill is partly because they fit in with this chivalric conception of war. Likewise, his interest in things like commandos and partisans fits in a bit with that. De Gaulle, I think, has a cooler attitude. So he has a more direct experience of the First World War, although, of course, for a long time an experience of the First World War in which he personally is not fighting because he's then a prisoner of war, which in some ways is a particular kind of, from his point of view, humiliating way to experience the war. He repeatedly tries to escape and fails. I think probably he knows that he may well owe his survival to the fact that he was captured and wounded rather than being killed outright or rather than being able to return to the battle. And then his conception of the Second World War is, curiously enough, not much to do with fighting at all. He sees this as a largely political war in which France has been defeated and in which then his job is to reassert kind of French honour by being the political representative of France. So I think he pays less attention to military concerns during the Second World War. I think there's. Then perhaps I'm going rather beyond your initial question, but there's a final dimension to this, which is, of course, after the Second World War, warfare is transformed by the atomic bomb and then especially the hydrogen bomb and the idea of kind of utter destruction that you might have in total war from the 1950s onwards. And I think Churchill actually is very upset by that because then he says this is really, you know, the end of warfare as I knew it. And so I think his rather sad, unsuccessful attempts to negotiate for peace between the United States and the Soviet Union owe something to that sense of horror at what war has become. And he does feel that the hydrogen bomb has kind of swept away all his normal strategic assumptions about things like whether you need to hold particular parcels of land and things like that. Whereas de Gaulle actually adjusts very well in some ways, the hydrogen bomb is kind of part of what de Gaulle needs for his conception of French independence. So the idea of an independent French nuclear deterrent and the idea that in some ways possessing a nuclear deterrent makes you the equivalent of the great powers, even if obviously your military power is less than theirs in real terms, those things matter to de Gaulle. So I think de Gaulle, again, in this rather cold blooded way, adjusts to the kind of very Horrible nature of late 20th century warfare or the second half of the 20th century warfare, better than Churchill does.
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Dr. Charles Petito
How was Churchill able to rejoin the cabinet in 1917?
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Professor Richard Finnan
He comes back as a slightly kind of reduced level. So I think he's accepted because he's an able man and he does very well. So they need kind of energetic people in the Cabinet. And obviously he still to some extent has the patronage of Lloyd George, who by that stage has become Prime Minister.
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Dr. Charles Petito
And what caused him to leave the Liberal Party and rejoin the Conservative Party in 1924.
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Professor Richard Finnan
That, I think, is open to two interpretations, and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive interpretations. So first of all, he doesn't quite move straight from the Liberals to the Conservatives. So there's a period of flux in British politics. It's a period of rare period. Well, rare period until now, when British politics is not simply dominated by two parties and where there's uncertainty in the early 1920s about kind of what the outcome of British politics is going to be and what the dominant groupings are going to be. Now, during that period, Churchill leaves the Liberal Party, doesn't rejoin the Conservatives straight away, he kind of works through a variety of kind of semi independent party tickets as a constitutionalist and so on, and then eventually rejoins the Conservatives. Now, I think he does that partly because he is a Conservative in social terms, and particularly he's an anti socialist, so that as the Labour Party, the Socialist Party becomes the dominant force on the left, replacing the Liberals. Churchill is very keen to stand on the opposite side of the spectrum from socialism, and I think anti socialism is very important to him in the interwar period, even though he then allies with the Labour Party during the Second World War. I think also, as always with Churchill, there's something that might be opportunism. So it's clearly politically useful for him to get back into the Conservatives because the Liberal Party is in decline. And he also benefits again from patronage by other people. So people recognise his talents. I think Lloyd George had recognized his talents before 1914. In 1924, the person who recognizes his talents is someone that with whom eventually has very bad relations, which is the Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin, who I think appreciates what he can do with Churchill and also appreciates quite well how to kind of manage and control Churchill and brings him back into the Conservative fold and very generously gives him very high ministerial office.
- [19:10]
Dr. Charles Petito
How would you evaluate his performance as Chancellor the Exchequer under Baldwin?
- [19:16]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think one would be very hard pressed to say that Churchill was a successful Chancellor of the Exchequer. So that he takes Britain back onto the gold standard, which I think is kind of universally regarded as a mistake, which means that the pound is overvalued, that British exports become too expensive, that British imports, imports to Britain become too cheap. This, of course is a decision that is very strongly condemned, especially by John Maynard Keynes, the economist. I think it's also an unusual period for Churchill in that he's not really a natural economist and he's not someone who naturally thinks about economics. So he has the kind of strange vestiges of not just pre1914, but in some ways pre, pre 1900 British liberalism, kind of Gladstoneian liberalism with a very heavy emphasis on free trade. And so I think that partly informs his economic views. Now, someone like Keynes would say that's a very outdated view by 1924. But also he's not completely confident in his own economic thinking. Now there are times when Churchill is extraordinarily confident in his thinking and willing to overrule experts or at least to argue with experts and to kind of constantly push for the kind of action he wants. But I think he's not confident about economics in the mid-1920s. And I think to some extent the British treasury, the people who work under the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they are famously intellectually self confident men. And I think Churchill for once in his life is slightly controlled by other people when he's Chancellor.
- [21:01]
Dr. Charles Petito
Would it be accurate to say that Churchill was mostly at fault, that he had to endure more than 10 years in the political wilderness beginning in June 1929, at fault?
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Professor Richard Finnan
I think possibly so. I mean, he may have made a miscalculation, of course. He may have thought that he was going into the political wilderness and assumed he'd be coming back rather earlier. So it may just be a kind of gambler that doesn't pay off. I think it's important to stress that he's in the political wilderness for two reasons, which are very different reasons. So people often assume that what the kind of Churchill myth comes to call the wilderness years are to do with his opposition to the British government's policy of appeasing Nazi Germany. And that's not initially true. So initially the issue that kind of alienates him from the Conservative leadership is his opposition to reform that would move India towards home rule. And that obviously is a cause where retrospectively people are much less likely to think that Churchill was right and where Churchill reveals himself as a much more kind of unabashedly conservative figure, even by the standards of the Conservative Party, and where lots of people feel, well, he's extreme, he's showing poor judgment, where other conservatives quite often denounce him and sometimes just regard his position as absurd. I think he's in a strange position at this point, partly because of his age. So, of course, we know in retrospect that Churchill is going to have his apotheosis in his late 60s as a war leader, but at the time, that's not obvious. And in his mid-50s, around 1930, he's very painfully aware that he's getting old, that he's been a brilliant young man. You know, this is a man who's been in Parliament at the age of 25, who's been a cabinet minister in his early 30s. So you can see that the idea of adjusting to what I now think of, in my kind of aged way, as middle age, but which I would want to define as old age, that's quite difficult for Churchill. And you can also see there are certain ways in which Churchill feels uncomfortable with kind of aspects of the modern world in the late 1920s and early 1930s. So the prospect of the end of empire is certainly one of those things. But, I mean, there are all sorts of things that other conservatives actually adjust to quite well and understand and that Churchill doesn't fully understand. So that one of my favourite examples of this is the extension of female suffrage. So Churchill before 1914 has sometimes been against female suffrage. Of course, in the 1920s, women do have the vote, but in the late 1920s, the Conservative government decides to extend the vote to all women previously been reserved women over the age of 30. And Churchill is so certain that this is wrong that he very unusually demands that the records of the Cabinet should include a record of his opposition to giving women under the age of 30 the vote. And he says these archives will be opened after 50 years and they will show that I was right. And of course, they're opened in the late 1960s at the point where it's highly unlikely that most people thought Churchill was right about these kind of things. So I think he seems, for a time, curiously, as though he's not really kind of understanding the times he's living in in the late 20s and early 30s. And then the big change comes with the increasing role that Nazi Germany begins to play in his thought. Now here, I think it's important to stress a big difference with de Gaulle. De Gaulle is an anti German, or at least he's a very strong anti German until 1945. So he's a traditional French nationalist who always thinks Germany is A threat to France. And he thinks the Franco Prussian War, the First World War were examples of that. Of course, French territory has been occupied in the Franco Prussian War, then reconquered in the First World War. So this absolutely obsesses de Gaulle, and de Gaulle doesn't think there's anything particularly special about Hitler. I mean, he doesn't like Hitler, doesn't like Nazism, but he just thinks this is the latest manifestation of German nationalism. Whereas Churchill very emphatically does think, no, Nazism is something new. He's not intrinsically hostile to Germany, but he becomes very, very worried by Nazism. He sees, on the one hand, I think, very importantly, the Nazi regime as something evil. So particularly the persecution of the Jews is something that moves him a lot. And we often think of Churchill as a kind of politically incorrect person on matters of race and things like that. But on Nazi Germany, he, I think, says things that most modern readers would find very sympathetic. He says that this is terrible and that this makes the regime different from anything that's come before, really. And also, of course, he begins to see Nazi Germany as a military threat to Britain. So by the late 1930s, he's moved away from opposition to Indian home rule as his dominant political issue and is increasingly preoccupied with preparation for war against Nazi Germany.
