I Accuse De Gaulle

I ACCUSE DE GAULLE HENRI DE KERILLIS TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY HAROLD ROSENBERG HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, NEV YORK Contents NOTE TO THE AMERICAN READER vli PREFACE IX 1. A GOOD BEGINNING 3 2. A BAD COURSE II 3. THE ENTOURAGE 22 4. THE DE GAULLIST PRESS 43 5. VICISSITUDES OF THE EMPIRE 6l 6. THE AMERICANS IN NORTH AFRICA 79 7. BEFORE CASABLANCA 10 8. THE RICHELIEU 117 9. THE DOWNFALL OF GIRAUD 127 10. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ARMY 146 11. THE VIOLATION OF LEGITIMACY 164 12. THE DE GAULLIST CONSTITUTION 179 13. LIBERATOR VERSUS LIBERATORS 192 14. GENERAL DE GAULLE AND THE ALLIES 211 15. THE DE GAULLIST DOCTRINE 236 16. CONCLUSION . 249 INDEX Note to the American Reader American readers ought to bear in mind that this book was writ ten primarily for Frenchmen. Many o its details are peculiar to French life, to French history and tradition, to French sensibility it seemed to me that these should be retained. So many Americans are eager to have a better grasp of the contents of the French mind. So many American soldiers were startled and disturbed witnesses, both in Africa and in France itself, of the birth and first movements of De Gaullism. In order better to understand what they have seen, they need a familiarity with the inner workings of the French attitude. Besides, De Gaullism is connected with a whole complex of inter national phenomena it has already had its international repercussions and will have others in the future, and it ought to be known in its essence and its specific design. The French text has therefore been followed to the letter in the translation. Preface And ye shall now the truth, and the truth shall maf e you free GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN, Vin, 32. J-HE author o thisbook is an exile, weak and isolated, grief stricken, with nothing left him but his conscience and the certainty that he is fighting for the truth. The man he is attacking has raised himself by means of the political swirls of the war to the pinnacle of honor, fame and power he is the undisputed master of France. He has enthusiastic supporters in countries other than his own. He has at his command overwhelming resources, the whole apparatus of a great State with which to beat down those who dare stand in his way. Why then have I written this book For one reason, strange and paradoxical though it may seem, to defend myself against an accusation. Certain French newspapers have denounced me as a traitor. A member of the French govern ment has taken up this accusation on his own account. He was misled by an odious and diabolical propaganda. In this horrible war, men, like nations, have often been turned thus from their true friends and hurled against one another. The havoc wrought by lies, calumnies, psychological poisons, has backed up the work of tanks, guns, and firing squads. I continued throughout the entire occupation writing incessantly for a French newspaper in New York, proclaiming the sufferings x PREFACE and the martyrdom of France defiled by the Germans, denouncing those French traitors who were collaborating with them, and hail ing the heroism of those who went on fighting. I had belonged to the vanguard of the French Resistance at a time when there was only a handful of us in France to fight against German ideas and the spies and traitors in the pay of Germany, and to denounce Hitlerite lusts, preparations, and plans. It was pre cisely because I belonged to the first wave ofanti-German and anti-Hitler fighters that I was forced to leave France with the first wave of exiles. I was the only one out of 525 non-Communist deputies to vote in the Chamber of Deputies against the French capitulation at Munich in 1938 the only one to denounce, from the tribune of the Chamber and every day in my Paris newspaper, the work of the Abetzes, the Brinons, the Beats, and the Doriots the only one to name Marshal Petain in the middle of the war, six months before the capitulation, as the man who would be chosen to negotiate with Germany...