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Chapter 7

This webpage reproduces part of

Giraud
and the African Scene

by
G. Ward Price

The Macmillan Company, 1944

The text is in the public domain.

This text has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

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Chapter 9

 p166  Chapter VIII

Giraud Succeeds Darlan

Political excitement has a special appeal for youth. Young men are inclined to resent the experience and wisdom of their elders. They find themselves confronted by a solid body of senior opinion upon matters which, to their ardent minds, seem of a highly controversial character. Against this accumulated dogma their eager arguments beat in vain.

It is with delight, therefore, that in times of political crisis youth finds its elders divided upon matters of great gravity, and its own ardour admired and praised by whichever side it serves.

So flattering a change of attitude on the part of the older generation sometimes goes to young men's heads.

This happened to a youth in Algiers named Bonnier de la Chapelle when that city was suddenly plunged into excitement by the Allied landing. His father was a local journalist, and his mother, of Italian birth, had gone back to Italy.

He was a tall, rather pleasant-faced youth — to judge from his photograph — of the kind that one sees talking loudly and volubly in the cafés on the Rue Michelet. He was a student at Algiers University, and after graduating there might well have become a merchant or a lawyer, spending his life obscurely but comfortably in one of those modern flats perched on the steep hillside above the town, and living to an age when he would have smiled at the memory of the political ardours of his youth.

Fate and the hour however, had chosen this particular young man for a more tragic destiny.

His own political views were probably sketchy but he frequented friends who talked freely and excitedly about the historic developments that were going on around them. Some of these companions were De Gaullists, who saw in Admiral Darlan a traitor to  p167 his country, a Vichy place-hunter and a pro‑German collaborationist. According to such people, the Admiral was a scoundrel profiting by the naïveté and political ignorance of the Americans to seize for himself a place that rightfully belonged to General de Gaulle.

Other acquaintances of Bonnier de la Chapelle were romantic monarchists. Here was a chance, they declared, to restore the legitimate Sovereign of France to his throne. The leader­ship of the French nation stood vacant. A descendant of the last French king, Louis Philippe, was living close at hand in North Africa.​a Yet the unique opportunity of regaining the position which was his by right of birth was being filched away from him.

All this excited talk took place under stirring conditions that might have upset a steadier mind than La Chapelle's. From being a peaceful backwater in a world at war, Algiers had become the centre of momentous martial developments. Tanks roared through the city's streets. The port was full of warships. American seaplanes went droning across the sky. At night, sirens sounded, and enemy bombs sometimes fell.

These novel conditions had a disturbing effect on the young man. The contagion of violent action inspired him with eagerness to have a part in the historic events going on around him — and so, from frequently hearing the remark that Darlan ought to be shot, he was impelled to the resolve to shoot him.

In some way unexplained, Bonnier de la Chapelle managed to obtain, from a member of Darlan's staff, a pass admitting him to the General Staff office, where the Admiral worked during the day. This is a small building standing at the upper end of the large garden of the Palais d'Eté, the official residence of the Governor-General of Algeria, which is reached by the serpentine Rue Michelet as it climbs the steep hill behind Algiers.

La Chapelle called at the General Staff office on the morning of Christmas Eve, but could not get access to Darlan. He came back in the afternoon and was put in the waiting-room. There he sat until the Admiral came out his office to walk down the corridor past the open door of the room in which La Chapelle was. The young  p168 man sprang up and fired two shots at close range with his .22 revolver. The first bullet hit Darlan in the mouth, the second pierced his lungs.

The mortally wounded man fell across the open doorway of his room and La Chapelle jumped over his body into it. Major Hourcade, one of the Admiral's staff, leapt from his desk and tried to close with the assassin, who fired two more shots with a trembling hand, wounding the officer in the leg. As he fell to the floor Hourcade tripped his attacker up.

By this time white-robed Spahi orderlies from the entrance hall and the gendarmes on duty were rushing to the scene. There was no escape for La Chapelle, as the windows were barred. He was seized, disarmed, and beaten up.

The guard on duty at the entrance gate rushed out into the Rue Michelet, to arrest any suspicious loiterers who might have been accomplices. The grounds of the Palais d'Eté were also searched, but no one was found who could be suspected of connection with the murder. There was no car waiting to provide Bonnier de la Chapelle with a possible get‑away. He had committed that most formidable of all types of political murder, in which the killer makes no attempt to save himself.