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Dr. Charles Petito
Given how little he trusted him, why did Chamberlain take Churchill into the cabinet in September 1939?
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Professor Richard Finnan
I think partly because he has to. I think Chamberlain doesn't quite dispute, distrust Churchill. I mean, in some ways, the whole British ruling class is always a bit suspicious of Churchill. They think he's a bit unstable. They sometimes don't think he's been entirely honest. They think he's too ambitious, they think he's too unconventional. They sometimes don't think he's a gentleman. In Britain, of course, you can be an aristocrat without being a gentleman and vice versa. And sometimes, you know, Churchill, for all his grand social background, which of course vastly grander than Chamberlain's, doesn't seem, you know, the kind of chap you'd want in your club. But so there's all those suspicions of Churchill. But at the same time, people do appreciate that he has extraordinary capacities, and they appreciate that even when he's in opposition in the late 1930s. So one thing to say is that Churchill is never completely cast out. Civil servants are talking to him. Politicians always recognise his abilities. Chamberlain even allows him to see some papers. I think Chamberlain thinks there may be circumstances under which the country will still need to call on Churchill. And so, in a way, it's not as much of a surprise as it might seem for Churchill to be brought back into government in 1939. Of course, Churchill, in some ways has been proved right. So Churchill has been warning for all these years, we're going to have to fight Nazi Germany. So when the country does go to war with Nazi Germany, it's hardly surprising that Churchill will be vindicated and that people would want him back in government. And he's seen, I think, as a very good figure to bring into the government because he responds with such kind of energy and determination. So, obviously, Chamberlain is very depressed in the circumstances of 1939 because all his attempts to produce peace have failed. And. And I suppose the whole government in some ways thinks this is a very sombre time. And so there's something a bit refreshing about Churchill, who comes at all this with the kind of, you know, energy of a lion that's been taken off its chain. And so public opinion, I think, responds to Churchill at that stage too, and begins to say, well, Churchill is, you know, the person of energy and dynamism
- [29:07]
Dr. Charles Petito
in this government, that a degree of distrust in the ruling class vis a vis Churchill. Would that explain the retrospect? Astonishing comment by Rab Butler to Lord Hume on 10 May, that Churchill was, quote, the greatest political adventure in British history?
- [29:24]
Professor Richard Finnan
Yeah, I think it does, to some extent. So, of course, these are all people who've supported appeasement. They're people who've been close to Chamberlain. So Alec Douglas Hume, or Dunglass as he is at that stage, goes to Munich with Chamberlain. Butler has been very much part of the kind of Chamberlain clique. So I think some of these people dislike Churchill personally. They feel, as I say, that he's not quite a gentleman. I think there is one very important remark by de Gaulle at this stage, where de Gaulle at one point is asked about British discussions with Vichy France. So British discussions with the regime installed partly under German aegis in France during the war. And they're having these discussions kind of alongside their dealings with de Gaulle as leader of the Free French. And de Gaulle says, no, I'm not shocked by these at all. Gentlemen's agreements count for nothing because this is not a war of gentlemen. And so I think both Churchill and de Gaulle do understand that this is not a war of conventional gentility. And I think actually the British ruling class understand that too. So even with the kind of suspicion of 10 May, people are beginning to say, no, it's Churchill we need. One must remember that Lord Halifax, who, in Lots of ways is the person that people like Butler looked to with admiration in May 1940. Halifax really kind of rules himself out of being Prime Minister. He says, I can't be Prime Minister because you need a Prime Minister in the House of Commons, not the House of Lords. And I think Halifax appreciates that Churchill is going to have to be the war leader. Halifax, though, also says something very interesting to Butler, which is he says, I think Winston needs a restraining influence. And I can exercise that restraining influence better as a member of his government than I could do if I was Prime Minister and he was a member of my government. So I think the ruling class do turn to Churchill. I think it's important to say that they do choose him. I mean, remember, Churchill doesn't win an election. He isn't voted for by MPs in the House of Commons. He's strictly speaking, chosen by the King, who's kind of been given informal advice by prominent Conservatives about who now needs to take over. So in that sense, the ruling class have decided now they're going to resort to Churchill. And I think they see Churchill as necessary for the time. You know, they say, okay, this is a really serious war. We're fighting with our backs to the wall now. We need to kind of have this extraordinary bulldog determination from Churchill. And I think their position is not a foolish position. They say Churchill is not necessarily the man you want in ordinary peacetime government, perhaps not even a person you want leading an ordinary wartime government. But May 1940, things are not ordinary. You need extraordinary measures. And they recognize that Churchill is going to be their extraordinary measure, but they also recognise that once Churchill is Prime Minister, they're going to have to kind of do things around him, things to support him, things to advise him, and also sometimes things to control him. So I think we're wrong to think of Church as a completely isolated figure in the summer of 1940. I think there's a whole team of people around him who are providing support, but also sometimes arguing with him, talking him out of certain ideas. So someone like Alan Brook, who eventually becomes his most important kind of military advisor, very, very significant figure in being willing to argue with Churchill when he thinks Churchill is wrong.
- [33:27]
Dr. Charles Petito
Would you agree that Churchill's decision to fight on in late May 1940 was a case, quoting David Reynolds, of Right policy, wrong reason.
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Professor Richard Finnan
I'm not sure. I'm trying to think what David means by that remark. It seems to me that every reason is a reason to fight against Hitler in the summer of 1940
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Dr. Charles Petito
is simply that the Things that Churchill advanced in the camp discussions on the. I think 27th, 28th and 29th of May 1940 were in fact accurate. I think Churchill, as per Reynolds, was relying too much on early intervention by the United States, which point was not politically realistic at that time.
- [34:14]
Professor Richard Finnan
Yeah, I mean, I think Churchill is making an argument, and so it's probably unfair to judge him by what he says. I mean, his view is, you know, we must fight on, kind of really, whatever the cost. I don't think Churchill is blind to the risks he's taking. So that Churchill, on the one hand, makes a very strong case for Britain staying in the war, which in some ways is inevitable. That's what he's got to do. I think he makes a case to the British people for kind of the need to tackle the war with spirit, so that in some sense there's an optimistic tone in Churchill, the idea that we can win. But I think in private and occasionally in public too, Churchill also recognizes these are very dark circumstances. So I think he knows that the United States will provide help. I think he certainly does not know how much that help will come, how fast it will come and whether the United States will eventually join the war. So de Gaulle has a very striking phrase in his memoirs. He's actually staying at the official country house of Churchill when the Lend Lease agreement is authorised by Congress. And he says that Churchill bursts into his bedroom early in the morning. Churchill always gets up early, or at least gets up, bounces out of bed with tremendous energy when he gets up. De Gaulle actually likes to sleep late. But anyway, Churchill arrives in de Gaulle's bedroom and he says, literally dancing with joy, because he knows that American help is so important. And of course that doesn't. He's not saying that immediately going to come. And likewise, of course, Churchill knows as soon as the Japanese attack Pearl harbor, he says, after that, I slept the sleep of the saved. Now, I think up till that stage, he's not completely secure in the help that America's going to provide and American intervention. I think he thinks there's no choice but to fight. But he also knows there is a prospect of defeat. So Clarissa Eden, who is Churchill's niece, eventually the second wife of his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. Clarissa Eden goes to see Churchill just after he becomes Prime Minister, and she's very struck. She says, you know, normally this is the man you so much associate with optimism, but in fact, he thinks there's just a chance we can pull Fort through, but he's not sure. And then later on, Clarissa Eden has this extraordinary moment in her memoirs where she describes she's tidying up her husband's possessions. I think this is in the 1960s. And she comes across a strange yellow looking thing and she says, anthony, what is this? And he says, it's a cyanide pill. Winston and I were given cyanide pills in case we were captured. And you realize that Churchill and I think a lot of key ministers do really realize that maybe their life is at stake during those few months in the summer of 1940, because they do think it's a rather unfashionable thing to say among British historians now. But I think they do believe there's a real prospect of German invasion and a real prospect that the country will go down. So I think Churchill knows he's fighting with his back to the wall and, and he knows that he's making all sorts of arguments for continuing the war, not all of which are entirely kind of coherent or well justified arguments.
