Allies at War: The Bitter Rivalry Among Churchill, Roosevelt and De Gaulle

        Berthon's narrative accompanies his forthcoming PBS telecast about Charles de Gaulle's struggles once France fell to the Nazis in 1940 to play the modern Joan of Arc. Aged 49 and a one-star general for only three weeks, he had flown to London five days before Paris was surrendered. Legally, Marshal Petain's collaborationist regime at Vichy represented France, but de Gaulle almost single handedly established the exile "Free French" to continue the war from England and some of the colonies.
In Berthon's view, de Gaulle had four enemies Germany, Vichy, a skeptical Churchill and a hostile Roosevelt. This hostility, fed by at best half-truths from Roosevelt's rightist links to P‚tain ambassador Admiral Leahy, State Department adviser Charles Murphy and Secretary of State Cordell Hull more than by Churchill, shackled and even undermined de Gaulle. Berthon describes vividly the wartime climate of duplicity and distrust: Churchill tried to "straddle the two Frances"; de Gaulle compensated for his powerlessness with haughty pride; Roosevelt (for whom "France had lost all right to...respect by her abject failure in 1940") excluded de Gaulle from all decisions affecting France.