The wounded Admiral was carried to the door. It so happened that all the official cars were away on duty. The only automobile standing there was one belonging to M. Louette, a supporter of De Gaulle, who had escaped from France in 1941. The Admiral was lifted into the back seat, and M. Louette started off alone, to drive him at top speed to the Maillot Hospital. Darlan died when the car was only half‑way there. His body was carried into a private ward, and his wife sent for.

When La Chapelle was told by his gaolers that the Admiral was dead, his only remark was: "I am glad. You can kill me now." The young murderer was interrogated most of the night, and brought before a court-martial on Christmas Day.

The examining magistrates came to the conclusion that he had acted independently, but it is part of the regular routine of French criminal procedure that in such cases everybody with whom it can  p169 be traced the murderer has had contact shall be detained for interrogation. Twelve such people were arrested in connection with Admiral Darlan's death. Two of these had helped in the Allied landing; others were Jews, and there were also some police officers who were alleged to have had reason to suspect the criminal's purpose but had not reported it to their superiors.

Their detention strengthened the suspicion in the United States and Great Britain that a predominantly pro‑Vichy regime in North Africa was using the murder as a pretext for revenging itself on friends of the Allies.

The investigations carried out by the police revealed nothing to incriminate these people, and they were all soon released.

Nor was any foundation discovered for the rumour that the murders of General Giraud and Mr. Robert Murphy had also been planned.

General Giraud, who was held responsible for these investigations, explained his attitude to me in the following terms:

"When a murder has taken place, the law must be allowed to take its course. If the examining magistrate thinks it necessary to arrest anyone on suspicion of complicity, he must have a free hand to do so. That is a matter of French law. It may be that some of the people detained have rendered services to the Allies. It is certainly a fact that among them are declared supporters of myself. In neither case can I interfere with the regular process of law. It would be all the more unfitting for me to do so because I have succeeded to my post as head of the French civil administration in direct consequence of this assassination of my predecessor."

Bonnier de la Chapelle was shot down at dawn on December 26th, and later on the same day Darlan was buried with military honours, the coffin being carried from the Cathedral to the Palais d'Eté, where military detachments marched past it. President Roosevelt described his death as "murder in the first degree."

The Italians represented the murder of Darlan as being the work of the British Intelligence Service, which they depicted as determined to maintain the position of De Gaulle against Washington's supposed support of the Admiral.

 p170  The Stampa went so far as to invent some "last words" for Darlan as follows "You can do nothing for me now. England has achieved her aim."

That is the story as it stands on the official record, and as it will be written in the history books.​b

Some of the French people in Algiers professed to disbelieve it. They accept the fact that Darlan was murdered, but they do not concur that Bonnier de la Chapelle killed him, or that he was executed for it. They suggesting that this young man was a substitute, a sort of "John Doe" of political assassination, a scapegoat arrested to divert suspicion and then spirited away.​c

I feel some sympathy with the opinion expressed by Mr. Henry Ford on the witness-stand during his libel suit against the Chicago Tribune in July, 1919. He asserted that "history is bunk." Having spent a lifetime as a journalist in trying to ascertain what is going on in the world from day to day, one realises that no historical narrative is likely to be more than fifty per cent accurate. Newspaper correspondents in foreign countries grow to be sceptical about the accepted versions of many public and political events and situations, but most of them, in the limited time at their disposal, do their best to pursue the elusive truth, and I interrogated certain doubters of the official account of Darlan's death.

Their suspicions were based on surmise rather than knowledge. They argued in this way: "Many people had a motive for killing Darlan. Besides the De Gaullists and the Monarchists, Laval might have wanted to make an example of a subordinate who had broken away from his authority. The Nazis, too, would feel a professional pride in punishing a renegade quisling.

"On the other hand, the murder may have been committed by a patriotic Frenchman who resented the fact that the Allies were conceding high office to a man whom the great majority of his fellow-countrymen regarded as a traitor."

These sceptics argued that reasons of State might make it desirable for the new French administration in Algiers to conceal the true facts of the murder, and that the Allied authorities, treating the  p171 event as an internal French affair, would have condoned the deception.

Getting down to facts, they asked how it was possible for an unknown young man to get inside Darlan's closely guarded offices.

"I saw Darlan every day when I was living in Vichy," said a refugee from France with whom I talked. "He used to pass my door on the way to his villa close by. There were armed guards in his automobile, and before and behind it were cars filled with detectives. The villa itself was protected by barbed wire, and sentries patrolled around it day and night.

