The defence of its empire in Indo-China and
North Africa proved a crushing burden for postwar
France. The fall of Dien Bien Phu in May
1954 brought down another French government,
but the new prime minister, Pierre Mendès-
France, was a politician in a different mould. He
was, like Leon Blum, a Jew, tough, intellectual
and at last ready to face realities – at least some of
the realities. He fulfilled his undertaking to bring
France out of the disastrous dirty war in Indo-
China in July 1954 by agreeing to the peace terms
of the Geneva Conference, and he negotiated
Tunisian autonomy, but, ostensibly over weakness
in dealing with North Africa, he was brought
down in February 1955. The determination of the
Gaullist right to maintain France’s colonial rule
led to more falls of government until, in 1956,
independence was conceded to both Tunisia and
Morocco. But Algeria was different. Politicians of
all parties – communists, socialists and conservatives
– regarded Algeria, governed through the
French Ministry of the Interior, as part of France.
One million French settlers, the pieds noirs, from
the wealthy to the hard-working fisherman or carpenter,
who had lived in Algeria for a generation
or more, saw themselves as the French of Algeria,
not as French men and women living in a colony
of France. All the French political leaders echoed
Mendès-France when he declared, ‘France without
Algeria would be no France.’
Yet all the talk about Algeria being a part of
France was paradoxical and hypocritical, as was
the rhetoric in the constitution of the Fourth
Republic, whose preamble promised equality
without distinction of race or religion. Racism
was as rampant in Algeria as it was in the worst
of European colonies overseas. How could
Algeria be France if the majority of its inhabitants,
the 9 million Muslim Arabs, were not
French people with equal rights? There was no
place for the Algerian in the higher administration
of the country; the economy was dominated
by the wealthy European settlers; the plight of the
land-hungry poor Muslim Algerian was aggravated
by a high birth rate; meanwhile, the larger,
more mechanised settler farms no longer required
large numbers of peasant labourers. The Fourth
Republic instituted some reforms but, on the key
issue of political rights, only a measure of ostensible
power-sharing was introduced. An Algerianelected
assembly was created, chosen by two
electoral colleges, one composed of the European
French citizens, plus a few meritorious Muslims,
some 500,000 electors, who chose sixty members
of the Assembly; the rest of the Muslim population
chose the other sixty members. Even this was
not enough for the European settlers: electoral
corruption made doubly sure that the European
minority would continue its domination.
The tragedy of Algeria was that violence and
atrocities, involving great loss of innocent lives,
marked the path to nationhood. That was not
how the majority of moderate Muslims wished to
achieve their rights. A lack of vision and of gen-
erosity and the resolution of the pieds noirs, actuated
by fear and material self-interest, to deny the
Muslim Algerians genuinely equal rights and selfdetermination
left the outcome of the struggle to
be decided by the extremists. The settlers believed
that their power, backed by the army of all
France, could always overwhelm such guerrilla
units as the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale)
could muster. But their confidence misled them.
In the end, the French were sickened by the
bloody excesses and the slaughter of civilians,
which spilled over into metropolitan France. The
French military too reacted by torturing captured
FLN to elicit intelligence information. It was a
struggle without honour on both sides. The
majority that ultimately counted was not that of
the pieds noirs in Algeria, but the majority of
voters in France. To them the price of retaining
Algeria and defending the European settlers
proved too high. De Gaulle ended the Algerian
conflict on the only terms that could be secured:
those demanded by the FLN leadership.
The twisted road from the close of the Second
World War to Algerian independence in 1962 was
punctuated by waves of violence, abortive negotiations
and constitutional crises. The liberation
of Europe in May 1945 had raised the expectation
of colonial peoples that a new era had
dawned for them. In Sétif, a small Algerian
market town, these expectations led to a bloody
clash, the first of many. Extremist Muslims carrying
nationalist flags turned on European settlers
that May, murdering and raping more than a
hundred. The French response was to ‘pacify’ the
region in typical colonial fashion, killing thousands
of Muslims. The indelible impression of
racist conflict and bloodshed overshadowed all
political speeches. De Gaulle had promised a new
deal to the French colonial peoples: they would
be led eventually to self-government, but the time
and manner would be decided by the French.
