Allies at War: the Bitter Rivalry Among Churchill, Roosevelt, and De Gaulle

by Simon Berthon, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2001, 356 pp., $26.00 cloth.

Scheduled to be a BBC/PBS television series, Allies at War explores the discord the world did not see hidden behind the allied leader's united front. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Charles De Gaulle held the destiny of the Free World in their hands as Nazi forces stormed through Europe in the 1940s. Inspiring their troops and their nations with confidence in victory, these three statesmen stood firmly together against the axis powers in public. In private, however, their relationships were marked by contention, distrust, duplicity, and ruthlessness.

Berthon neatly traces the steadily escalating political environment that made the disputes inevitable. Roosevelt was a rigid anti-imperialist. Aside from defeating the enemy, his long-term aim was to disband all of Europe's empire, including the British and the French. Churchill, caught in the middle, was determined to preserve the British Empire and resist the Nazis, but had to have the cooperation of his two allies. De Gaulle fanatically wanted to regain all of France and maintain her empire as it had been before the Nazi occupation and the Vichy collaborator government. In his view, cooperation was secondary to his main goals. Opposition between the three increasingly eroded negotiations that not only significantly colored allied policy during the war, but also colored relations of De Gaulle's France with Britain and America.

With the fall of France in 1940, the Nazis would occupy two-thirds of the country and the remaining one-third would be governed by the collaborating new state based at the Spa town of Vichy. Two Frances would emerge, the Vichy France and the Free France of De Gaulle. Vichy France broke off relations with Britain in July 1940 when the British navy attacked a portion of the French fleet at Oran in Algeria to end the possibility of it falling into German hands. Not yet in the war, the break with England made it more important for the United States to maintain relations with Vichy France. This was an effort to reduce Germany's influence to a minimum, prevent the surrender to the Axis of the French Fleet or French bases in Africa, and serve as a channel of intelligence to Axis plans and activities. De Gaulle, starting from nothing in England, gradually built up the forces of the Free French, but could not convince his allies that France could be restored to the status of a major power.

Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt so doubted the loyalty of General De Gaulle that they kept the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa a secret from him, as well as the Normandy landings, and excluded him from the Yalta Conference. Nevertheless, De Gaulle had 1,300,000 men under him at the end of the war. This earned him a place in the peace settlement, with a little help from Churchill. Britain knew that France would be a power to reckon with during the post-war period. Prophetically, Charles De Gaulle would become President of France. He lost no opportunity to chastise the United States and even blocked Britain's early attempts to join the European Common Market. This legacy, that affected both Britain and the United States at crucial points of their post-war development, is rooted in the extraordinary relationships between three titanic figures that became allies at war.

This clearly written and solidly researched work would have been enhanced by footnotes or more extensive endnotes. It would also eliminate confusion for the reader if foreign phrases were translated. Nevertheless, this book has much to offer for those interested in international relations.

DENVER FUGATE

Radcliff, KY

COPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Army Armor Center
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group