"These precautions were not superfluous. As Darlan drove through the streets, the people on the pavements would shout after him abuse and threats such as 'Vendu ! Traître ! On aura ta peau !' [Grafter! Traitor! We will get you yet!]

"Who can believe," asked my informant, "that Darlan, on coming to Algiers, where he knew he was in greater danger because he had not the same means of protection, would have allowed an obscure student to make his way to the very door of his room? L'histoire de son assassinat est une mystification de premier ordre !"

I record these observations simply because, when the contemporary history of France comes to be written, it seems likely that the French may make of Darlan's death a mystery similar to that surrounding the identity of the "Man in the Iron Mask" and the fate of the little son of Louis XVI after his escape from the prison of the Temple.

The characters of Darlan and of his successor, General Giraud, were thus summed up by the London Times in its first issue after the news of the murder had reached London:

Admiral Darlan's major fault was that he had little faith in his own country and less still in this. All too readily he succumbed to the baleful defeatism which in June, 1940, vainly sought national survival in capitulation rather than in continuing the hard struggle.

With that cardinal error — an error of judgment and of fate — started a long course which committed him, and those with whom he was associated, to the perpetuation of the humbling and enslaving of France.  p172 Even in the roughest sense he was not a pro‑German, as his old associate, Laval, is; yet his collaboration with the Germans never lacked outward heartiness. Nor was he a traitor of the conventional sort; yet his political actions outraged some of the dearest sentiments of the mass of patriotic French people. Throughout his Vichy days he harboured the hope that, using the French Fleet as a bargaining weapon, he could extract from the enemy more tolerable terms for his country.

Darlan, a first‑class sailor, was at bottom an opportunist as a politician. He read aright and betimes the composite meanings of the Battle of Britain, of the German failure in Russia, of the American entry into the war. His willingness to be associated with the Allied move into French North Africa, once he understood its real scope, was not therefore, a surprise. The only surprise was that so crucial a part in it should have fallen to him. The reasons for the choice had a plain and pressing military validity, and General Indicates a West Point graduate and gives his Class.Eisenhower, the Allied Commander-in‑Chief, who was immediately responsible for the execution of the whole hazardous enterprise, was bound to heed them in the interests of the troops under him, American and British alike. His decision, which was not lightly made, saved much needless sacrifice.

No time was lost by the Imperial Council, established by Darlan, in appointing a successor. General Giraud becomes High Commissioner while remaining Commander-in‑Chief of the French land, sea and air forces in North Africa. His record is known, and is approved. Whatever may be said about his purely political influence, at least he had never left anyone in doubt where he stands in the struggle. His own life has been very much "a march and a battle." In two wars he escaped daringly from his German captors, and his recent exploit in getting out of Vichy France to sound the rally in North Africa was of the same pattern. If a legendary fame attaches to his name, it is of the kind which a robust patriot and doughty warrior brings to the fight. Collaboration with the enemy has never entered into his calculations, nor has compromise been part of his character. The issue, as he has said and shown, will be settled by fighting, not by finesse. His first order of the day marks the men. The call is unequivocal. It goes forth in the name of France. The task is victory.

The acceptance of Admiral Darlan as the representative of French authority in North Africa, at a time when resistance to the Allied landing was still going on, might be claimed to be a case of force  p173 majeure. It was essential to put an end to a dangerous situation and the Allied generals could not afford to be particular as to the means they employed or the personalities with whom they dealt. The situation was somewhat different when it came to choosing his successor under more peaceful conditions.

The Allied Governments left this matter in the hands of the "Imperial Council," which Darlan had formed as the administrative authority for North Africa. It consisted of the highest civil and military officials, and its choice fell unanimously upon Giraud. This was satisfactory to the American Government, which had appreciated the General's ready consent that the supreme military command which he had expected to receive should be entrusted to General Eisenhower, and also the further abandonment of his claim to civil authority in favour of Darlan.

There was a moment when the Allies feared that the choice of the Imperial Council might fall on General Noguès. That would certainly have led to friction between them and the French administration in North Africa.

By electing Giraud to the position of supreme military and civil authority, the Council, despite its supposedly pro‑Vichy composition, continued the precedent set by Darlan in giving aid to the Allied plan.

Giraud's election was, in fact, another step in the right direction, because, in distinction from Darlan, he did not claim to derive his authority from Marshal Pétain. The subterfuge adopted by the Admiral that, in working with the Allies, he was only fulfilling the secret wishes of the Marshal, who was held in duress by the Germans, was abandoned by the General. Giraud was as frankly anti-Vichy as he was anti-German.