- [37:42]
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- [38:11]
Dr. Charles Petito
Terms apply, how sincere or not, meaning disingenuous was his comment to Halifax in the War Cabinet exchanges of late May 1940, that if peace with Hitler required merely the loss of Malta, perhaps Gibraltar and some African colonies, you would go for it immediately.
- [38:31]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think that's primarily, in fact, a remark probably about Mussolini. Those are the people. That's the person he thinks might be bought off with concessions in the Mediterranean. I doubt if Churchill ever thinks there's a prospect of peace with Hitler. He doesn't know how the war with Germany will end. And of course, the idea that Britain is actually going to be part of this great alliance that will completely crush Nazi Germany, that seems very, very optimistic indeed in the summer of 1940. So I think Churchill can't be sure what's going to happen. I think probably his best hope at first is that Hitler will be deposed, perhaps as a result of military reverse, and that then the British will be able to do some kind of deal with, you know, conservative German generals who might take over in the event of the collapse of the Nazi regime.
- [39:24]
Dr. Charles Petito
How much did de Gaulle's conservative Catholic background made him stand out in the post Dreyfus French Army?
- [39:32]
Professor Richard Finnan
Not at all, really. I mean, the post Dreyfus French army is divided to some extent, but there are certainly a lot of Catholic conservatives in the army, a lot of royalists in the army. It's a lot. A lot of the time it's a retreat from republican politics as far as a certain kind of French minor aristocratic class in de Gaulle's case is concerned. So I think in some ways that's quite a standard position for a lot of army officers overall.
- [40:01]
Dr. Charles Petito
Would it be accurate to say that de Gaulle did not have a particularly good Great War?
- [40:06]
Professor Richard Finnan
He had a bad. Well, he had a good Great War in one very simple sense, which is that he lived through it. And of course, a lot of young men who were junior infantry officers at the age of 24 in 1914 did not live through the Great War, but he lives through it because he's captured. So he's wounded three times, He's a brave officer, there's no way around that. But he's captured and therefore removed from the fighting. And he is very, very unhappy about this. He describes to his son, he says, being a prisoner of war is like being a cuckold. Of course, there's this huge contrast with Churchill. So Churchill, very characteristically has a much more kind of dashing career, where in South Africa, he is captured by the Boers and almost immediately escapes very dramatic circumstances. Now, as I say, de Gaulle repeatedly tries to escape, but fails to do so. So in that sense, he has a kind of unglamorous war. I think it's a useful war to him. Useful in the sense that he does a lot of thinking. His first book, Discord among the Enemy, really springs from lectures he gives in a prisoner of war camp. And of course, he observes Germany. He's a man who's already been trained to speak German before the First World War, always on the assumption that Germany will be France's historic enemy. And so he has a good deal of time to look at Germany and think about Germany during the First World War. But he doesn't have the kind of distinction that he might have obtained if he'd survived and risen up more spectacularly through the ranks, or, you know, won medals for gallantry, things like that. That obviously happened to some people who were not taken prisoner.
- [41:47]
Dr. Charles Petito
One explains de Gaulle's up and down relationship with Marechal Patan in the interwar period.
- [41:54]
Professor Richard Finnan
So he himself explains it by saying that Peter was a great man until about the mid-1920s. His famous phrase about old age, old age is a shipwreck, was used about Peter. And of course, you've got to remember that Peter is, I think, 58 at the beginning of the First World War. His career seems over. Seems like he's going to retire as a lieutenant colonel and, you know, go and dig his garden in the south of France. So Petain is brought back from obscurity by the First World War. So when perhaps when I said that de Gaulle didn't have a glamorous career in the First World War, Petain, who rises incredibly fast through the very senior ranks of the French army as a commander during the First World War, he's the man who does have a good First World War. But then de Gaulle says, well, he's getting old already, you know. So by the end of the First World War, he's in early 60s. By the time he becomes leader of France in 1940, he's 84 years old. So I think that partly explains de Gaulle's distrust of Peter, but also they're very different kinds of men. So Peter, a more conservative. More kind of. Well, conservative in the sense of conservative in his way of living, not his politics. A more kind of complacent figure than de Gaulle, much less restless than de Gaulle. And de Gaulle is also a thinker, a man of intellectual originality, which Petain conspicuously isn't, and a writer. One of the things about de Gaulle is that probably until 1940, almost the most important thing de Gaulle does is write books. Books and articles. And he cares a lot about writing. He cares a lot about language. He actually writes for Peter, so he's a kind of ghostwriter for Peter. And their arguments initially spring from a disagreement about a book that de Gaulle has written for Peter and that de Gaulle then chooses to publish in his own name. And de Gaulle uses this very interesting phrase. He says, the book is the man. And I think that very much reflects how de Gaulle thinks about his writing. Writing as a kind of expression of his character. Now, Peter, who hardly ever reads and never really writes anything, is very remote from that kind of world. So I think there's a kind of intellectual distinction between them and a clash of personalities, which means they're on poor terms by the late 1930s. Peter has been an important patron for de Gaulle early on. And then, of course, I mean, they see each other for the last time in 1940. There's this extraordinary moment where de Gaulle just walks over and wordlessly shakes Petain's hand almost immediately before de Gaulle leaves France for Britain.
- [44:55]
Dr. Charles Petito
How influential was de Gaulle's book on tank warfare?
- [45:00]
Professor Richard Finnan
Not at all, really. Well, a bit, but much less than people assume from obviously, de Gaulle's retrospective reputation. So it didn't sell vast numbers of copies. It seems to me the great myth is the idea that the Germans learned from it, so that very frequently people say, well, de Gaulle had these ideas about rapid movement tank warfare and those were not picked up by the French, but they were picked up by the Germans. And you find hugely implausible statements about this. Albert Speer, Hitler's minister, says, oh yes, he heard Hitler talk about de Gaulle during the war. And having read de Gaulle in the 1930s, de Gaulle's son in law says he actually saw a copy of Verlami di Metier towards the professional army in Hitler's quarters at the end of the war, which was, he says, annotated in Hitler's own hand. I don't think any of this is true. The German translation of this book is actually one that leaves out much of the military detail. The book doesn't sell vast numbers of copies in France. De Gaulle is still at this stage relatively unknown. Basil Little Heart, who is the great British military thinker of the interwar period, who also likes to claim that he was responsible for the invention of tank warfare and the Germans learnt it all from him. Basil Little Heart does buy a copy of Ver l' armi de Metier. He goes to France and buys a copy and actually you can still find that copy on the shelves in the Liddell Hart Library here at King's College London, just a few floors below the office I'm talking to you from with Liddell Hart's penciled, handwritten annotations to that book. And Liddell Hart later becomes very jealous of de Gaulle because he thinks de Gaulle has got all the credit for kind of inventing tank warfare. He becomes very bitter towards de Gaulle, but in the 1930s he has no reason to feel bitter. And he says, well, this is the right idea, but it's all far too woolly and unclear and lacking in detail. And that's not a completely unfair criticism. So Verslahr Midier is an interesting book in all sorts of ways, I think interesting largely about de Gaulle's conception of France, but I don't think it's actually a book that has a huge influence on how people think about tank strategy.