Thus the initial stance of the Europeans was that
violence would not wrest that decision of
decolonisation from them. French military power
was so overwhelming that proposals put forward
by the more moderate Algerian nationalist
leaders, such as Ferhat Abbas, for a compromise
solution were not entertained (Abbas had proposed
an independent Algeria federated to
France). The movement for independence, therefore,
became more radical, and new leaders, such
as Ahmed Ben Bella and Belkacem Krim, were
ready to use violence. With just a few hundred
armed men, Belkacem Krim started an open
revolt on 1 November 1954. Throughout the
country a proclamation was distributed addressed
‘To the Algerian people’ and announcing the formation
of the Front de Libération Nationale,
whose objective was to gain Algerian independence.
But the FLN also promised that French settlers
and French interests would be dealt with
fairly: the pieds noirs could even opt for Algerian
nationality. For more than seven years the FLN
fought, without deviating from their objectives.
But the implacable hostility of the settlers made
it impossible for any agreement to be reached
which might have safeguarded their future. In
1954 the Fourth Republic rejected as unthinkable
the very idea of Algerian independence. The
prime minister at that time, Pierre Mendès-
France, and his socialist minister of the interior,
François Mitterrand, were ready to abandon colonialism
in Indo-China, Morocco and Tunisia, but
not in Algeria – for, as they repeatedly proclaimed,
‘Algeria is France.’ Their solution was
military repression, which was to be combined
with economic reform to reduce unemployment.
But reform had no chance. The FLN answered
repression with terrorism.
Ten years after Sétif, in August 1955, indiscriminate
terrorism was repeated at Philippeville.
The murder of Europeans and their Muslim allies
by an FLN-instigated mob led in turn to the
killing of more than a thousand Muslims in
reprisals. Such violence could only play into the
hands of the FLN, who regarded as their enemy,
not only France, but those moderate Muslims
who were prepared to accept French rule. The
FLN killings were directed as much against these
‘traitorous’ Muslims as against the French.
Indeed the Muslim Algerians who had placed
their trust in France were to become the most
tragic victims of the war. The FLN resorted to
bombing cafés and dance halls in Algeria, causing
bloodshed wherever Europeans came together in
large numbers. The French army responded with
equal ferocity, torturing FLN suspects to gain
information. French military power, however,
could not crush the terrorists. All that could be
achieved were temporary victories over the FLN,
as in what became known as the battle of Algiers.
Meanwhile, the pieds noirs became suspicious
of the intentions of the government in Paris.
Would they negotiate with the FLN above their
heads? The FLN was gaining respectability internationally
at the United Nations, receiving
support from Tunisia, while Nasser’s Egypt –
recently victorious over the French – broadcast
pro-Algerian propaganda from Cairo. Practical
help, however, was not so readily forthcoming.
In the spring of 1958 the paths of the European
settlers and the recalcitrant generals in
Algiers, on the one hand, and the politicians of
the Fourth Republic, on the other, fatefully
crossed. From 15 April until 13 May 1958 Paris
was politically paralysed: no government could be
formed. The way was opened for the return of de
Gaulle at the end of May. This spelt the collapse
of the Fourth Republic and, after another four
years of confusing politics, military repression and
bloodshed, of French Algeria as well.
De Gaulle, in 1947, had miscalculated and as
a result of his resignation spent a long decade in
the political wilderness, preparing for his return.
He wished to end the Fourth Republic and what
he regarded as its fatally flawed parliamentary
constitution, which he believed had brought back
the errors of the Third Republic. But he would
not seize power unconstitutionally. The Fourth
Republic must turn to him and ask him to save
France from chaos. This did not mean that he was
reluctant to exploit the feelings of those groups
of Frenchmen in France and Algeria who were
ready to conspire against the Fourth Republic.
His refusal to condemn disloyalty to the Fourth
Republic, or those ready to defy the government
in Paris before he came to power, was sufficient
to encourage the belief that his Algerian policy
would be resolutely French. A master of lofty
rhetoric, de Gaulle could be all things to all men.
When, three weeks after the fall of the government
on 5 April 1958, President René Coty had
found no politician able to form a new government,
he consulted de Gaulle. But on 13 May, it
was Pierre Pfimlin, a man who was anathema to
the army in Algeria, to whom he turned.
In Algiers, 13 May 1958 was the decisive
day. Brigadier-General Jacques Massu and
Commander-in-Chief General Raoul Salan, with
their associates, were practically in open revolt
against Paris. Although Pfimlin received the
backing of the National Assembly to form the
next government, the conspiracy on both sides of
the Mediterranean was in full swing. De Gaulle
had to make his move. Although it was the insurrection
of the army in Algiers and the threat of
civil war that were forcing the hands of the president
and legitimate government of the Fourth
Republic, de Gaulle had to give the appearance
of total independence and personal disinterest in
anything except the cause of saving France. In a
crucial public statement of 15 May de Gaulle
avoided mentioning the insurrection in Algiers
beyond referring to ‘disturbance in the fighting
forces’; he condemned the ‘regime of the parties’,
which he said could not solve France’s problems,
and harking back to his mission in 1940 concluded,
‘Not so long ago the country, in its hour
of peril, trusted me to lead it . . . to its salvation.