He too, like his predecessor, was beset with impatient criticism from Britain and Africa as soon as he took office. There was great clamour for an immediate purge of the whole North African administration.

But Giraud resembled Eisenhower in his determination to subordinate political questions to military interests. The General has never paid much attention to politics, or had any experience of them.  p174 He regarded it as his primary and paramount duty to organise the cooperation of the French North African troops under his command with the Allied campaign in Tunisia. During his first weeks in office he had no time to spare for the questions which obsessed his political critics in the Allied countries — as to which of the French officials in North Africa were still pro‑Vichy at heart, and what was to become of the internees, who were regarded in Britain and America as the victims of political persecution.

General de Gaulle began by taking a favourable attitude toward Giraud's appointment. In his broadcast to France on December 28th he said:

"A renowned French military leader, General Giraud — and I can testify that the Government of the Republic regretted, at the worst moments of the Battle of France, that he could not be appointed Generalissimo because he had been taken prisoner by the enemy — has begun to draw into combat a part of the troops of North Africa.

"Their comrades who have been able to resume the fight at different dates in different theatres of war salute them, and hope that all who bear the arms of France may emerge, as is right and proper, into a single French army, a single French navy, a single French air force.

"An enlarged temporary power, grouping all French forces inside and outside the country and in all French territories which are able to fight for liberation, is necessary for national independence and unity, until such time as the nation itself may be able to express its sovereign wishes."

At the same time De Gaulle sent a message to Giraud that he was prepared to meet him. But the "Free French" in London were plus royalistes que leur roi.

They protested that the administration of French North Africa should immediately be entrusted to their chief, on the ground that he had established a regime already operating in French Equatorial Africa and Syria. To people in North Africa, however, it was evident that the arrival of De Gaulle in Algiers would have set the local French population at loggerheads. The result would have been to add civil discord to a military situation which was still difficult, if not dangerous.

 p175  Under such pressure from his supporters De Gaulle modified the approving attitude which he had taken up towards Giraud's election by the Imperial Council.

A few days after his broadcast welcoming Giraud's appointment he made the following statement to me personally on the situation in North Africa:

"There is Vichy, and there is the war. Giraud is trying to take up a middle position. He must consequently fail.

"Thirty-three million Frenchmen are behind me. If the attempt to instal Giraud were to succeed, it would mean revolution in France.

"He wants to absorb my movement, and his administration is made up of men who have all been collaborationists, who belong to the same class as lost the war and made a bad peace, and who only want to hang on to their jobs."

General de Gaulle added that it was not General Eisenhower who had put Darlan at the head of French affairs in North Africa but the American State Department. "They have always favoured Vichy," he said, "and they want to install a Vichy-model Government as the post‑war authority in France."

De Gaulle even objected to the dispatch of Mr. Harold Macmillan as the British Minister of State in Algiers. "Either he is a member of the British Government, which has no authority in French North Africa," he said, "or else he is an envoy, who can only be accredited to General Giraud."

Giraud's first measures on taking up the succession of Darlan were reassuring. He abolished the office of High Commissioner which the Admiral claimed to have received from Marshal Pétain. Instead, he took the title of "Civil and Military Commander-in‑Chief." The change was only a nominal one, but it broke down more of the Vichy tradition.

Another satisfactory measure was the removal of M. Yves Châtel from the Governorship of Algeria. The popularity which this step might have brought General Giraud with those American and British critics who at that time were so scathing in their condemnation of him was largely negatived by the fact that he appointed M.  p176 Marcel Peyrouton to succeed him. Giraud was denounced as having replaced one Vichy collaborationist by another, for Peyrouton had been Vichy Minister of the Interior from September 6, 1940, to February 17, 1941, and was held responsible for the creation of concentration camps in unoccupied France.

Those who were so ready to censure Giraud were generally ignorant of the difficulties of his position. Competent Governors of Algeria, in a time of great political complexity, are not to be found on every hand. Peyrouton was the only capable man available at the moment. He had both the ability and the necessary experience — for he had been General-Secretary of Algeria, French Resident-General in Tunisia, and Resident-General in Morocco.

The British Government would have liked to see General Catroux appointed to the Algerian Governorship — as has since been done — but at that time, before Giraud and De Gaulle had reached a working agreement, this solution was impossible.