- [47:26]
Dr. Charles Petito
How important was Paul Reynaud to de Gaulle's rise, such as it was up to mid June 1940, very important.
- [47:34]
Professor Richard Finnan
So he's de Gaulle's patron. A very interesting thing about de Gaulle, which dates back to the First World War, is that although he's a soldier, he becomes convinced that military control of politics is a bad thing. He says one of the reasons why the Germans are going to lose the First World War, he says this during the First World War, is because the generals have taken over. And he says politicians must always keep control of the military, so they must impose their view of what the kind of war aims are and so on. And then de Gaulle, even when he's an officer, really goes on thinking political control is what matters. So I think it's interesting that when he wants to get his military ideas adopted, he goes outside the military hierarchy entirely and seeks politicians who are going to impose those ideas on the military. See, he talks to all sorts of politicians, but the most important of the men he talks to is Paul Reynold, who certainly is very important in kind of publicizing de Gaulle's ideas, Supporting de Gaulle in the 1930s. Of course, at first, this is a relationship between a comparatively junior officer and one of the senior politicians in France. So even when Reynaud is out of office, he's more important than de Gaulle is. De Gaulle is just, well, a major, eventually a colonel in the French army. Then things become really important when Reno gets back into office in 1938, and then, of course, especially when he becomes prime minister in March 1940. In some ways, that's the big turning point in de Gaulle's career, certainly before he goes to London, because at that stage, suddenly he's got this patron in a really powerful position. And especially what Reynaud does is he makes de Gaulle a member of his government. So de Gaulle now himself becomes a politician, although he doesn't like the word politician, but he becomes a very junior minister, really immediately under Paul Reynold, as under Reynaud himself, keeps the Ministry of War, and de Gaulle becomes the Under Secretary of State for War. Now, I think that changes de Gaulle's view of himself. So from now on, not only is he saying, well, the civilian politicians must be superior to soldiers, but he's also now saying, I myself am part of a civilian government which must command the armed forces. So he has a very interesting relationship with Maxime Weygond, who's the great French general and who by this stage is French commander in chief. So Weygond refers to the government having made suggestions, and de Gaulle says, the government doesn't make suggestions, it gives instructions. So you have this man who is very junior member of the government, who himself, in military terms, is massively junior to Maxime Weygond, but who is giving Maxime Weygond orders. So I think that marks a terrific change in de Gaulle's status. He's still, at this stage, not terribly well known outside. Well, outside French political circles, really, and not terribly well known even inside them. Then, obviously, very, very quickly, the relationship with Reynaud changes. So Reynaud moves from being his patron, then Reynaud appoints him to this political office. Curiously, at this stage, the balance of power between the two men begins to change a bit. So I think de Gaulle begins to acquire really quite a lot of power over Reynaud. And I think part of the reason for this is that French government is full of uncertainty, division, hesitation in the summer of 1940. And under these circumstances, de Gaulle sometimes seems like the only man who is absolutely clear about what he thinks should be done. So he's providing very kind of straightforward, determined advice to Renault. And in that sense, I think he begins to kind of almost dominate Renault, although Renault is still technically his boss. And then, of course, they divide, really, with Renault staying in France after the defeat and de Gaulle leaving and going to London.
- [51:57]
Dr. Charles Petito
What made de Gaulle jump into that airplane on 17 June 1940?
- [52:03]
Professor Richard Finnan
Partly, he doesn't, by that stage, have much choice. So by that stage, Petain is taking over in France. So it's clear that the French government is going to be one that will seek an armistice with the Germans, which is the policy that de Gaulle vehemently opposes. De Gaulle later on says something interesting, which is that he is made the decision that he will fight on from London when he meets Churchill at one of the conferences. So there's a very rapid period of movement. You know, you've got to remember de Gaulle is not a member of the government. At the beginning of June 1940, he's really met no one. He meets Churchill for the first time on the 9th of June, when he goes over his kind of emissary to London. That is also the first time de Gaulle has ever set foot in Britain. Now meeting Churchill at one of the conferences, in fact, back at France. So there are a whole succession of meetings in Britain and France, he says. When he looks at Churchill's determination, he says, that's the moment when I decide if France is defeated, I will fight on from Britain if necessary. So I think he may already have made the decision that Britain is the place to continue the battle. This is interesting because at that point, a lot of French people are still thinking the way they might continue the war is by retreating to North Africa, retreating to the French possessions in Algeria and Morocco, and fighting on from there. De Gaulle seems to invest less hope in that, to be looking more to London. But the final decision to go to London, I think, is taken because he sees it as the only thing to do. There's a very interesting moment there, actually, something that I came across in the archives quite recently, which is that when de Gaulle and Churchill write their. Well, their memoirs and their accounts of the Second World War, Churchill's history of the Second World War, they exchange them. So when they write about each other, they send what they've written to each other for checking. And Churchill writes a very characteristically dramatic romantic account of de Gaulle's departure from London, with de Gaulle being kind of almost pulled aboard the aircraft at the last moment by Churchill's emissary, as the French, the patentist police, are almost about to arrest him. And de Gaulle, very characteristically, who never likes romantic accounts and always thinks Churchill is far too much of a romantic, writes back and says, no, no, no, it was much more banal than that. Your account is far too Romanesque, which means a kind of too much of a storybook account. So de Gaulle presents his departure from France as, in some ways, quite a natural and undramatic thing.
- [54:51]
Dr. Charles Petito
Would it be true to say that without Churchill and General Edward Spears, that de Gaulle would never have been able to found the Free French Movement?
- [54:58]
Professor Richard Finnan
Yes. So de Gaulle is still quite obscure when he gets to Britain. People in Britain haven't really heard of him. As I say, he's come to Britain for the first time on 9 June, then arrived definitively on 17 June. He is also not much known in France. So when he broadcasts to France, French people don't know who he is. They don't know how to spell his name, they don't know what he looks like. They think he's a short, fat man because that's how Vichy cartoons portray him eventually. Although, of course, he's in fact a tall, thin man at this stage. So that in that sense, de Gaulle doesn't have very much going for him. He is not a very established politician, he's not a very senior general. So as the British sometimes point out, de Gaulle is a general de brigade, and in the British army, that's the equivalent of what they call a brigadier. So de Gaulle is not even a general in the British perception. He's also very importantly, not a head of government. People often talk about De Gaulle, as if he's head of an exile government. That's not true. There is a government in Bordeaux and then eventually in Vichy under Petain. The British, even though they don't like that government, always say, this is the legitimate government of France. And of course, the Americans, but also the Canadians and the South Africans, people who are part of the British Empire, have ambassadors at Vichy. They recognize that Vichy is a legal government. So in that sense, de Gaulle's constitutional position is always very weak. And to come back to your question, the key at first is Churchill's personal support. So it is Churchill personally, really, who says we must give de Gaulle the chance to broadcast to France, which he does famously, on the 18th of June, 1940, almost the kind of founding moment of wartime resistance. So that's very important. And it's also Churchill who uses this phrase, I recognize you as the head of the Free French, the leader of the Free French, wherever they may be, which is quite an ambiguous phrase, really. So he's not recognizing me as the head of the government or anything like that, but he's giving this quite loosely defined form of recognition. But that's the key to what de Gaulle is able to do in 1940.
- [57:23]
Dr. Charles Petito
Why did the debacle that was the Dakar operation in the fall of 1940 not sink de Gaulle and his movement?
