Roosevelt v de Gaulle: What Was FDR Thinking?

The rest of you puzzle over Putin, I'm still trying to figure out de Gaulle.  No, not de Gaulle, but his "allies," in this case the President of the United States.  You remember FDR, the one in the wheelchair, with the cigarette holder and the benign (if icy) smile.

Here's the thing:  de Gaulle had one overvaulting purpose which was to preserve the identity of an independent French nation, aka "the Free French."  In pursuit of his goal, he stepped on toes, kicked shins, wounded egos. But he also had a clear and coherent strategy: he also understood that to achieve his purpose, his best path was to make the French indispensable to the Allied war effort (and to make sure that the Allies knew it).   Many--perhaps most--people who encountered de Gaulle during the war did not love him, but quite a few came to understand him.  Notable example, de Gaulle drove Churchill into legendary rages.   But Churchill was not one to let personal indignation blind him to pragmatic convenience: he usually found a way to accommodate himself to de Gaulle  because he understood that at the end of th day, de Gaulle was on his side.  And Eisenhower--he certainly had his disagreements with the general, but he was usually pretty good at keeping his relationships off the boil, and he seems to have understood just what de Gaulle could do for the common cause.

The puzzle is Roosevelt.  He seems to have encountered de Gaulle in a posture of sporadically contained outrage, laced with withering contempt.   Unlike Churchill, he seems never to have let down his guard.  Worse, his rancor seems to have infected those round him--Secretary of State Cordell Hull, for example, or Secretary of War Henry M. Stimson (though Hull who wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, might well have wound up in the same posture without exterior assistance).

And why?   Particularly after D-Day, when the Allies were back on Northern European soil, and when it was clear that de Gaulle, vindicated, was evolving into an authentic national hero--what was the percentage for Roosevelt in persisting in trying to marginalize, even to humiliate, him?  Why not at least tolerate--no, why not embrace someone who was clearly emerging as the authentic voice of a liberated nation?

I don't have any answer to that one.  One might be tempted to say that FDR found de Gaulle "too conservative" for his taste.  Such a conclusion might have been a mistake--de Gaulle eluded and still elude simple characterization.    But in any event, it didn't prevent Roosevelt (or at any rate, his government) from maintaining cordial relations with the quisling Vichy statelet almost to the end.  One might speculate that Roosevelt found de Gaulle too cozy with then communists.  This would surely have been a misjudgment of the man who did more than any other to thwart communism in postwar France.  And in any event, it would be pretty rich coming from someone so chummy for so long with "uncle Joe" Stalin).

One is--I am--tempted to speculate that de Gaulle brought out the inner Roosevelt: a steely-hearted loner who really didn't like anybody very much, however well he may have concealed his isolation under a gauzy exterior of charm.  One might be tempted, but then you'd have  to explain Roosevelt's apparently genuine affection for Churchill--often at least as refractory as de Gaulle, yet a man who may well have been Roosevelt's one genuine friend.  As I say, I don't have a good answer to that one.  For valuable prizes, readers are invited to set me straight.

Great Men: a Matched Set

Once again I'm indulging my curiosity about General Charles de Gaulle who, among other achievements, personally created "the free French" in World War II by spinning threads out of his own gizzard.   You don't build such an unusual resume without being a difficult person and de Gaulle  was surely difficult.  People remember Churchill saying that "the heaviest cross I have to bear is the cross of Lorraine." Apparently it wasn't actually Churchill (it was somebody close to him).  But it's one of those remarks that lives because it sounds so right.  Here's a memorable occasion when the two alphas lock horns.  Churchill had become, shall we say, profoundly disappointed with de Gaulle, but he felt tht circumstances demanded that he try to path things up. 

 He ... carefully choreographed the meeting at Downing Street, telling [his secretary, Jock] Colville that he would rise and bow slightly but not shake hands, while indicating to the General the chair in which he should sit on the other side of the big table in the Cabinet Room. He would not speak in French but would converse through Colville as interpreter

Churchill went through this rigmarole when de Gaulle came into the room. ‘General de Gaulle, I have asked you to come here this afternoon,’ he began. Colville translated, ‘Mon Général, je vous ai invité à venir cet après-midi.’ Churchill broke in to say: ‘I didn’t say Mon Général, and I did not say I had invited him.’ 

After a little more from Churchill, de Gaulle began to speak, also correcting the translation. So the secretary left the room and called in a linguist from the Foreign Office. When he arrived, the two leaders had been sitting looking at one another silently for several minutes. After a short time, the interpreter emerged red in the face, protesting that they must be mad: both had told him he could not speak French properly so they would have to manage without him.

Fenby, Id.
 
Later:

The Prime Minister warned that some British figures suspected that his visitor had ‘become hostile and had moved towards certain fascist views which would not be helpful to collaboration in the common cause’. Rejecting the charge of authoritarianism, de Gaulle said he ‘begged the Prime Minister to understand that the Free French were necessarily somewhat difficult people: else they would not be where they were. If this difficult character sometimes coloured their attitude towards their great ally . . . [Churchill] could rest assured that their entire loyalty to Great Britain remained unimpaired.’ It was just the kind of statement designed to melt his host’s anger.

Outside, Colville tried to eavesdrop, but the double doors defeated him. He decided it was his duty to burst in – ‘perhaps they had strangled each other’. Just then, Churchill rang the bell for him. Entering, Colville found the two men sitting side by side, ‘with an amiable expression on their faces’, smoking cigars and speaking in French.

Fenby, Jonathan (2012-06-20). The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France He Saved (p. 175). Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

And on a separate occasion:

[W]hen the writer and politician Harold Nicolson said that, for all the problems he caused, the General was a great man, the Prime Minister responded: ‘A great man? Why, he’s selfish, he’s arrogant, he thinks he’s the centre of the universe . . . You’re right, he’s a great man!’

Fenbyn Ibid., 133.