Today with the trials that face it once again, it
should know that I am ready to assume the
powers of the Republic.’ By placing himself at
the ‘disposal’ of the French people over the head
of the president, the government and National
Assembly, de Gaulle undermined whatever authority
they might have been able to exert. The
French people would not have taken kindly to a
usurpation of power led by the army, which
would have provoked protests, riots and widespread
civil disturbances.
There were still formidable obstacles in the
way of a legal transition of power. After all a government
under Pierre Pfimlin was functioning
and there was no real danger of an insurrection
in metropolitan France other than by armed units
from Algeria. General Massu knew he would need
to camouflage any use of force. He planned a
coup in Paris codenamed Resurrection: mass
demonstrations would be organised, backed up by
paratroopers airlifted from Algiers and the southwest
region of France who would occupy stra-
tegic government buildings. The crisis reached
fever pitch on 28 and 29 May. De Gaulle’s relationship
with Resurrection is one of the most
hotly argued controversies among historians. Had
the general himself given the order to set the coup
in motion or was it Gaullist supporters in Paris
who gave the green light to the army generals in
Algiers? What seems likely is that de Gaulle had
expressed himself in an ambiguous way, yet
had given clear indication that if he failed to gain
power by legal process, which he preferred, he
would have taken advantage of the Algiers plot.
The airlift actually began when six Dakotas
took off early in the afternoon of 28 May. That
evening in Paris President Coty called in de
Gaulle and invited him to form a ‘government of
national safety’ since France was on the verge of
civil war. Coty also had to accept de Gaulle’s
demand that he would take over only if he could
prepare plans for a new constitution; meanwhile
he would govern without the National Assembly.
De Gaulle then agreed that he would be granted
special powers for only six months and would first
need to appear before the National Assembly for
confirmation as head of government and to
receive authority to plan and submit a new constitution.
When they received this news, the generals
postponed Resurrection. The National
Assembly on 1 June 1958 by a majority voted its
approval of de Gaulle as head of government with
special powers, but a sizeable minority voted
against him, 224 members out of 553. The following
day he received the necessary three-fifths
majority for submitting a new constitution to the
French people by referendum. So de Gaulle, at
the age of sixty-seven, had become head of the
government again, but Coty remained president,
an arrangement that conferred legality and continuity
on the interim period that marked the
last months of the Fourth Republic.
De Gaulle had achieved a constitutional transfer
of power just this side of legality – but he
could not have done it without the military threat
from Algeria. His immediate problem was now
not metropolitan France but Algeria, where settlers
and generals, together with French Gaullist
politicians back home, would look upon any
retreat from ‘l’Algérie Française’ as rank treachery,
which would absolve them from owing
loyalty to any government guilty of it. But what
did de Gaulle really think?
It is a question not easy to answer. In letters
and private conversations he seems to have tried
out ideas, using those he addressed as a sounding
board. But he was clearly pragmatic. The conflict
would be brought to an end and de Gaulle did
not believe that could be achieved by continuing
to discriminate against the Muslim majority or by
employing military force and the torture of opponents.
He relied on his own immense prestige
among the settlers and the millions of Algerian
Muslims, to whom he proposed a new deal. To
the fighting men of the FLN he offered an olive
branch by praising their courage. He was under
no illusions that one day Algeria would be independent,
but that independence would be best
achieved gradually and in harmony and in some
form of association with France.
For all his rhetoric and grandeur, de Gaulle
was far from sure of his ability to impose a policy
opposed to the wishes of the French settlers and
the army generals, who were congratulating
themselves on their destruction of the Fourth
Republic. Nor did the killings in Algeria cease
with de Gaulle’s return. Indeed, the savagery was
worse than ever during the next four years, while
the general seemed to procrastinate, switching
from concessionary overtures to the FLN to
renewed efforts to achieve ‘pacification’, and the
toll of death, maiming and torture mounted. If
de Gaulle really represented, as he claimed, the
greatness of France, is he not to be condemned
for vainly attempting to save France’s position in
Algeria? The ambiguity of his policies was to be
revealed on his first visit to Algeria, only three
days after his investiture. To Algerian Muslims
and the French settler crowds, he proclaimed on
different occasions the delphic utterance, ‘I have
understood you’; however, in all but one of his
speeches he carefully avoided uttering the pieds
noirs’ slogan, ‘l’Algérie Française’.