- [57:30]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think it doesn't sink in partly because the British at this stage still have relatively modest expectations of de Gaulle, so that Churchill has recognized him. But I think Churchill still assumes that de Gaulle is going to be a primarily military figure. So it's this classic kind of misunderstanding. De Gaulle sees himself as a primarily political figure. The British think, well, his job is going to be to command troops in battle, and he may eventually command a kind of French legion, really, under British control. That's what they're thinking he's going to do. So in that sense, Dakar is obviously a kind of military defeat. But, you know, generals have military defeats. The British can accept that. So I think it's very personally devastating for de Gaulle. Some accounts. De Gaulle contemplates suicide after the Dakar expedition, or the failure of Dakar. And especially, I think de Gaulle is very hurt by the fact that other French soldiers have fired on his troops. So the idea of Frenchmen shedding each other's blood, I think is very painful for him. But the British don't withdraw their support at this stage, of course, Spears, Churchill's emissary, is still a supporter of de Gaulle, and Churchill more or less continues his support. And then of course, although Dakar fails, de Gaulle does stay in Africa and does acquire quite important territories in Africa that rally behind him, which give him an independent base. So in a funny kind of way, even though Dakar fails, de Gaulle does derive advantages from the whole kind of African expedition, which means that he's moving from being really a man who just owns, you know, has control of an office in central London and a small group of people who've come over to join him. He moves from that to someone who controls huge swathes of territory and potentially can begin to recruit significant military forces.
- [59:36]
Dr. Charles Petito
Was there a conflict between de Gaulle and the British over Syria and the Lebanon? First time that de Gaulle had. And the British had a serious falling out.
- [59:46]
Professor Richard Finnan
There's degrees of tension between de Gaulle and the British all the time, partly because of de Gaulle's personality, but that's the first very spectacular falling out. Yeah.
- [59:56]
Dr. Charles Petito
What was the nature of Churchill's relationship with President Roosevelt?
- [59:59]
Professor Richard Finnan
So Churchill. Churchill says to his private secretary, John COLOLVILLE, after the Second World War, a very interesting phrase he uses, he says, no lover ever studied his mistress's whims more assiduously than I studied those of President Roosevelt. So that he knows that Roosevelt is really crucial for British survival. And he knows it's his job to be friends with Roosevelt. They're not necessarily natural friends. I think Churchill has actually been to the United states in the 1930s and not met Roosevelt. He writes about Roosevelt in Great Contemporaries, but it's not, in fact, an uncritical essay that he writes about Roosevelt. He says that he's rather hostile to what he sees as Roosevelt's kind of social radicalism. He talks about Roosevelt hunting down rich men as if they're not noxious wild beasts, I think. So. It's not kind of obvious that these two men are going to get along, but Churchill makes a decision that it's his job for them to get along. And I think he does come to admire Roosevelt hugely. And like, as with a lot of circumstances where one absolutely needs someone, it's also, in a way, easy to become affectionate towards them.
- [61:17]
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- [61:47]
Dr. Charles Petito
Would you concur with Timothy Bouverie's observation that while Churchill had a genuine liking for Roosevelt, Roosevelt did not really reciprocate these feelings?
- [61:55]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think Roosevelt is a cooler man than Churchill, you know, cooler in terms of his emotions and his judgment and so on. So I think he probably doesn't entirely reciprocate them. I think both men mythologized the relationship a bit. Arthur Schlesinger, who knows all sorts of people, including Churchill's one time daughter in law, Pamela Harriman, as she becomes, has a very nice line in his diaries at one point where he says Churchill and Roosevelt liked the idea of liking each other, but didn't necessarily like each other. So they both kind of certainly construct the relationship in ways that suits them. But as I say, I think Roosevelt is probably the cooler of the two people. And of course a key thing is that Roosevelt is controlling this huge military power. So once Roosevelt comes into the war, then the United States is really the dominant participant in the Second World War. It's fighting in all sorts of different theaters, it's mobilizing its economy. So Roosevelt has lots of different things to think about. And Churchill is. He's not quite a pawn on the chessboard, but let's say he's a rook or a bishop on the chessboard.
- [63:14]
Dr. Charles Petito
Why did de Gaulle enjoy such bad relations with the Americans almost to the end of the war?
- [63:19]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think de Gaulle, unlike Churchill, first of all, he has no emotional relationship with the United States. He's never been there until 1944. I think obviously Churchill has an American mother. Churchill has spent a lot of time in America. So Churchill is moved by America. Churchill admires America. And Churchill particularly has a view very common among bits of British society that in some way United States is the successor to Britain, that the United States is going to kind of pick up the torch. And of course the idea of picking up the torch becomes very important in the late 30s and 1940 when it does sometimes seem that Britain might go down and that America will be the place where, you know, civilization is defended. Now, de Gaulle never has that kind of relationship. I think he understands the United States as a huge military industrial power and he's kind of cold bloodedly realistic about what that means. He knows, just like Churchill knows, that the United States is a crucial player in the Second World War. He is offended by some of the things the Americans do. So he's obviously offended by the fact the Americans maintain diplomatic relations with Vichy, which obviously means that de Gaulle is always more cut out of the picture as far as the Americans are concerned. He's offended by the fact that the Americans sponsor another French general who comes out of France in 1942, General Giraud, who is really a kind of supporter of Peter in terms of his internal politics, but anti German. The Americans sponsor him as an alternative leader of the Free French, really, in a bid to kind of eclipse de Gaulle. So that obviously contributes to hostility between him and the Americans and him and Roosevelt. I think one should say two things, though. One of which is that de Gaulle is actually quite admired in a lot of American public opinion during the war. So people like the journalist Walter Lippman admire de Gaulle. So part of de Gaulle's strength rings from the fact that even when he's on very bad terms with Roosevelt, and especially, of course, with the Secretary of State, with Cordell Hull, he's sometimes on good terms with US Public opinion. I think one should also say that because de Gaulle is realistic, and perhaps sometimes more realistic than Churchill, about the kind of realities behind the war. De Gaulle does, in fact, understand something of Roosevelt's position. He does understand that Roosevelt is running this huge chessboard on which de Gaulle is not even a rook or a bishop. He's a pawn. And I think de Gaulle does know that's true and does understand why Roosevelt has to make kind of ruthless big decisions in which he can't necessarily allow for concerns about France or de Gaulle to get in the way of these decisions.
- [66:18]
Dr. Charles Petito
What did Roosevelt make of de Gaulle and what did de Gaulle make of Roosevelt?
- [66:23]
Professor Richard Finnan
So they only meet, I think, twice. They don't know each other very well. As I say, there's not much emotional investment on either side. They don't kind of need, in the way that Churchill and Roosevelt, I think, kind of need to define their relationship in a certain way. De Gaulle and Roosevelt never have that kind of relationship. I think, as I say, that de Gaulle is quite sympathetic to Roosevelt. He does. Although he sometimes crosses Roosevelt and sometimes feels the need to publicly quarrel with Roosevelt, he does understand the big picture of what Roosevelt is having to do. Roosevelt's view of de Gaulle is sometimes one of amused contempt. So he describes de Gaulle in quite kind of mocking terms at times. Churchill says something interesting when he's talking to de Gaulle just before D Day, and he says, you must go to the United States and you must kind of make friends with Roosevelt. And he says, roosevelt thinks you're a mystic. And I think probably Roosevelt does think de Gaulle is a mystic, which is a very shrewd kind of analysis. So de Gaulle is not a romantic, but he does have this kind of mystical view of France as something almost supernatural. And I think Roosevelt has probably understood that, and understood, you know, that doesn't necessarily exclude him. Also regarding de Gaulle as sometimes being absurd and annoying. Mystics obviously can be absurd and annoying. So I think in some ways, Roosevelt probably has quite an interesting understanding of de Gaulle. Roosevelt, of course, speaks good French, unlike Churchill, who thinks he speaks French, but almost certainly speaks something that French people find very hard to understand.
- [68:07]
Dr. Charles Petito
Yes. Why was the liberation of Paris in August 1944 the cause of such rancor between de Gaulle, the British, and the Americans?
