Thursday, April 29, 2021

Julian Jackson's book on Charles De Gaulle


Now, I'll tell you how I felt about de Gaulle. About two years before de Gaulle came back into office I began to tell Dulles, I said, now look, Foster, our only hope in Europe is to get de Gaulle back in. He is the only man that will save that country. Now, let's make no mistake -- this man is not easy to deal with and, I said, as a matter of fact, that I was probably the only American that was welcome in his house. But the thing is, only he can save France, and France is going down the drain.

(Dwight Eisenhower, Interview Transcript)



I haven't been posting for a while thanks to commentator Jason. As a result of his recommendation to read Julian Jackson's biography of Charles De Gaulle, I've ended up falling down a rabbit hole of contemporary french history, European politics, philosophy and theology which I'm still trying to make my way through.

I've always had a great respect for Charles De Gaulle, ever since I read my first biography about him. I have always considered him one of the great statesmen of the 20th C. In light of the new material that I've been acquainted with I have now re-evaluated my opinion of the man and regard him as its greatest. I say that with the full recognition of the other famous leaders and their circumstances. Perhaps his nearest competitors are Konrad Adenauer, Lee Kwan Yew and Theodore Roosevelt but for a variety of reasons I feel that none of them was able to achieve so much with the hand that fortune had dealt them.

But first to Julian Jackson's biography.

A Certain Idea of France has achieved many accolades and I must admit the book is well written. I had actually read bits of pieces of it in the past but had not tackled it in its totality before. Jackson is a great story teller and gives a great account of De Gaulle's tumultuous life. The book is great on detail without getting boring and it does appear that Jackson is trying to give a fair and balanced account of De Gaulle's life. However, it does appear to me that the French critics of the book are to a certain degree right, in that the book gives a very British view of his life. And what I think the French critics are saying is that the British interpret De Gaulle incorrectly and I think that they are right.

The problem with Jackson's book is while he gives a good account of the life of the General but in my impression there's a "spin" to it, either conscious or unconscious, that is really not corroborated by an investigation of the facts which leads me to the conclusion that the author did not really understand his subject matter. He gave a good rendition of his life without understanding the man.

The Anglo-Saxon approach to De Gaulle tends to emphasise the negative experience of his personality as if this was an unavoidable feature of a "man of history." He is described a prickly, petty, cold, aloof, arrogant, ungrateful and spiteful man, especially to the British.  One really gets the impression that De Gaulle was a unnecessary "pain in the arse" and did everything he could to sabotage the latent goodwill of the British and Americans toward him. Furthermore, while Jackson, does acknowledge De Gaulle's patriotism it does appear to me that Jackson suggests that there is calculating Machiavellian component to it that poisons it's sincerity.

The impression that I got from Jackson was the De Gaulle was a disagreeable politician that was scheming for somewhat cynically for French dominance, particularly in Europe. And then while looking a bit deeper into some of the issues involved, I came upon this interesting interview with Dwight Eisenhower which gave me the impression of a totally different man. (It's worth a read)

Something wasn't right.

Part of my trip through the rabbit hole has been trying to work out which of the two versions of De Gaulle is correct. It's my opinion that Eisenhower's assessment is a truer understanding the man.

And that's where things get really interesting. In trying to understand De Gaulle you begin realise the greatness of his being and the vision he was trying to implement with the limited means at his disposal, all the time being undermined by "friends" and enemies. In a sort of super-Nietzschean sense, it was not enough for him to will himself to power, he willed France to power, particularly "a certain idea of it". The tragedy of his story is that the French people in 1968--as in 1939--weren't up to the task, and as Michael Houllebecq has demonstrated in his novels, they preferred mediocrity to greatness.

De Gaull's conception of French "greatness" was based up a deep sense of its history and culture. He saw France as a "light to the world" and it was only when the French were fulfilling this role were they truly themselves. At the bottom of this is an identitarian conception of France which saw it as having a unique  role in the world.

Identity is a keen theme in the philosophy of De Gaulle and it's important to understand that he didn't want the world to be "French" as much as he wanted the world to be influenced by France. No where was this line of thinking more evident than his conception of the European Union which he saw as a "Europe of patries" where each nation maintained his identity as opposed to a supranational european state which suppressed them. He would have supported Brexit, not because he hated the British but because, in a certain sort of way and no matter how much it exasperated him, he loved them being British.