De Gaulle’s impact on the population in
France and in Algeria was enormous. The great
majority of French citizens and of Muslim
Algerians were prepared to place their trust in him
and to be led to new relations and a better future.
He was the best guarantee that France would not
be plunged into civil war. The trouble was that
the trusting French settlers and military expected
a completely different outcome from that expected
by the trusting Muslim Algerians. Even so,
the referendum on the new constitution, held
in France, in the French Commonwealth and in
Algeria, was a personal triumph for de Gaulle.
In metropolitan France over 80 per cent voted
for him. In Algeria, where the Muslim Algerians
could vote with the Europeans on equal terms for
the first time, army intimidation cannot account
for the large majority, of 76.4 per cent, achieved
in the face of FLN threats. So why was there no
prompt settlement in accordance with the wishes
of the great majority of Muslim Algerians, who
were clearly ready to accept some form of association
with France? After all, de Gaulle himself
was deliberately using the weapon of democracy,
of the majority, as the best means of finding a
settlement.
It was not majorities that decided the issue in
Algeria but the organised force of settlers, the
French army and the minority of militant
Algerians who made up the FLN. The FLN
would not lay down their arms for anything less
than complete independence. They survived as a
guerrilla force in the country and in urban areas
despite ‘successful’ French military actions,
attacking the French settlers and their Muslim
Algerian supporters. De Gaulle’s attempts to
negotiate with them, even at moments of their
greatest military weakness, came to nothing.
Moreover, the extremists among the pieds noirs
soon recognised that, whatever his personal preferences,
de Gaulle would in the end settle with
the Muslim Algerians and abandon the settlers if
need be. These extremist settlers mounted some
thirty assassination attempts against de Gaulle,
and one revenge shooting in August 1962 riddled
his car with fourteen bullets and nearly succeeded
in killing him and his wife. In February 1961 they
had formed the Organisation Armée Secrète in
Algeria, soon known throughout the world as the
OAS. They declared that they would act as ferociously
as the FLN and take their terror tactics to
Paris if de Gaulle and metropolitan France tried
to abandon ‘l’Algérie Française’.
On 30 March 1961 de Gaulle announced that
peace talks with the FLN would begin shortly at
Evian. This was the signal for an open rebellion
carried out in April by OAS plotters with the
assistance of four retired army generals in Algeria.
But the French army in Algeria was split. Once
more de Gaulle’s appeals averted the danger of
civil war. During the long-drawn-out negotiations
at Evian, the OAS did their worst, but they
were unable to prevent agreement being conceded
practically on FLN’s terms on 18 March
1962. On 1 July that year Algerian independence
was granted after a referendum in France and
Algeria. The previous month the OAS gave up
the hopeless struggle in Algeria. The extremists
had ensured that there could be no future for the
French Algerian settlers, most of whom now
migrated to metropolitan France.
Was it an honourable peace? The French could
not protect all the Algerians who had been loyal
to them and were now condemned as traitors by
the FLN. Muslim Algerians who had served in the
French army had numbered 210,000. Only a
minority took refuge in France, and it is not
known how many of those who remained behind
were executed or murdered. Estimates vary
between 30,000 and 150,000. The leaders of the
new Algeria later admitted that there had been
‘blunders’. Whole families, even children, were
massacred. Many Third World countries have
passed through the suffering of colonial repression
and then through the wars of national liberation,
which involved not only the fight against
the ‘occupier’ but also the savagery of fratricidal
civil war. Algeria was one of the worst examples
of this process. De Gaulle’s military training
helped him to face this inescapable consequence.
Certainly the blame cannot be placed solely on
him.
Whatever failings are attributed to de Gaulle in
handling the crises in Algeria from 1958 to 1962,
only his enormous prestige in the army and
among the people of France saved Algeria from
seizure by a rebellious army backed by the settlers,
and France from a confrontation that might
have led to a neo-fascist regime in Paris. The
ending of the war was greeted with enormous
relief by the great majority of the French people,
and by none more than the half-million conscripts
sent to Algeria. The verdict on de Gaulle offered
by the historian Alistair Horne seems eminently
just: ‘the way he extricated France from Algeria
may not have been done well – but certainly no
one else could have done it better’.