- [68:16]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think it's. I mean, Paris is not an important military target for the British and the Americans. And the Americans especially, they think of the liberation of France primarily as a military operation. So it's simply that they need to get their troops on the ground and then get them heading east to attack Germany. So in this context, they're never very concerned with cities that are great symbols of Frenchness. So it seems possible at one time they'll just circumvent Paris. You know, why bother with Paris? You know, unless you want to go to the Louvre, why would an American need to control Paris? And they also, very importantly, at one point, seem indifferent to the fate of Strasbourg, which is in the east of France, which is this great kind of iconic city for a certain kind of French nationalism. So I think the French, the Americans see this very much in military terms. De Gaulle sees it much more in political terms and much more as a matter of things that are big political symbols. I think generally the liberation of France is a cause of conflict between Churchill and de Gaulle. So Churchill thinks that de Gaulle's focus on his kind of political needs is distracting from military necessities. But, of course, the liberation of Paris does, in the end, work out very much in de Gaulle's interests. So the Americans do agree that Paris will be liberated, and things are set up so this. It appears to be liberated by the French themselves. So it's French troops that enter Paris, although clearly the Germans only leave Paris because the prospect of vast American forces behind the French forces. So in that sense, de Gaulle gets what he wants, this kind of symbolic liberation of Paris in which he plays this very, very key role. There's key phrase that de Gaulle uses immediately on the day of the liberation of Paris really, when he speaks to the crowd, he says, paris broken, Paris mastered, but Paris liberated, liberated by itself. Paris liberet par lui meme, which is a wonderful phrase and which, of course, as lots of people point out, is completely untrue in the sense that Paris had not liberated itself. Allied armies were what really had liberated Paris, with the French playing this comparatively small symbolic role in it. But there is a wonderful kind of upshot to this, which is that when Churchill College, Cambridge is founded in the 1960s, de Gaulle gives a tapestry as a present for them to hang in the library, which is a very gracious thing for him to do. And sewn into the bottom of this tapestry are the words pari libere par Paris liberated by itself. So he gives a tapestry, but he gives it with words sewn into its fabric, which would have particularly exasperated Churchill.
- [71:20]
Dr. Charles Petito
If anything, did de Gaulle gain by his visit to Moscow in the fall of 1944?
- [71:25]
Professor Richard Finnan
Not very much, really. I mean, he needs the kind of symbol of being a head of government as he's finally become who's being treated on equal terms by the Soviet Union. But in reality, the Soviet Union is not treating on equal terms. Stalin is really very indifferent to de Gaulle. So Stalin thinks very much of the war in terms of divisions and military power. And he thinks the Free French, even at that stage, at the very end of the kind of history of the Free French, don't have very much military power. So Stalin is actually telegraphing Churchill, sort of saying, obviously, we'll do nothing with de Gaulle without your consent. So I think de Gaulle is at the beginning of a point where something that becomes very important to his policy later in his career is developing, which is the idea that you might play off great powers against each other. So de Gaulle always likes the idea that he has relations with more than one foreign power and that he can juggle between them. And for that reason, the entry of the Soviet Union into the Second World War had mattered to him, even though obviously historically he was a very strong anti Communist. But Stalin does not, in fact, give particular significance to de Gaulle. What Stalin has done, which is very important to de Gaulle, is that Stalin has told the French Communist Party, you must rally behind de Gaulle. We need successful resistance in France for military reasons. And for that reason, the Communist Party is kind of forbidden from launching its own independent interaction or anything like that, which is very, very useful to de Gaulle.
- [73:08]
Dr. Charles Petito
Why were both men out of office within less than a year after the end of the war?
- [73:14]
Professor Richard Finnan
Churchill because he's defeated in the General election. So Churchill, you must remember, leads his political party, the Conservatives, into three general elections and loses two of those and wins one of them very narrowly in 1951. So Churchill is not actually a very good electoral politician a lot of the time, although he's a man who always accepts the results of elections without quibble. He loses that election, I think, because in some ways it turns out that the whole British people have taken the view of Churchill that the British ruling class took in 1940, which, which is that they say Churchill is the man we need for the desperate circumstances of 1940, but not necessarily the man we need to be the architect of the post war peace. Clearly, support for the Labour Party, support for some kind of socialism has grown quite a lot during the war. The Labour ministers who served in Churchill's government are often seen to have done a good job. Servicemen abroad. We know of course how servicemen voted because their votes were counted separately. And although a lot of them didn't vote, those of them who did vote tended to vote for the Labour Party. A very striking passage in the diaries and in memoirs of Michael Howard, great military historian. So he's serving in Italy with the Coldstream Guards, very posh Regiment in 1944 and the Coldstream Guards, the officers decide that the enlisted men, the other ranks, they must be given a kind of mock election to prepare them for democracy. And of course the officers in the Coldstream Guards assume that these heroic men who've been fighting against the Germans for all these years, they're all going to vote in favor of Winston Churchill. And they make speeches explaining the various cases and so on and so forth. At the end of them, this battle scarred 24 year old sergeant stands up and says, well, that's all very well, but we're working class men, we vote Labour and all the Coldstream Guards kind of cheer. And you can see that strangely among the very people who fought the war for Churchill, they're not necessarily in favour of Churchill as a peacetime political leader. So he has what for him is a very difficult defeat in the election of 1945 and then a Labour government when he becomes leader of the opposition. I think de Gaulle is a more complicated figure as always. So De Gaulle chooses to go. What happens is that De Gaulle is head of government for a time. He adjusts to this with some difficulty. One has to remember not just that De Gaulle has never been a member of a political party, but as far as I know, De Gaulle has Never voted until 1945. He votes for the first time in his mid-50s, because before 1940, army officers in France did not have the vote. So he's got no conception of conventional politics. Things like Parliament are a complete mystery to him. He really doesn't like parliamentary politics, and so he finds that period quite difficult. I'm not sure he has a very clear vision of what he's going to do with France at the end of the war. So he has general conceptions. He believes in a strong executive power. He wants to make Parliament weaker, he wants to have a firmer, stronger government. But I'm not sure he really knows how he's going to achieve that. And then on the 20th of January 1946, he resigns. Suddenly unexpected. He doesn't have to resign, but he resigns kind of because he's not getting his way, which is very typical of de Gaulle. De Gaulle is a great resigner and a great person who's threatening to resign a lot of the time. So whereas Churchill doesn't want to walk away from power, De Gaulle chooses to do so.
- [77:01]
Dr. Charles Petito
What, if anything, positive can be said about Churchill's second term in office? What Sir Anthony Seleter has called Churchill's Indian summer,
- [77:11]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think, not very much positive. So that Churchill, by this stage, is old, he's tired, he's not well, he has a stroke when he's in office. I think he is not a good peacetime politician. I don't think he necessarily understands the economy. He doesn't understand Britain's very diminished status. So he still has a lot of belief that he will be able to play a big diplomatic role negotiating between the Soviet Union and the United States in ways that I think are just not realistic by the 1950s. I think also very importantly, the British ruling classes have rallied behind Churchill in 1940, knowing what they're getting into and knowing that they're going to have to kind of control Churchill and channel his extraordinary energies. I think in some ways, by 1951, they're too deferential. So people don't argue with Churchill in the same way. It's very notable that if you read the private diaries of people like Harold Macmillan, the man who eventually becomes British Prime Minister, they often disapprove of what Churchill is saying or doing, but they find it much harder to argue with him by this stage. So I think that is, on the whole, an unsuccessful government. And curiously enough, I think the people who regard it as particularly unsuccessful are Churchill's fellow conservatives. So especially Churchill is very keen that there should not be a dispute with the trade unions in the 1950s. And lots of people argue, well, trade union power grew during the 1950s in ways that ultimately damaged the British economy, partly because of Churchill.
- [78:52]
Dr. Charles Petito
Why was de Gaulle called back to power in May of 1958?