De Gaulle’s concern was that political decisions affecting Europe should be made primarily by national leaders attached to national realities as they sought to negotiate outcomes that would first benefit their nations and thereby Europe as a whole. No doubt, this demanded a degree of statesmanship which (de Gaulle would undoubtedly agree!) was probably beyond most national leaders. But to refer to “Europe” as a political entity without more-or-less immediately speaking about European nations risked, from de Gaulle’s standpoint, precipitating a slide into a highly technocratic conception of Europe: one which viewed the differences between European peoples which reflect the rich tapestry of European culture as atavisms that obstructed the realization of perpetual peace and an apolitical empire ruled by largely unaccountable bureaucrats.

Samuel Gregg

Jackson misses the point that much of De Gaulle's intransigence and rudeness--on many occasions completely justified--came about as result of his attempts to reassert both French and European identity against the homogenising influences of Modernity, particularly the Anglo variety.  It's interesting to see that one of his most pointed criticism of Churchill was that he subordinated the British identity and independence to that of the United States. De Gualle never allowed France to follow this course; to his core he believed in the primacy of identity.

Jackson frequently attributes De Gaulle's identitarian impulse as reaction to the "humiliations" of a "dependent France" suffered by the hands of Britain, U.S and Nazi Germany, but here I think he has also missed the mark.

De Gaulle was perhaps one of the most "intellectual" politicians of the 20th C.  He thought deeply about  about the issues of nation and state, politics, religion and history. He read widely and deeply and his identitarian politics were as a result of a deep understanding of the human condition and politics. De Gaulle was no reactionary, he was a positive identitarian.

But what also struck me while digging deeper into his life is just how important religion was to him and just how influenced he was influenced by many of the writers associated with the Nouvelle Theology movement: Bergson, Maritan, Bernanos, Mauriac, but most particularly Charles Peguy. While there is no doubt that he was quite "conservative" and sympathetic to Action Francaise, he was not cut of their cloth. If I have understood De Gaulle at all, then his vision of France was influenced by a new "Right Wing" version of Catholicism which was able to transcend the moribund traditionalism of the past while avoiding the idiocies of its "liberal" opposition.

People who have frequented this blog will know that I think that one of the reasons why Christianity is in decline is because it affected by a heresy akin to Buddhism which has sapped it of its vitality. What surprised me was that what De Gaulle embodied--and attempted to instill politically-- was a spirit of anti-buddhism which he drew from these "nouvelle theological" authors.  He wanted Christianity, France and Europe to live. Unfortunately, he was undermined by other.

The political Right--and I'm not including Conservative Inc. in this group--seems rudderless at the moment. I think there is a lot of profit to be made from studying De Gaulle and the authors that influenced him. His ideas on nation, identity, history and politics bring a different approach to right wing thought. While Julian Jackson's book is a good read and has chronicalled his life well you'll miss the man for the history and hence the book is not a good start.

15 comments:

  1. Right of Way6:03 am

    The reason the Right has no traction is because there is no Right that doesn't become Leftist.

    De Gaulle is praised for becoming a leftist, a 'progressive', but was really a leftist fascist where the State come first.

    "He managed to keep France together while taking steps to end the war, ******much to the anger of the Pieds-Noirs (ethnic French born in Algeria) and the military; both previously had supported his return to power to maintain colonial rule. *******"

    Note how the ethnic French and the military supported De Gaulle ... and were then betrayed.

    Just like with Trump and his supporters.

    That's no one to praise in any way. He was the same sell-out that every Western leader has been for over 50 years now.







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  2. Thank you for this very good post. The Eisenhower comments are very interesting!

    Will put this book on my to-do list.

    Am a bit reminded of David Fraser's biography of Frederick the Great -- had never seen him as a sympathetic figure before reading it.

    Small plug for Salazar as an underappreciated hero of C20.

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  3. Anonymous1:48 pm

    De Gaulle was an American vassal at the end of the day. France should have allied with the Soviets and demanded US troops leave Europe. If Hitler could do it why not de Gaulle? Realistically, he would have been whacked by the CIA if he tried. The rest of French and European history is baked into the cake-- their "right" (including the Catholic Church) would be the CIA/State Dept. approved version. If the old Great Powers didn't destroy each other in WWI this might have been avoided. With American domination of Europe, navel gazing about identity or nationhood or vitality doesn't mean much.