De Gaulle succeeded in 1958 in re-establishing
the constitutional authority of France over the
recalcitrant army and rightist extremists. Not least
important among his weapons were his impressive
personal television appearances in which he
addressed the nation. Even opponents were
bound to admire the authoritative style of the
grand Charles, dressed in the uniform of a
brigadier-general, during these early years of turbulence.
He had been given just six months of
rule without parliament to reshape the institutions
of government. He lost no time. Invested
with special powers in June 1958, de Gaulle
created a consultative committee (which he
chaired) to draft the new constitution. It was
approved by an overwhelming majority in a referendum
on 28 September.
The constitution of the Fifth Republic, which
came into force in January 1959, enormously
increased the powers of the presidency. Under
Article 16 it permitted the president in case of
grave national crisis to take ‘whatever measures
are required by the circumstances’. Until the
1958 constitution was amended in 1962 by a
further referendum, the president was not directly
elected by the people but chosen by an electoral
college consisting of all members of the Assembly
and other ‘notables’: de Gaulle was proceeding
cautiously. On paper the prime minister shared
executive power with the president, but the president
chose the prime minister, and other ministers
on the recommendation of the prime
minister. On paper, parliament retained considerable
powers. Governments were responsible to it
and were required to resign if the National
Assembly censored them or rejected their programme.
The prime minister (Article 20) was
charged with determining and conducting the
policy of the nation and was given responsibility
for national defence as well as the power to
appoint top officials; moreover, his countersignature
was required for treaties. Responsible
for negotiating treaties and empowered to initiate
new laws, the president is commander-in-chief
and presides over the Council of Ministers. For
the constitution to work, the government would
have to act as the junior partner of the president,
thus eliminating the overlapping powers and
potential sources of conflict. De Gaulle interpreted
his powers widely and was able in practice
to make decisions in all areas which he regarded
as important, at home as well as abroad. In fact,
he treated the prime minister and the ministers of
the government like civil servants. The government
was little more than the means by which the
executive presidential will was carried out. Prime
Ministers Michel Debré (1959–62), Georges
Pompidou (1962–8) and Maurice Couve de
Murville (1968–9) were the president’s men, and
many ministers were technocrats rather than party
leaders. Their divorce from the political parties of
the National Assembly was emphasised by the
provision that members of the government could
not hold seats in the Assembly. This was to distance
them from the political manoeuvring
among ministers that had caused so much instability
to the Third and Fourth Republics. With
the support of the Gaullists and their allies in the
National Assembly, which following the elections
of November 1958 and November 1962 formed
the largest group, de Gaulle was able to override
such powers as the constitution of 1958 had on
paper awarded to the prime minister, government
and parliament. He established overwhelmingly
presidential rule for the period of office to which
he was democratically elected, but was mindful of
the individual liberties and civil rights of the
French. This starkly differentiates de Gaulle from
the dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and much of
Latin America. The president’s position was
further strengthened in 1962, as we have seen,
when an amendment to the 1958 constitution
replaced indirect election with direct election by
the people for a term of seven years.
De Gaulle led France effectively, and by making
use of the special provisions for referendums
could bypass parliament and seek approval for his
policies by popular mandates. He was clearly the
choice of a large majority until at least 1968–9,
even though there were many who disapproved of
his highhandedness and regarded his treatment of
governments and parliament and his political
monopolisation of radio and television as a threat
to democracy. But there seemed no other choice,
no man of equal stature, who could provide the
political stability France so badly needed. De
Gaulle had become both intolerable and indispensable.
The economic transformation of France, both
industrial and agricultural, had been rapid since
1949 and accelerated further during de Gaulle’s
eleven years from 1958 to 1969. This progress
was achieved by a mixed economy, with state
intervention, planning incentives and government
encouragement. Key sectors of French industry
were modernised. De Gaulle adhered to the
Treaty of Rome and the economic competition it
opened up among the Six signatories. There was
no turning back to France’s traditional protectionist
policies, and the free circulation of goods
in the EEC was achieved on 1 July 1968 after the
agreed ten transitional years allowed to France: its
trade now had to reorientate towards the new
European markets, which were expanding fast.
France excelled in many branches of the new
high-technology industries – chemicals, aeronautics,
oil, precision engineering and automobiles –
while cheap power, based first on oil and then,
increasingly, on nuclear energy, helped to make
it more competitive. Between 1949 and 1969
French economic growth increased by an annual
average of 4.6 per cent in the 1950s and 5.8 per
cent in the 1960s, so that, having lagged behind
its West European neighbours, France overtook
Britain in the 1960s. Its industrial production
index moved as follows:
1937 100
1949 112
1959 193
1969 341
French agriculture was also rapidly modernised.