- [78:56]
Professor Richard Finnan
He is called back partly because there's a crisis in Algeria. So there's been a rebellion in Algeria, which has started in 1954, nationalist rebellion. This becomes increasingly difficult for the Fourth Republic, the regime that's been established after the Second World War to contain and control. De Gaulle actually, I think, probably thinks some point in the early 1950s that his political career is finished. He thinks he's going to retire definitively and just write his memoirs. And I think de Gaulle could have lived with that. De Gaulle is not a man who needs power or needs political office. He thinks he can do good things for France, but he doesn't kind of need to be in the Elysee Palace. But he also certainly wants to come back to power, if he can do. And so, partly that a general crisis of the regime brews up around Algeria, partly de Gaulle's supporters, so people who remain quite powerful in government circles in Paris begin to kind of plot to bring him back. Partly, de Gaulle himself plots to bring himself back, although he always pretends that he doesn't. He always likes to pretend that he is simply a kind of Olympian figure who is summoned back by France in 1958. That's not quite true. It always seems to me that de Gaulle is really a kind of spider spinning his web around the political regime by 1958 and knowing that what he's doing. And then finally, the thing that triggers his return is that there's a rebellion by the army in Algeria. The army rebels because they don't think the government is providing. The government in Paris is providing strong leadership, and they rebel. And some of them then call for the return of de Gaulle. And that's what provokes his return. So he comes back first as head of government, and then under his aegis, a new constitution is drafted, and then he becomes head of state, the president of the new fist Republic.
- [80:55]
Dr. Charles Petito
When and why did De Gaulle decide to escape? The Algerian millstone, he would say, did
- [81:01]
Professor Richard Finnan
say that he always had a kind of view that this is what he was going to do. He likes the idea that he has a plan for Algeria. And de Gaulle likes to present himself as a man who kind of always knew what he was doing. His enemies also think he always knew what he was doing. And one of the reasons why they come to hate him so much is they think he has plotted to betray French Algeria as they would see it from the beginning. I don't think that's true. I think probably de Gaulle does think when he comes back to power in 1958, that he is indeed going to preserve French Algeria, the French presence in Algeria, which of course is what lots of people who helped him to come back wanted him to do. And I think he then decides, over quite a long period, slowly adjusting himself to the fact that he's going to have to give up Algeria. I think one crucial quality of De Gaulle is that he's very good at maintaining ambiguity. He always seems like a completely decisive person, but actually he often takes quite a long time to make his decisions. And he covers this in a kind of sphinx like ability to hide his real intentions, or even to hide the fact that he doesn't always have clear intentions, so that he moves towards Algerian independence through a succession of kind of carefully judged formulae that might mean all sorts of different things. So when he first addresses the crowd when he goes to Algeria immediately after his return to power, he says famous phrase, je vous AIs compuis, I have understood you, which obviously could mean lots of different things, although the crowd think it means he's understood their desire for Algeria to remain part of France. And then later on, he talks, for example, about Algerie Algerien and Algerian Algeria, which is a wonderfully meaningless term, but which covers up what is really an evolution of his thought towards Algeria. Eventually he talks about auto determination, self determination. Remember, Douglas Johnson always used to claim, I'm never sure if this is actually true, but that when the French ambassador to the United nations spoke in the United nations, he tried to explain that auto determination did not mean self determination. So he said this in French, auto determination ne veu pardieu self determination. And of course, the simultaneous translators had no idea what he was saying and translated this as self determination does not mean self determination. But that's, I think, very typical of the fact that de Gaulle is actually using words that are precisely difficult to translate into English and perhaps difficult to translate into any kind of concrete terms, which really reflects the fact that his thought is evolving. And then I think probably some point in 1960, he finally decides, okay, France will leave. And de Gaulle always, when he finally makes a decision, usually makes a very radical decision. So I think once he decides France is going to leave and okay, that's it, and no further messing.
- [84:08]
Dr. Charles Petito
Why did De Gaulle Veto repeatedly the UK's application to join the Common Market? And was there an aspect of petty revenge for what he regarded as his mistreatment by the British during the war?
- [84:20]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think probably not. I think de Gaulle is not a petty man. I think the British are probably rather tactless. So the British always assumed that de Gaulle would be grateful for their support in 1940, and that the right way to kind of win him round is to remind him of their support in 1940. I think, in fact, de Gaulle is a very proud man, and the one thing he can never forgive is someone who's done him a favor. So I think Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, by this stage, probably doesn't handle things well. But I think primarily de Gaulle vetoes British membership because he thinks that Britain is somehow not a properly European country because he thinks its relationships with the United States are too close. He very often refers back to the big argument he has with Churchill just before D day, where Churchill says, between you and the United States, we will always choose the United States. And de Gaulle thinks about that really, for the rest of his life. It has a big effect on how he regards Britain. I think also he's very, very hostile to the British Commonwealth, which sounds strange because you might think, well, the British Commonwealth is a fairly trivial and, you know, kind of nominal organization. But de Gaulle is a huge believer in the idea of national sovereignty and the idea of the commonwealth, which involves these different countries which recognize the monarch as head of state, the British monarch as head of state, but on the other hand, also have their own independent governments. De Gaulle is always rather troubled by this. And so I think he just doesn't see how the British Commonwealth and this rather strange British constitutional structure can come into France. And then, of course, there are always some rather more low and simple motives. So the common agricultural policy, which is a big benefit to French farmers, he thinks this will be destabilized by British entry into the Common Market.
- [86:12]
Dr. Charles Petito
Was the foreign policy in the period after 1962 more and more about upsetting the British and the Americans than it about raison d't?
- [86:19]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think it's. It's about partly. I mean, American Secretary of State has this famous phrase about the British Empire. He says, you know, Britain in the early 60s has lost an empire and not yet found a role. I think de Gaulle's key achievement is that as France loses an empire, he does find a role for France. And I think raison d' etat is indeed a great deal of this. I think he's concerned that France should appear to be an independent power which is not part of either of the two great power blocs so not part of the American power bloc, not part of the Soviet power bloc. That of course explains especially the decision that in some ways seems most shocking, which is the decision to withdraw from NATO's Combined Command structures in 1966 and which obviously greatly offends the Americans, understandably. I think in reality, de Gaulle always knows that France is a member of the Western alliance. He knows that when the chips were down, France's defense rests more with the United States than with the Soviet Union. He knows the realistic threat to France's interests comes from the Soviet Union. But nonetheless, he wants to maintain this air of independence, this image of independence. And he does also launch all sorts of kind of independent diplomatic initiatives. He tries to make France into a kind of leader of the Third World, as it's coming to be called. He is against American policy in Vietnam. And he also tries to kind of break with the whole idea of international blocs. So even the Soviet Union he regards as a kind of strange international conglomeration. And he always really insists, what I'm really talking about is Russia here. He thinks Russia kind of eternal Russia is the key thing and that therefore communist ideology and the Soviet Federation, these things matter less. I think he, I mean, he obviously gets on, knows that he needs to have good relations with the Americans. He would have preferred probably Nixon to win the presidential election over Kennedy. He certainly doesn't like Lyndon Johnson as on a personal level, but he does maintain relations with the United States and he does succeed in the end in kind of creating this period where France is able to balance other countries. And he also, I think, understands this is a moment of kind of equilibrium in the Cold War. The two sides have balanced each other out. And in these circumstances, a small country or a medium sized country that stands between these two blocks can exercise rather more power than its real economic and military weight would justify.
- [89:13]
Dr. Charles Petito
What was reaction to the Ben bell affair of 1965?
- [89:18]
Professor Richard Finnan
He's, I mean, he's cynical about these things. So, you know, he, he doesn't particularly, I think, care. It doesn't terribly matter. He's not greatly concerned with legality, human rights, things that move a lot of other politicians.
