Robert Pralle
Who – or what – was Charles de Gaulle?
Most commonly he is known as ‘l’homme du 18 Juin’, the date of the 1940 appeal broadcast to his countrymen from the BBC, urging them to follow his example and rally to London.
‘L’homme du refus’ (of the armistice) had two aims: Germany’s military defeat certainly, but, even more, reestablishing the State, which had collapsed so spectacularly. In achieving this miracle it helped that ‘le Solitaire’ may have been a little crazy, said Mitterrand.
What he wrote about L’État, that it was a ‘monstre froid’, could be (and was, to Pompidou, another successor) applied to himself. ‘There is no such person as “Charles”,’ considered André Malraux.
“Forgive me! I have only one love, France.”
An historical figure, though, need not be serious all the time. His aide-de-camp recalled how, “We often laughed together. He liked to unwind with me when the pressure was really on.” There are plenty of instances of his humour here. For example, smiling to Malraux, when his culture minister observed of the presidential cat, “Look, mon Général, how his ears are pricked … he’s listening to us” – “You really think so? I know that cat … he’s pretending.”
In fact, this portrayal of him, in his own and others’ words, both spoken and written, reveals ‘Charles’ as well as De Gaulle … not to mention ‘De Gaulle’, as ‘l’homme du destin’ referred to himself in the third person; a “phenomenon”, he once confessed, “I do not always understand myself. I know, however, that I am shackled to it.”
It was a feeling of constriction he had experienced before. “Je suis prisonnier! Next, you will be sending me to the Isle of Man!”
“Non, mon Général, pour vous, très distingué, toujours la Tower of London,” replied Churchill to the “Monster of Hampstead”.