    Its the same with US conservatism--the philosophical debates between neocons and paleocons and libertarians and populists and agrarians and Catholics and evangelicals are all straw--at the end the positions backed by Wall Street, the oil majors, and the military industrial complex win.

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  4. Anonymous2:09 pm

    By 1945 everyone knew a "Europe of patries" couldn't work. It ends with extremely costly industrialized wars and white subgroups ethnically cleansing slightly different white subgroups. Some form of European federalism was necessary. Even fascists like Mosely and Otto Stasser saw this. The EU would have worked if they kicked out the Americans (somehow), maintained a conservative/Christian culture (somehow), made Latin the linqua franca of the Union and modernized it like the Zionists did with Hebrew (very plausible), and created an actual political union where tax dollars from Germany and France could be spent to develop Portugal and Italy (in the actual EU, this is impossible, and instead the poorer countries are forced to become debtors to the Germans.)

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  5. Anonymous10:43 pm

    "De Gaulle was an American vassal at the end of the day. France should have allied with the Soviets and demanded US troops leave Europe."

    Except he literally did that with the US presence and aid in VIETNAM, and subsequently saw French blood spilled by the hundreds of gallons just to see no return on investment for the French, and the Vietnamese driven from the arms of the United States into those of the Chi-Coms.

    That being said, I maintain that between De Gaulle and Petain, France was spared what should have been, on paper, an absolutely brutal fate during the second world war. The presence and fortitude of each of them saw France do what it needed to survive in it's given circumstances. Petain refused to see France reduced to a ruin by continuing to fight the victorious Germans, at the insistence of the British, and instead negotiated a place for France in the, "New European Order," and De Gaulle ensured that when that order fell apart, France was not wholesale subjected to the status of willing German vassal, in defeat.

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  6. @Right of Way

    Note how the ethnic French and the military supported De Gaulle ... and were then betrayed.

    You mean like the OAS when they tried to assassinate him?

    De Gaulle, was hugely sympathetic to the French Algerians, but he had four problems working against him:

    1) Demography
    2) Frances internal politics (A huge communist Left that was supporting the native Algerians
    3) A 150 year history of treating the natives really badly which justified their grievances to the rest of the world.
    4) Finally and perhaps his biggest problem were the French Algerians who were living a fantasy world.

    De Gaulle realised he was in an unwinnable situation which was threatening to unleash civil war in France. He did what any good commander would have done in that situation in sacrificing the part to save the whole. De Lattre De Tassigny told the French government to do the same in Vietnam but the locals (pieds-Jaunes) had more political clout with government with the resulting debacle of Dien Bien Phu The Pieds-Noir's may hate his guts for sacrificing them but it's highly unlikely if the Algeria would have survived if France imploded. The best they could have hoped for is a French version of South Africa which would of in time had the same fate.


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  7. @Genji

    Thanks

    Small plug for Salazar as an underappreciated hero of C20.

    I'm not that big a fan of Salazar since the long term consequence of his reign was the radicalisation of Portugal. (Admittedly there are other factors involved.)

    @Anon

    and created an actual political union where tax dollars from Germany and France could be spent to develop Portugal and Italy

    Oh please. Are you a Greek socialist? Because that's exactly their line of thinking. Don't borrow too much from the Germans, pay them back on time and you won't be a debtor. Countries like Portugal, Greece and Italy are poorly run and corrupt. The source of their poverty is cultural.

    Some form of European federalism was necessary. Even fascists like Mosely and Otto Stasser saw this.

    That's no surprise. Socialists (even the nationalistic variety) still think like socialists. Europe functioned for many years without being federal.

    It ends with extremely costly industrialized wars and white subgroups ethnically cleansing slightly different white subgroups

    While any sane man prefers peace to war it does not come at any price. This blog regards a corrupt peace much worse than a just war.

    @Anon

    Petain refused to see France reduced to a ruin by continuing to fight the victorious Germans, at the insistence of the British, and instead negotiated a place for France in the, "New European Order," and De Gaulle ensured that when that order fell apart,

    If I have any fault with De Gaulle is his "national myth" that he tried to uphold after the war. The reality is that many of the French were willing and enthusiastic collaborators with the Nazi's and this "papering" over this unpleasant fact has left deep wounds in French culture. Many of the Action-Francaise French actually welcomed a German victory seeing it as a source of moral renewal for France. This is how corrupt the French 'Right" had become.

