# Nicolas Sarkozy challenges France's version of history - BBC News



## Yrys (15 Mar 2009)

Nicolas Sarkozy challenges France's version of history






_President Sarkozy has taken his 
country back into the Atlantic fold_

Earlier this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his country would end four decades 
of self-imposed isolation and return to Nato's military command.

Here, the BBC's Allan Little reflects on France's long journey to reconcile itself with one of the 
darkest chapters in its history and its difficult relationship with the US and the UK.

There is a story about a conversation between General de Gaulle, who, as president of the 
French Republic, telephoned his American counterpart Lyndon B Johnson, to inform him that 
France had decided to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty alliance.





_De Gaulle sought to diminish US and 
British influence on foreign policy_

Since its foundation nearly two decades earlier, Nato had had its headquarters in France. Now 
Nato would have to move. Furthermore, de Gaulle added, it was his intention that all American 
service personnel should be removed from French soil. *"Does that include," Johnson is said 
to have replied, "those buried in it?"*

Ouch.

*Anti-Americanism*

But go to the cemeteries of Normandy and you see what an Anglo-Saxon business the D-Day 
landings - and the liberation of France - really were.

The historian Andrew Roberts has calculated that of the 4,572 allied servicemen who died on 
that day on which, in retrospect, so much of human history seems now to have pivoted - only 
19 were French. That is 0.4%. Of the rest, 37 were Norwegians, and one was Belgian. The rest 
were from the English speaking world - two New Zealanders, 13 Australians, 359 Canadians, 
1,641 Britons and, most decisively of all, 2,500 Americans.

After the disastrous Suez crisis in 1956, it fell to Harold MacMillan as UK prime minister to move
Britain from the Age of Empire to the Age of Europe. But his attempts to take the United Kingdom 
into what was then called the Common Market fell foul of General de Gaulle's famous vetoes. 

Twice Monsieur Non listened politely to Britain's plea, and twice he slammed the door. De Gaulle 
saw in British membership the Trojan Horse of American imperialism in Europe.

After Algeria won its independence from France in the early 1960s, de Gaulle was fond of saying 
that he had not granted freedom to one country only to sit by and watch France lose its 
independence to the Americans.

MacMillan, in old age, spoke ruefully of France's almost psychotic relationship with its Anglo-Saxon 
allies. France, he said, had made peace with Germany, had forgiven Germany for the brutality of
invasion and the humiliation of four years of occupation, but it could never - never - forgive the 
British and Americans for the liberation.





Harold MacMillan spoke of the strained 
relationship with France

French anti-Americanism has a long pedigree. The 18th Century philosophers of the European 
Enlightenment believed the New World to be self evidently inferior. They spoke - and wrote, 
prolifically - of the degeneration of plant and animal life in America. They believed America 
had emerged from the ocean millennia after the old continents; and that accounted for the 
cultural inferiority of civilisations that tried to plant themselves there.

*Self-liberation*

I was living in Paris when France celebrated the 60th anniversary of its liberation. I went to 
the beaches of Normandy on the 60th anniversary of D-Day and watched veterans assembling 
one last time, old men, heads held high, marching past blown up photographs of themselves 
as young liberators.

France's ambivalence - the same neurosis that Harold MacMillan spoke of - was evident. Paris 
launched a series of events to mark the 60th anniversary of its own liberation in August 2004.
The city's mayor had given the celebrations the title Paris Se Libere! - Paris Liberates Herself!
One of the newspapers published a 48-page commemorative issue. There was no mention of 
the allies until page 18.

*Building a myth*

An English friend of mine, in town that weekend, had remarked how empty Paris felt in August, 
the month the city empties out as its residents head for their annual sojourn in the countryside.
"I see," he said "that Paris was liberated in August. I guess the Parisians didn't find out about it 
till September, when they came back."

Again - ouch. The caustic Anglo-Saxon wit stings. It stings because the tale that France told itself 
after the war was built around a lie. Paris se libere. The words were first spoken by de Gaulle 
himself at the Hotel de Ville on the evening of 25 August 1944.

Paris had been liberated by her own people, he declared, "with the help of the armies of France, 
with the help and support of the whole of France, that is to say of fighting France, the true France, 
the eternal France."

France knew, in its heart, even in 1944, that that was not true. It took until the 1980s for a 
generation of historians properly to re-examine the darkest chapter of France's 20th Century 
history.

When I was living in Paris, it struck me that Sarkozy - not yet president - had the potential to be
France's first post-Gaullist leader. His enemies called him "Sarkozy the American" in the hope that 
this would make him unelectable. It did not work. And now he has taken his country back into the 
Atlanticist fold.