- [89:36]
Dr. Charles Petito
How did de Gaulle mishandle the student uprising in May 1968? And what could he have done differently? In retrospect,
- [89:46]
Professor Richard Finnan
he has a strange relationship with the students in 1968. So in some ways extraordinary that may sound, he has things in common with the students. So there's a famous article published in 1967, France is bored, an article in Le Monde which Says, you know, France is prosperous. There are no big problems anymore. The Algerian war is over, but it's kind of dull for everybody now. And the author of this article, a man called Vienson Pontius, French journalist, says, of course, the person who is most bored is De Gaulle himself, who's, after all, a man of great causes, a man of great dramas. And, you know, got to remember, in the early 1960s, de Gaulle is subject of repeated assassination attempts. So there's a sense that his own life has become much less dramatic. So in some ways, he doesn't like the kind of easy consumer prosperity of the late 1960s. And lots of students feel the same way. He also, as I say, has condemned America in Vietnam. Lots of students feel the same way. And he's also very much associated with the myth of the resistance in France. And the students are very moved by the idea of anti Nazi resistance. That's something that distinguishes French students, say, from American students during the 1960s, is that French students are to some extent looking to a heroic past as something they want to recreate. But the key problem for De Gaulle is by now he's an old man. He's kind of indissolubly wedded to a certain image of the past. And so it's inevitable that the student events will slightly pass him by. The key thing about 1968 is not that people are particularly anti Gaulist. As I say, in the early 60s, people had been ferociously anti Gaulist, and the French extreme right parts of the French military had tried repeatedly to kill de Gaulle. Now, in a funny kind of way that actually plays into his hands, it makes him the great hero of a drama. By 1968, the students just regard de Gaulle as a kind of irrelevant old man, and they don't talk about him very much. And if they do, they usually do so in slightly mocking terms rather than hostile terms. And very importantly, his own ministers, who up to that stage have been very subordinate figures, begin to take control of events. So this is particularly his prime minister, Georges Pompidou, who actually has a much better 1968 than de Gaulle himself does. So Pompidou kind of takes control of events and decides what will happen for a while. There is this very strange moment at the end of May 1968, so really at the end of the student uprising, where de Gaulle suddenly and completely unexpectedly flies to Germany to go to a French military base in Germany, and no one knows this is going to happen. They all think he's going to his country house, and no one knows at first, even where de Gaulle has gone, he just disappears for a while, and no one knows what he's seeking to do. They don't know whether he's going because he's actually fleeing the country, because he's frightened for his own safety, or whether he's going because he's mobilizing the army to kind of retake France from the students, or whether he just doesn't know what he's going to do. But because of this, for a brief moment, de Gaulle again becomes the center of the French drama. Suddenly everybody is talking about de Gaulle again, when they've rather ignored him for most of the previous few weeks. And in a strange way, de Gaulle being absent is the thing that makes him most present again in French public life. And then he comes back to France and briefly seems to take control of things again. So he makes a radio broadcast, very importantly, a radio broadcast, because of course, it recalls his wartime broadcasts where the French have heard him on the radio, and because his television broadcasts by this stage portray him as an old man, whereas when he talks on the radio, it's as if it's the youthful de Gaulle coming back. So that briefly he becomes the centre of attention again. There's a big pro Gaullist demonstration. Oddly enough, the biggest demonstration of May 1968 is actually a demonstration in favor of de Gaulle by political right wingers. But in a way, de Gaulle now becomes trapped, because he's always been most successful when he's been something un other than a conventional conservative. He is a conservative, but his two great moments in history were 1940, when he rebelled against the army, against military dictatorship, against an armistice with Nazi Germany, when he took a position that was different from that of most other conservatives. And then again during the Algerian war, when he decides that France is going to leave Algeria. And those are both ruptures with conventional conservatism. 1968. Suddenly it looks as if he's been taken prisoner by conventional conservatives, because those are the people who've rallied to support him. And I think he feels slightly uncomfortable for the rest of his time in power. He gets a huge majority in parliament in the legislative elections of the summer of 1968, but he doesn't seem very comfortable with that majority. He seems to think, these are not really my people. And then he almost contrives a reason to resign. In 1969, he holds a referendum he doesn't have to hold, and he chooses to resign when he doesn't get the result he wants from that referendum.
- [95:23]
Dr. Charles Petito
Oh, fawn, do these two Men have a liking for each other. The only one gets this strong impression that Churchill, Aromantic had a deep liking for de Gaulle as a man and as a historical figure. Or as in the case of de Gaulle, how would you describe his view of Churchill?
- [95:39]
Professor Richard Finnan
They respect each other, for sure. De Gaulle, Churchill is a romantic. And the strange thing is that although de Gaulle is not a romantic in the sense that he does not think in romantic terms himself, he's a romantic figure in the sense that there is something so heroic about his kind of lonely stand in 1940. So I suppose the most famous joke that Churchill ever makes about de Gaulle is he thinks he's Joan of Arc, but I can't get my bloody bishops to burn him. Which is a funny remark, but actually it's interesting because Churchill has a huge admiration for Joan of Arc, one of the historical figures he most admires. And I think there's a sense in which he greatly admires de Gaulle, sometimes almost wants to be de Gaulle. He almost wants to be this great kind of chivalric figure standing against impossible odds. De Gaulle, I think, understands Churchill. So, first of all, de Gaulle does recognise Churchill in the summer of 1940, as this man who's going to fight on whatever happens, and that's very important to him. I think de Gaulle also understands things about Churchill that are to do with the way Churchill kind of crafts his image, with his sense of. Of his own historical importance, which is something that de Gaulle has too. So de Gaulle has this wonderful phrase about Churchill. He says he's an artist of history. And I think that sums up both men in lots of ways. They are indeed artists of history, people who are kind of treating their own political careers almost as if they're works of art. But I think in terms of something that goes beyond respect. Do they actually like each other? I think I'm always struck by their very last ever meeting. So they meet twice in 1960, and the first of these is when de Gaulle makes a state visit to London. And it's a rather uncomfortable meeting at that stage, an embarrassing meeting, because Churchill is really very old and doesn't fully understand what's going on. And de Gaulle is now a very grand figure who doesn't even want to see Churchill, really. So it's an awkward meeting they have, but then six months later, they meet in France in more informal circumstances, and they meet in the south of France, which Churchill always loves, and they meet more privately. And Churchill's private secretary sends home a report to the British Foreign Office about this meeting. And he says very movingly that de Gaulle was affectionate and charming throughout the meeting. So affection and charm might not be qualities you always associate with de Gaulle, but on that very last meeting with Churchill, those are the qualities that he displays.
- [98:21]
Dr. Charles Petito
You wanted people to take one thing away from your book, Professor. What would it be?
- [98:25]
Professor Richard Finnan
I think it would be the asymmetry of their career. So the fact that these are men who are comparable but different and different in revealing ways. I suppose also it would be something which I think de Gaulle very much understands and Churchill perhaps finds much more difficult to accept, which is that in the end, Britain and France are middle sized powers in the middle of the 20th century, which are in decline. And the strange thing is that although we think of these as the great men of victory, actually they're largely molded by defeat. So I suppose for the French, the key Defeat is obviously 1940, and the key defeat for the British is one that may be slightly forgotten now, but in February 1942, the fall of Singapore, which is an absolutely heartbroken blow for Churchill and which signals the beginning of the end of the British Empire. And so I think both men live at a time when their countries have to adjust to a much more modest status in the world. And I think de Gaulle in the end is better at doing that than Churchill. Better at doing that, partly because he is able to cover decline with a kind of rhetoric of greatness. But deep down, de Gaulle is a more kind of realistic person. There's a wonderful moment when de Gaulle is talking as he decides to abandon Algeria. And he says to the French people that he, de Gaulle is a nostalgic. And he says, I was born in the 19th century and I look back to the age of the fleet at sail and the sweetness of the oil lamps in the evening, and he makes this wonderfully evocative speech about kind of late 19th century Europe. And then he says, but that's over and there's no point in politics without realism. I think that's de Gaulle's key insight.
- [100:12]
Dr. Charles Petito
Would you say that Enoch Powell's famous dictum that all political lives end in failure applies to both men?
- [100:18]
Professor Richard Finnan
Yes, I think it does. I mean, Enoch Powell, of course, is a huge admirer of de Gaulle. And I think de Gaulle, especially de Gaulle, of course, I'm not quite sure whether he's a Christian, but he's certainly a man who thinks very deeply about mortality. And I think the sense of kind of, oh, de Gaulle is always conscious that in the end, you know, he's going to end up in the graveyard at Colobili des Eglise. And so I think, in that sense, yes, de Gaulle does appreciate the kind of ultimate frailty of all human endeavor.
- [100:48]
Dr. Charles Petito
On our observation, I'd like to thank you very much, professor, for being so kind to speak to us. Sam.