Description
Book SynopsisDe Gaulle and Churchill examines the tense and complicated relationship between General de Gaulle as leader of the Free French on the one hand and Winston Churchill and the British Government on the other.Evan McGilvray shows that De Gaulle was a career soldier, not a politician by any means, prior to 1940 but stepped into the leadership vacuum after the fall of France to provide a vital figurehead and rallying point for the Free French movement. His experiences in WW1, where he had served with distinction and was decorated but then was captured and so missed the nadir of despair expressed in the mutiny of 1917, meant he did not share the general defeatism of his peers in 1940.De Gaulle had demonstrated between the wars that he understood modern warfare and the need for modernization and reform of the French forces.Churchill valued the Free French contribution, particularly the French colonies as bulwarks to the British Middle East and jumping-off points for a Mediterranean counteroffe