The number of farms decreased by a third
between 1955 and 1970, with the numbers of
farmers and farm wage-earners declining still
more steeply, while output increased. Agriculture,
which has declined in importance within the
French economy, by the close of the 1960s
employed only 16 per cent of the working population,
as against more than a quarter just after
the war.
The most obvious negative feature of France’s
economic growth was inflation, which had been
rapid during the Fourth Republic. On coming to
power, de Gaulle and Antoine Pinay, the finance
minister, made a determined effort to create a
stable currency. First, the franc was devalued,
then a new franc was introduced. Confidence in
the currency soon returned, and inflation was
reduced. Strikes in 1963 were followed by
another austerity package by the new finance minister,
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Economic expansion
was aided by the sudden increase in the
labour force when nearly a million pieds noirs
from Algeria emigrated to metropolitan France;
further cheap labour was attracted, especially
from Italy, North Africa and Spain. In the 1960s
the West European consumer market for cars,
refrigerators and television sets seemed to be insatiable,
and French industry grasped the opportunities
provided by this enlarged market. Full
employment was maintained until 1968–9, and
even then, with less than 1 million unemployed
(though the figure alarmed contemporaries),
unemployment amounted to no more than 4 per
cent of the working population.
As old traditional structures were adapted to
modern conditions, there were many French who
deplored and resisted these painful changes. The
French peasantry repeatedly and sometimes violently
gave vent to their grievances. Artisans and
small shopkeepers protested, while frequent strikes
expressed the frustration of industrial workers. The
increased national wealth, moreover, was unevenly
distributed. The industrial wage-earners did better
than the non-industrial; skill was rewarded; and
management considerably improved its standards
of living. But a society as stratified as France’s was
exposed to growing tensions that were suddenly to
boil over in May 1968.
De Gaulle did not share the enthusiasm for a
united Europe displayed by Monnet and his followers
and had been critical of the establishment
of the European Economic Community with its
supranational Commission. Would the EEC be
launched at all on 1 January 1959, requiring as it
did France to begin dismantling its protectionist
industrial tariffs? France was in deep financial
crisis, but de Gaulle did not attempt to abort the
birth of the Common Market. For him it was
not the economic aspects of the Treaty of Rome
that mattered most, but the political. He now
discovered important positive aspects and calculated
that through leadership of the European
Economic Community France could regain influence
in the world and wrest Europe away from
economic and military dependence on the Anglo-
Saxon nations. The recovery of France’s international
position was foremost in de Gaulle’s
mind. An alliance with the US would remain
essential to counter the Soviet threat, but that
need not mean subservience or a European junior
partnership. In a Western Europe still looking to
the US for its defence and advanced technology,
de Gaulle’s was a bold vision of the future.
When de Gaulle returned to power in 1958
one major obstacle to his ambitions was the socalled
‘special relationship’ between the US and
Great Britain. Britain was not willing to make a
choice ‘for Europe’ if this entailed weakening its
links with the US and the Commonwealth; and
so, although British policy favoured the creation
of an industrial free trade area in Western Europe,
the common external tariff, which would operate
against all non-European members as required by
the Treaty of Rome, was unacceptable. But without
Britain in the Common Market, and with
West Germany within it and anxious not to appear
assertive, France would be the unchallenged
leader of Western Europe. As far as the wider
world was concerned, de Gaulle in September
1958 proposed to President Eisenhower and
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that it should
be directed by the US, Great Britain and France.
This policy would have gravely offended
America’s other NATO allies, Italy and the
Federal Republic of Germany, and rejection was a
foregone conclusion. De Gaulle simultaneously
sought a special relationship with the West
German chancellor, Adenauer, who was invited
to de Gaulle’s home at Colombey-les-DeuxÉglises.
The terms he offered to Adenauer were
that Germany should abandon any idea of a
nuclear partnership with France, that an agricultural
common market should be added to the
industrial Common Market of the EEC, and that
France and the Federal Republic should press
ahead with the Common Market of the Six in
preference to Britain’s larger Free Trade Association.
Adenauer assented. De Gaulle, who had
come to power with a free hand, had by the close
of 1958 already achieved much for France and
had enhanced its international position. The historic
enmity between France and Germany had
been buried and replaced by a new and special
intimacy, which was sealed by the Treaty of
Friendship in January 1963. The French role
would be crucial to the EEC’s further development.