It might at least be counted in Peyrouton's favour that he had signed the warrant for the arrest of Pierre Laval on December 13, 1940, and had resigned his ministerial post rather than comply with German demands. He had been compensated for this loss of office by appointment to the French Embassy in Buenos Aires. Directly his enemy, Laval, returned to power as Premier on April 17, 1942, Peyrouton resigned his Ambassadorship. For the rest of that year he remained in the Argentine as a private individual, and was a candidate for a professor­ship in the law faculty of the University of Buenos Aires when the Allied landing in North Africa took place. As soon as Giraud succeeded Darlan, Peyrouton offered to serve under him in his military rank of captain in the reserve.

His portly figure and heavy jowl, which give him the appearance of an elderly actor, made this gesture on the part of a man well over fifty seem somewhat histrionic, but, since resigning his Governorship under the agreement eventually reached between Giraud and De Gaulle, Peyrouton has, in fact, rejoined the army.

During his term of office, Peyrouton, like Darlan, proved to be a shrewd opportunist. He fully realised the need of working with the  p177 Allies, and did all that they requested for the security and convenience of their armies.

As a matter of fact Peyrouton became almost popular even with the Jews and Communists of Algiers who were the most irreconcilable elements of the local population. The Psychological Warfare branch of the Allied General Staff, part of whose duty it was to keep close touch with public feeling in North Africa, reported that he gained steadily in prestige. He released the twenty-seven Communist deputies who had been in prison for opposing the French Government at the outset of the war, when Stalin still had a pact with Hitler, and to a deputation of them he gave the assurance that there would be no objection to their carrying on their political activities so long as they did not disturb local order or threaten Allied military interests.

He also let out some of the various categories of people detained in the North African internment camps, and rescinded part of Vichy's anti-Jewish legislation.

It may have brought bad publicity for Giraud to appoint a man who had been so closely associated with the collaborationist Government of France, but from a practical point of view this mistake was not so serious as it was represented to be by some of the journalists in North Africa, whom the comparative inactivity of the campaign in the early months of 1943 left with time to concentrate their attention upon the political situation.

The fact that Giraud gave his energies almost exclusively to military cooperation with the Allies was responsible for another incident at beginning of January, 1943, which aroused a storm of suspicion and abuse. This was the arrival in Algiers from Morocco of the Comte de Paris,​d son of the late Duke of Orleans, and a descendant of King Louis Philippe, who was on the French throne from 1830 to 1848.

Left-Wing Frenchmen made the brief emergence of this all‑but-forgotten royal personage a pretext for the charge that Giraud was scheming to use North Africa as a back-door through which to smuggle the Orleanist dynasty back onto the French throne.

 p178  The Comte de Paris had always refused to have anything to do with either the Allies or General de Gaulle. He persisted in regarding Pétain as the head of a properly constituted French Government. The Action Française of December 21, 1942, had published a letter from him protesting his loyalty to the Marshal.

The Count is a slim man of medium height, about forty years of age, affable and modest in bearing, who has not inherited the impressive physique and presence of his father. Though very rich, he lives at an out‑of-the‑way place in Spanish Morocco, since French territory is officially barred to him as the member of an exiled Royal House.

There is no evidence that General Giraud has ever indulged dreams of a monarchist restoration in France. His common sense would exclude such fancies. But among his political entourage there were Royalist sympathisers who saw, in the confused state of affairs prevailing in French North Africa, an opportunity for pressing the claims of a recognised Pretender to the French throne. They may have urged the Comte de Paris to come to Algiers in the hope of getting him adopted as the figurehead of a French Government in exile. He found, however, no encouragement from any quarter, and returned to Spanish Morocco, whence when no more has been heard of him.

The main pretext for the strictures that were passed on General Giraud after he took over the control of French military and civil affairs in North Africa was that he did not at once release all the prisoners in the internment camps which had been established there while that territory was under the control of Vichy. There were six or nine thousand people under this restraint (French official figures varied greatly), and they fell into several different categories.

Some of them, such as the Communists, had originally been interned because they opposed French participation in the war. These formed the oldest batch of prisoners. Then, after France and North Africa had come under German domination, a lot more people were locked up on the charge of making propaganda for the Allies, or for trying to escape to join General de Gaulle.

 p179  There were also a number of British and Allied seamen who had fallen into French hands and been detained, and to add to the complexity of the problem, about 3,000 Spanish Communist refugees who had surrendered to French internment after General Franco established himself in power.

As soon as Giraud took over the administration, the Allied seamen and all the Russian and Polish prisoners, together with those who had been arrested for favouring the Allies, were released, and a committee was formed under the International Red Cross to visit all the concentration camps and find out what the other internees proposed to do if they were allowed to go.

