Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Origins of the French-American Conflict, as Seen by a De Gaulle Foe

While America was giving lavishly of her blood and her money for the great democratic idea of human liberty, General de Gaulle was inclining more and more toward a neo-fascism that was the very thing America had set out to destroy. Only the United States could liberate and save France, But General de Gaulle was unwilling to admit this. Even on D-Day when the Americans landed on the Normandy beaches, he refused in his radio "Appeal to the French People" to acknowledge their sacrifice and heroism. … In London, in Algiers, in Paris, wherever he has gone, he has left behind him a trail of mistrust, ingratitude, and hostility toward America.
A 1945 pamphlet against Charles de Gaulle has been republished. Originally an admirer of the French officer, Henry de Kérillis turned against the general as World War II progressed. Because of the powers that De Gaulle kept accumulating, Henry de Kérillis warned that he would institute the equivalent of an effective dictatorship in France and, more to the point, that he was behind the French-American conflict (or, rather, the Gaullist-American conflict), a conflict which he (Henri de Kérillis) deemed entirely artificial.

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