Britain had been excluded and could continue
to be excluded as long as de Gaulle chose to
make use of France’s veto. But he wished to shape
the Common Market into a close alliance of sovereign
states and opposed the transfer of powers
to Brussels, the new headquarters of the European
Commission.
De Gaulle’s priority was to reassert France’s
position in the world. It had been excluded from
the wartime settlements and from the nuclear
club. Without its own nuclear weapons France
would not be given a place at the table of the great
powers. In September 1959 de Gaulle announced
that France would build up its nuclear strike
force. But was there any point? France could never
hope to match the Soviet or American arsenals. De
Gaulle of course realised this but what he feared
and suspected was that the US might not defend
Western Europe with its nuclear weapons if it
meant destruction of the US. France needed its
own strike force to be independent of others. The
new American doctrine of ‘flexible response’ only
increased de Gaulle’s fears that a nuclear war
between the Soviet Union and the US might be
confined between the Elbe and the Atlantic. The
Americans, moreover, were changing their strategic
plans fundamentally without first consulting
their European allies. In February 1960 French
scientists exploded France’s first atom bomb.
Then France went thermonuclear with repeated
tests in the Pacific.
Signals were also sent to the US that France
regarded NATO as an unequal alliance and
required change as the price of continued membership.
In April 1959 de Gaulle forbade the presence
of American nuclear weapons on bases in
France; but increasing French pressure for
changes to NATO that would give France a larger
voice failed to impress the Americans or the
British. And, however much the Germans wished
to maintain good relations with France, no
German chancellor would run the risk of alienating
the US, on whose support the defence of the
Federal Republic against the Soviet Union principally
depended. In July 1966, after years of
growing non-cooperation, de Gaulle therefore
took the dramatic step of withdrawing France
from NATO’s integrated military command
structure altogether. But he was careful to maintain
its political alliance with NATO. Indeed, de
Gaulle was conspicuous in supporting the US and
the NATO allies in every confrontation with the
Russians, over successive Berlin crises, the building
of the Wall in 1961 and the Cuban missile
crisis in 1962.
By 1966, de Gaulle appeared to be overplaying
his hand and his policies carried less conviction.
His stately visits to the Third World, Latin
America and Canada earned him personal
applause but no tangible benefits for France,
which was seen as dangerously anti-American.
Adenauer’s successors, Erhard and Kiesinger, were
less inclined to accept French tutelage as Germany
recovered not only its economic strength but its
confidence too. De Gaulle irritated his EEC partners
in 1965 by boycotting the Common Market
when its members tried to move towards majority
voting at the Council of Ministers. After several
months, the French in 1966 won the so-called
Luxembourg Compromise which, in effect,
allowed each member to oppose a majority vote
when it considered its vital interests were at stake.
De Gaulle had halted the move toward supranationalism.
This stance accorded with the views of
the British government (which had applied to join
the club) and ironically made possible the later
accession of Britain, which de Gaulle had vetoed
in January 1963 and November 1967. France’s
five partners, too, were now anxious to bring in
Britain to check France and did not take kindly to
his Olympian despatch of Britain’s applications.
Elected for a second term as president in
December 1965 on, admittedly, a reduced majority,
de Gaulle at the age of seventy-five was still
seen as indispensable to the maintenance of stability.
But Mitterrand, the candidate of the united
left, had also impressed and with 32 per cent of
the vote was only 11 per cent behind the general.
Internationally, de Gaulle had succeeded in
winning back an independent role for France. The
question which now arose was what he would do
with it, how he would exploit France’s position
to break the superpower deadlock. A visit to the
Soviet Union in the summer of 1966 led to agreement
on Franco-Soviet consultations, but de
Gaulle could make no headway in achieving his
real aim of freeing Europe from Soviet and
American military dominance. The time was not
yet ripe for de Gaulle’s vision.
In world affairs de Gaulle took up positions
diametrically opposed to American policy. He
advised the Americans to leave Vietnam and
during the 1967 Six-Day War reversed France’s
traditional policy of support for Israel against the
Arabs. Visiting Canada that summer, his behaviour
seemed downright quixotic when he encouraged
separatism in French Canada by declaring in
Montreal, ‘Vive le Québec Libre’. This was
blatant interference in Canadian affairs, though
French influence had been lost for good in that
country two centuries earlier. Visiting Poland, de
Gaulle openly encouraged Polish nationalism.
Not only did de Gaulle surprise the world with
his policies and pronouncements, but the personal
exercise of power began to cause misgivings
in France too. By the close of the 1960s, a great
swing of the pendulum was in the making. French
society was no longer uniformly ready to trust and
follow its remote and grand leader. The divisions
made themselves felt in the explosion of May
1968, which almost removed de Gaulle; he mastered
the crisis but his prestige was irreparably
damaged.