    Fun fact: One of the units defending Hitlers bunker was the Chralemagne (French) Division. Petain was a collaborator.



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  8. RoW: Note how the ethnic French and the military supported De Gaulle then betrayed. Just like with Trump and his supporters.

    I don't get this. How did Trump betray his supporters? If anything, Trump turned out to be 10X better than most expected; the most pro-life president ever, for example. What the heck do you want? Rabbits pulled from a hat? The dude had zero support yet did more than anyone else I've seen for my side.

    SP: De Gaulle...problems working against him...Demography...

    Always the same problem for the West, right? No kids...no future. Get wealthy and fade into irrelevance. God is clever, but never malicious. The West refuses to accept grace long enough to even get married and have a family of size, thus spurning the most amazing gift of co-creation. Well, justice demands consequences. And all the political analysis in the world won't improve this reality one bit.

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  9. @Social Pathologist

    It seems communists were a huge problem De Gaulle had far more trouble with and which Stalin seemed able to handle better.

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  10. @JR

    It seems communists were a huge problem De Gaulle had far more trouble with and which Stalin seemed able to handle better.

    De Gaulle recognised that France had two problems; the communists who were loyal to Russia and the Vichyistes who were more loyal to Germany than to France. At least in the instance of Algeria the commies, were less malignant than the Right.

    The problem with Algeria is a problem frequently seen in world history, namely trying to deal with a problem well after a solution is possible. The Algerians tried to be "reasonable" with the French early on but were betrayed and thereby radicalised. At which point no negotiated solution was possible. It was just demographics that were working against the French, but their own conception of themselves.

    MK
    The West refuses to accept grace long enough to even get married and have a family of size, thus spurning the most amazing gift of co-creation

    I don't think this is applicable here. Are you saying that demographic advantage would have justified the oppression of the Algerians?


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  11. Are you saying that demographic advantage would have justified the oppression of the Algerians?

    No I'm saying one is either going upstream or betting washed downstream, invading or getting invaded. One cannot just stay midstream as per Chesterton. So France was and is doomed, since it lacks Frenchmen or a plan for getting more, hence all the political mess in Algeria and France proper. De Gaulle faced an impossible task, but he did one thing that actually mattered: he had 3 kids. But it was too little too late; look at the demographics of "France" now and note De Gaulle's political machinations were at best a waste of time, and his 3 kids was about half of what was needed for the entire populace. QED.

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  12. Thanks for the kind acknowledgement at the beginning of your entry doctor.
    I would be much more charitable regarding Jackson's "understanding" of De Gaulle, which in my mind is nuanced and considerable in the way he portrays the general with all of his numerous dualities. To be sure the biographer extensively documents his insecurities, perhaps unduly, but the tactical purposes of De Gaulle's constantly pounding the table around allies is hardly neglected either. Consider the summary Jackson provides in evaluating the French president's disdainful treatment of Britain in the early 1960s: "But in his view of international relations ... the aim was not necessarily to achieve objectives but rather to have a 'great national ambition' to 'sustain a great quarrel' - to be noticed. In this he had certainly succeeded." Or about the general's modus operandi during the resistance years: "His achievement between 1940 and 1944 lay ... in the daily war of attrition he waged against his allies to prevent himself being subsumed by them. His more extreme interventions probably did him no good in the short term but overall they served the strategic purpose: with cunning, tactical skill and strategic vision, he leveraged his miniscule resources into securing for France a place among the victorious powers."
    To put the matter more generally: Can you really separate the indispensable man that Ike mentions above from the prickly prima donna who for decades drove people up the wall (not least many Frenchmen like Raymond Aron, which Jackson extensively documents)? Part of what moves me is how this rather cold, distant figure who definitely had his complexes was nonetheless used - by God? - for remarkable purposes. There were probably a dozen or so other French figures who would have seemed better suited to lead the Free French, especially during the dark days of 1940 and 1941, than de Gaulle. Yet he was the one who dared, who opposed Vichy which in its formative period was not merely popular but seen by most as a legitimate regime (indeed historians will defend its legality to this day). There's a lesson here.