It seems to me another step in a long journey, in which France - in its mature, disputatious,
entrenched democracy - is growing reconciled to the history that is now challenging the myths.


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## mariomike (15 Mar 2009)

If I may quote from a book, "Massacre Over the Marne: The RAF bombing raids on Revigny in July 1944" ( 41 Lancasters were shot down. Of the 290 airmen, only 59 survived ): "One thing that I hope emerges from this book, quite apart from the day-to-day heroism of the average bomber crew, is the wonderful assistance given by the average French family to the airmen whose misfortune it was to be shot down. We might have our national differences today but, when the chips were down....well, let's just say that for the French it was all or nothing. It was their life not yours on the line, and that should never be forgotten."


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## mariomike (19 Mar 2009)

World War II:
Country Pop. Killed/Mising  Wounded  Total(Military)  Civilian (deaths) 
 France  42m  250,000        350,000   600,000           270,000 
 U.S.A. 129m  300,000        300,000   600,000            -- 

I would like to add these statistics to my preceeding post from a few days ago.  
They are not intended as anti-American.  
Simply that it seemed to me that the casualty statistics in the BBC article seemed to ignore French losses. 
http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob62.html


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## Journeyman (20 Mar 2009)

I can understand the French anti-Anglo bitterness....after all, England beat them 34-10 in six-nations' rugby on Sunday. 

Next weekend, France plays Italy -- let's see who surrenders first.


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## ModlrMike (20 Mar 2009)

Journeyman said:
			
		

> I can understand the French anti-Anglo bitterness....after all, England beat them 34-10 in six-nations' rugby on Sunday.
> 
> Next weekend, France plays Italy -- let's see who surrenders first.



That would require Germany and England to be playing...... each other.


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## Rifleman62 (20 Mar 2009)

There is a monument at the Courseulles sur mer Normandy beach where The Royal Winnipeg Rifles landed which says something like: here on 14 June 1944 Charles de Gaelle liberated France. Can't find my picture of it.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/06/06/conrad-black-on-charles-de-gaulle-the-man-who-ended-france-s-slide-into-anarchy.aspx

Conrad Black on Charles de Gaulle, the man who saved France from anarchy
Posted: June 06, 2008, 3:26 PM by Marni Soupcoff 

The following article is about how de Gaulle handled: "As disorder spread in the spring of 1968, he was also aware that eventually French bourgeois avarice would reassert itself", but includes this:

"On the day of the liberation of Paris, August 26, 1944, de Gaulle launched the myth that France, except for a few traitors, had fought bravely through the war on the front lines and had largely liberated itself. This was naturally embraced by conventional French opinion as a face-saving legend, even as General Eisenhower’s armies cleared France and swept into Germany". 

You have to wonder about France in WWII. Vichy France fought hard against the British in Syria and Lebanon. It lost a "war' against Thailand  in French Indo-China before the Japanese occupation. Some Allied service personnel where turned over to the Japanese by Vichy.

De Gaulle was difficult through out WW II. See http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-GllBrgGnrlChrlsdndthFrFrn.html

Gaulle, Brig-General Charles de and the Free French

From: The Oxford Companion to World War II | Date: 2001 | Author: I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT | Â© The Oxford Companion to World War II 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001.


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## medicineman (20 Mar 2009)

My parents told me that when they went to see the movie "The Day of the Jackal" in the cinema God knows how many years ago, there were alot of dicontented folks at the end when Edward Fox missed the shot at de Gaulle's melon...

MM


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## mariomike (21 Mar 2009)

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> There is a monument at the Courseulles sur mer Normandy beach where The Royal Winnipeg Rifles landed which says something like: here on 14 June 1944 Charles de Gaelle liberated France. Can't find my picture of it.



Is this the one?
http://www.dday-overlord.com/img/normatoday/plag/juno/juno_beach_courseulles_monument_de_gaulle.jpg


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## Rifleman62 (21 Mar 2009)

Yes, I believe it is.


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## Antoine (22 Mar 2009)

It was about time for the political elites to allow France to rejoin NATO. 

The French population in general acknowledge the sacrifice made by the allies to free their country and are grateful. Numerous French dislike De Gaule as much as many Americains dislike Bush.

French have fought against the German (as my Grand father and relatives) but many have collaborated with Nazi which is unacceptable. French have to remember this to not make the mistake twice and they have to give the credit of the "new world" that didn't support the Nazi.

However, I agree that more emphasis should be done by France to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding work made by US, UK, Canada and Australia to save them from Nazi but also from the Soviet.