The May outburst had several causes, some
of them loosely connected. It was followed by
an apparently overwhelming Gaullist electoral
victory, some belated reforms and a rapid return
to calm and stability. Was it just a brief period of
turbulence of no great significance? With hindsight,
the events of 1968 look different, the
dramatising of a change in Western society that
had been slow in the making. It was a revolt in
the first place against authority: in the professions,
and especially among would-be professionals in
the universities, it marked a rejection of preordained
patterns, of subservience and patronage,
and of the concomitant corruption. It was a revolt
of youth, against an older generation that it held
responsible for the mismanagement of the past.
With the security provided by the welfare state,
relatively full employment and student grants,
students no longer had to concentrate on providing
their daily needs but could aspire to something
better. The success of the assault on the
bastions of privilege and archaic structures in education
and the professions was uneven, but a
recognition of the need for change, a loosening
of rigid hierarchies and the granting of a larger
role and greater freedom to the younger members
of society have been among the positive results of
1968. It reflected a movement evident throughout
Western society during the 1960s and 1970s.
The May crisis in France revealed the frustrations
of an active minority section of the population,
no longer confident that change could be
effected through the existing channels of bureaucracy
and government. Thousands took to the
streets, giving the upheaval its particular character:
half revolution, half carnival, shaking off the straitlaced
conformist stupor identified with Gaullist
France. The crisis was easily mastered because,
outside certain parts of Paris, France remained
profoundly conservative in attitude, a conservatism
affecting all parties from left to right, as
politicians of all shades preferred to lead the
masses rather than to have them take control into
their own hands. The efforts of the small group of
extremist students, such as the Marxist Danny
Cohn-Bendit, who were working for revolutionary
change, were doomed to failure, though for a
short while they drew the limelight on themselves.
The red flags and non-stop speeches by students
in Nanterre and the Sorbonne were not the real
stuff of which revolutions are made, but the
increase in student numbers to more than half a
million nationally since 1958 had made them a
significant force. The repressive police actions in
response might have become a more serious cause
of revolution, because they were met by counterviolence
in the streets of Paris, reinforced by barricades
and burning cars.
One reason why revolution did not break out
was that workers did not make common cause
with the intellectuals and students, and this was so
even though the workers had their own grievances.
The growth of their real wages had been hit
by an austerity economic programme, and unemployment,
though small, was rising. Trade unions,
receiving no cooperation from management,
called a strike, and workers throughout France
spontaneously occupied factories. But the unions,
the communist one included, were seeking better
conditions, not revolution. De Gaulle, incredulous
at the sudden storm, left crisis management
to Prime Minister Pompidou. At the height of the
crisis, on 29 May, he secretly withdrew and, near
breaking point, flew to a French military base in
Baden-Baden, West Germany, intending to depart
permanently from office and from France, but
General Massu persuaded him not to give up and
the following day he returned to Paris. Pompidou,
left to himself, had in the meantime bought off
the unions with large concessions. By the time de
Gaulle reappeared to broadcast a plea for massive
support and for a counter-demonstration to the
previous left-wing march on the Champs Élysées,
the response was immediate and impressive. In
June disturbances were practically over. Students
went on their vacations and the workers returned
to work. The National Assembly, with its slender
Gaullist majority in 1967, was dissolved in June
1968 and France gave its verdict at the polls: the
opposition was severely weakened and the
Gaullists secured an overwhelming majority. But
this was not quite the positive vote for de Gaulle
that it appeared to be. It was a fearful reaction
against the left, and a display of support for
Pompidou, whose moderation had brought success.
De Gaulle knew this and promptly dropped
Pompidou, appointing Couve de Murville as his
successor. Fresh economic problems were countered
with another austerity programme in the
autumn in preference to devaluation. By the
spring of 1969 de Gaulle had decided to put his
leadership to the test by another referendum on
the issues of regional devolution and the reform of
the upper house of parliament. His call for support
for French people to choose between him and
‘upheaval’ rang hollow. On 27 April, 52 per cent
voted against and de Gaulle promptly resigned.
French society was now sufficiently stable and
mature to benefit from a less authoritarian style
and from new leaders who did not claim to
embody the mystic spirit of France. Yet it is difficult
to escape the conclusion that de Gaulle had
been necessary and that Gaullism, with all its
drawbacks, had provided a bridge between the old
regime and the new.
World History