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  13. To allude to MK's point and regarding De Gaulle's promotion of Christianity, I wonder if a sobering note should be issued. Undoubtedly the most powerful Frenchman since Napoleon (well, maybe Napoleon III), it's instructive to observe how so much was still out of his hands. Opposed to the birth control pill for theological and moral reasons, he nonetheless allowed its eventual entry into France. Or consider agriculture: many contemporary traditionalists urge a return to the land, attempting to revert to the idyllic sort of life that you can see in Renoir or Monet. Yet De Gaulle actually encouraged modernization here, seeing more productive use of farmland as inevitable. This doesn't necessarily auger well for those integralists or Wendell Berry wannabees who seek some more rooted version of capitalism.
    Well, enough criticism or naysaying. You might be quite right doctor, that De Gaulle should be seen as the titan of the twentieth century. People who play this parlor game like to point to Churchill, but as you allude to he didn't face the constraints that De Gaulle did. Yes there was a real skepticism about the Englishman when he came to power, notably the Foreign Secretary Halifax, but the people (as well as Parliament and King) were still at the end of the day behind him. Not so with De Gaulle, who at the beginning generated relatively meager amounts of support. Even after his position had been consolidated after a year or so, he still had to maintain an almost preternatural tension: proclaiming himself as the established sovereign of France with its attendant rights and privileges, but never going so far as to totally upset the applecart and giving cause to the Allies to get rid of him.
    Also attention needs to be given to his presidency, which deserves more homage than Jackson perhaps provides. Probably only De Gaulle could have extricated his country from Algeria without some form of civil war; no other politician had that sort of authority. And after nearly 170 years since the revolution of the pendulum swinging back and forth between excessive centralism and anarchy, the general through his promulgation of the constitution leading to the Fifth Republic was able to find the sweet spot (e.g. a more powerful presidency, a genuflection to the French desire for monarchy). Since 1958, France has known a stability and efflorescence arguably absent in all of her previous history.
    Finally, just an aside about De Gaulle that I think is significant. He's probably the most famous parent of a child with Down's Syndrome, his daughter Anne. Unlike many in that day and age who sent those afflicted to institutions, the De Gaulles kept her. That photo in the biography, of the great man dressed in a suit with Anne on his lap at the beach, is quite poignant in my mind. (Actually, here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_de_Gaulle#/media/File:Anne_De_Gaulle.png) Also touching are his words to a chaplain in his regiment in 1940: "Her birth was a trial for my wife and myself. But believe me, Anne is my joy and my strength. She is the grace of God in my life." Being the cold fish that he was, perhaps she was one of the few individuals De Gaulle could be totally open with.

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  14. Thanks for your comments Jason.

    I would be much more charitable regarding Jackson's "understanding" of De Gaulle, which in my mind is nuanced and considerable in the way he portrays the general with all of his numerous dualities.

    I actually started off being quite sympathetic to Jackson's view but the more I read on the matter the less convincing it became. There's a lot here so I plan to put up a few posts justifying my position. For instance, Jackson omits a lot of background information with regard to De Gaulle's vetoing UK entry into the EU which makes his position not only justifiable but paints the British in an extremely bad light, though reading Jackson you'd think it was about spite and anglophobia. Jackson downplays behaviour which--if the shoe was on the other foot--he would totally deplore, yet sees it as a character fault when De Gaulle deplores it.

    Jackson seems far more objective when it comes to pointing out the Roosevelt administrations failures in dealing with De Gaulle. The American's really did treat him badly, with the exception of Eisenhower.

    By all accounts De Gaulle had an "officious" and reserved personality which made him difficult to like and yet when taking a Christian measure of the man, the question that needs to be asked is, how good was he as opposed to how agreeable. French politics was full of agreeable men before the war and yet their government was ultimately disastrous.

    I think the core problem with Jackson's analysis of De Gaulle, is that Jackson wants to fit him in the mold of a politician whereas De Gaulle saw himself as the servant of France. I think that there is a cynicism in Jakson's take which leads him to misunderstand the man. Anyhow I plan to clarify the position in the next few posts.

    But just to let you know, as I result of digging into his life, I've ended up reading up on EU history, Cold war transatlantic policy, the writings of Charles Peguy, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, the Novelle theology movement, and the spiritual crisis in Catholicism in the early 20th C and the writings of Etienne Gilson.

    All as a result of a book recommendation!

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  15. @Social Pathologist

    Agreed. My point is that Stalin had many communists reintegrated into the earth. Or sent to the Gulags where many perished. Meanwhile they remained in adoration of him despite decimating the Old Guard of the Bolshevik Party responsible for the mass murders of Christians.

    Some analysts even believe that he was a hand of Divine Vengeance:
    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/sixth-proof/



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