I hope that France now in NATO will double its teamwork duty with us.

 all the way


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## mariomike (22 Mar 2009)

The people of Occupied France helped Allied airmen who were shot out of the sky from falling into enemy hands. The Gestapo shipped 168 so called "Terrorfliegers" captured in France to Buchenwald. 
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6972/is_8_15/ai_n28563620?tag=content;col1
Quoting from "Rendez-vous 127" by A.C.M. Sir Basil Embry: "It is perhaps difficult for anyone who has not lived under the oppression of German occupation and witnessed first-hand the frightful evil of Gestapo police methods to appreciate fully what it meant to work in direct opposition to them. The married man or woman caught harbouring an Allied airman brought reprisals on the whole family - even small children were put to death."
The RAF Association had this to say in 1947 letter to the people who helped the 59 survivors of the Revigny raids: "We cannot speak highly enough of the great spirit and heroism which was found throughout the entire German occupation."


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## wannabe SF member (22 Mar 2009)

Collaborating French might have been a minority but so was the resistance. The great majority of France's population waited the whole thing out and danced in the streets with the victors. Sometimes I wonder if they wouldn't have danced with the axis to had they been the victors.


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## mariomike (22 Mar 2009)

The incongruous said:
			
		

> Sometimes I wonder if they wouldn't have danced with the axis to had they been the victors.



Any evidence I have seen shows Paris much happier during the Liberation than the Occupation.


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## geo (22 Mar 2009)

> There is a monument at the Courseulles sur mer Normandy beach where The Royal Winnipeg Rifles landed which says something like: here on 14 June 1944 Charles de Gaelle liberated France. Can't find my picture of it.



That's not quite what it says.....

6 june 1944
Allied forces liberate Europe.

HERE
at Courseulles, on 13 June 1944
Charles de Gaule, The Liberator, returns to the land of France.

It does not, in any way, shape of form allege that Charles de Gaule singlehandedly liberated France .... or anywhere else for that matter.

In the context that General Petain lost France to the Germans - De Gaule was the face of the "Free French"


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## geo (22 Mar 2009)

Sorry MM....fixed


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## mariomike (22 Mar 2009)

geo said:
			
		

> Sorry MM....fixed



Thanks, Geo. My family has been making pilgrimages to Loches-sur-Ource since 1954. 
http://www.oradour.info/appendix/frefranc.gif


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## Rifleman62 (23 Mar 2009)

Geo, did I not say "something like"? You fortunately have the ability to speak two languages. I do not, so more power to you.

 "It does not, in any way, shape of form allege that Charles de Gaule singlehandedly liberated France .... or anywhere else for that matter." What do you think 'Charles de Gaule, The Liberator, returns to the land of France" implies?
What other country, former French colony, did de Gaule ever set foot in during WWII?


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## geo (23 Mar 2009)

(Rifleman62... sorry if I came across as being accusing you of anything..... wasn't my intention.)

Ummm.... Algeria & Moroco



> 6 june 1944
> Allied forces liberate Europe.
> 
> HERE
> ...



Given that the Allies liberated Europe on June 6th and de Gaule returned on June 13th... he was a little late to liberate France.



> After the surrender of the French, de Gaulle escaped to Britain. He now developed what can only be described as a political role as he could do little at a military level. De Gaulle called on all French people to resist the Nazi occupiers.
> 
> His pride at being French, his aloof manner, his patriotism and his obvious sense of mission impressed many and he became the head of the Free French movement. Despite his status and the fact that he had actually fought in World War Two, de Gaulle was a difficult ally for Winston Churchill and F D Roosevelt. His personality did not help make friends and de Gaulle did not go out of his way to be popular. He was highly offended by what happened at the Allied meeting at Casablanca.
> 
> ...



By 1941, de Gaule had become a political animal.  He might have been wearing a uniform but he was the recognized leader of the French... not a military leader

I would consider that the LIBERATOR comment would be in the following context:
Gen Pétain - the political leader who saw to France's "sellout" / surrender to the Germans VS
Gen de Gaule - the political leader who saw to France's "liberation"


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## Rifleman62 (23 Mar 2009)

Geo, I should have read my own posted reference ( De Gaulle was difficult through out WW II. See http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-GllBrgGnrlChrlsdndthFrFrn.html ) to answer my own question (What other country, former French colony, did de Gaule ever set foot in during WWII? ).

Which proves I have difficulty in both offical languages.


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## geo (23 Mar 2009)

Yup.... same here 

( from one old fart to another, CHIMO! )


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## Servicepub (2 May 2009)

This brings to mind Churchill's quote about his often chilly relationship with deGaulle; "Every man has his cross to bear; mine is the Cross of Lorraine" referring to the symbol of the wartime Free French Forces in the UK.


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