NYT: FDR and De Gaulle Had Their Problems, too
Elaine Sciolino, in the NYT (May 31, 2004):
Franklin Roosevelt loathed Charles de Gaulle and de Gaulle loathed him back.
The Free French leader, was given only two days notice that 150,000 American and other foreign troops were coming by sea and air to the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, and de Gaulle was not allowed to take part.
President Roosevelt , worried about de Gaulle's authoritarian streak, drew up a plan to impose an American-run military government on the country. Roosevelt went so far as to print a new currency for the French people, but de Gaulle successfully vetoed its use.
"The French and Americans fought like cats and dogs," said Robert O. Paxton, the American World War II historian."This was not a time of French-American harmony. But in the mythology, we were all heroes and they were all grateful to be saved. We use the positive parts of memory to mend fences."
It is to honor this spirit of sacrifice and liberation that
Yet even as they celebrate the Atlantic powers' greatest achievement, many will be mourning their greatest debacle: the failure to forge a common strategy on Iraq.
No less than in 1944, political attention will be focused on the difficult relationship between the American and French leaders, George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac, the man who championed European opposition to the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. How these two men get along will help shape the course of trans-Atlantic ties.
French public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile to Mr. Bush. (Eighty-five percent who were asked in a Pew poll in March had an unfavorable opinion of him.)
Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister of France, calls the disconnect between the celebration of the past and the condemnation of the present"the paradox of June 6.''
The American president"will be welcomed as the president of brave men who died for freedom," Mr. Fabius said at the University of Chicago last Tuesday."But he will be considered as the exact opposite of the values that make us love America."
The Socialist Party spokesman, Annick Lepetit, puts it more starkly:"We say yes to America, yes to the heroes of D-Day, yes to peace - and no to George Bush."