It was obvious that they could not be turned out without employment by which to live. The Red Cross Commission got their scale of wages increased, for various works on which they were employed, from 5 to 70 francs a day.

Most of the prisoners were offered the chance of enlisting in the British Pioneer Corps, though the Spaniards were given the alternative of being sent to Mexico.

Of French political prisoners there were, on the day of the Allied landing, 577, a figure, which, six months later, had been reduced to 131, of whom 80 had been locked up for anti-Allied activity since the North African campaign began, being members of the pro‑German organisation known as the Parti Populaire Français and the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire.

Of the foreign political prisoners, who, on the day of the landing, numbered 1,118, there remained 808 in the concentration camps six months later, but 573 of these were Italians who had been interned since the arrival of the Allies. A hundred of the remainder were Spaniards who were waiting to go to Mexico, and the rest had for the most part been promised jobs in private employment. Those who were too sick to work would be sent, I was informed by Dr. Abadie, Giraud's new Minister of the Interior, to a special rest camp in Morocco, fitted up by the Red Cross.

There were also 1,642 men still in labour camps in May, 1943. Of these 643 were going to Mexico, and the cases of the rest were  p180 to be revisedº by a commission of three magistrates. Dr. Abadie promised that anyone whose case seemed to justify further detention would have a fair trial in the courts.

The internees could not do much to get publicity for their grievances, but the Jews were under no such disadvantage in denouncing Giraud's failure to remove instantly all the disabilities that had been laid upon them at the behest of the Vichy Government.

The native Jews of North Africa number about only 320,000, but they bulk conspicuously in public affairs because they are mainly concentrated in the towns and have considerable influence in business and the professions. To their number must be added many Jewish settlers from Europe.

After the fall of France, the Vichy Government, under German control, began to impose anti-Jewish legislation on North Africa. Jews were forbidden to hold posts in the army, the police, the magistracy and the educational service. Jewish clerks and workmen were dismissed from public utility enterprises.

Restrictions were placed on the number of Jewish lawyers, doctors, and other professional men, as also on the proportion of Jewish students admitted to the primary, secondary, and high schools. Much Jewish property was confiscated.

After the Allied landing, General Eisenhower announced in a radio broadcast on November 17, 1942, that these impositions on the Jews would shortly be abolished. For the next few months little was done. Darlan expressed the opinion that it was necessary to proceed cautiously in this matter, in order not to alienate the Moslems.

American and British pressure was, however, persistently maintained to do away with anti-Jewish discrimination. On January 29th, Giraud announced at a Press conference that he was taking measures to restore their property to the Jews in North Africa and to allow Jewish children to attend school in full numbers. But he, too, declared that such changes were an internal matter, and must be made gradually.

Six weeks later, all anti-Jewish legislation imposed by the Vichy Government was finally declared invalid. Jewish officials who had  p181 lost their jobs in the public service were reinstated with payment of their salaries from the date when they had been dismissed. One exception to this removal of grievances was made by General Giraud. He maintained the measure by which, on October 7, 1940, a law known as the Loi Crémieux, passed in 1870, had been abolished.

This law made it possible for native Jews and Moslems in Algiers to become French citizens with the right to vote.

Its practical effect was to put the Jews in a preferential position. In order to acquire French citizen­ship, the Algerian native, whether Moslem or Hebrew, had to renounce his "personal status," meaning the right to be judged by the traditional laws of his religion.

For the Moslems this renunciation involved giving up polygamy, together with certain rules of inheritance which they valued highly.

For the Jews the sacrifice of "personal status" was not so great, since the difference between their legal position under the authority of the Talmud and under the laws of the Third Republic was comparatively slight. It followed that many Algerian Jews, but few Moslems, took advantage of the Loi Crémieux to acquire French citizen­ship.

The Arab population of Algeria numbers 6,500,000, while the Jews are only 150,000. Giraud considered it important that this large Moslem majority should not be under any grievance which might be exploited by enemy propaganda. Since naturalisation was difficult for the Moslems, he felt that it ought not to be made easy for the Jews. Both sections of the population, he declared, were natives of North Africa, and there was no reason for one of them to have preference over the other.

In his speech of March 14, 1943, the General defined his attitude on this question as follows:

"Laws of racial discrimination no longer exist. The suppression of these laws has reestablished the French tradition of human liberty, and the return to the equality of all before the law. Without this equality, there are no French liberties. This suppression effaces the mark of debasement which the Nazis, in their work of persecution, wished to inflict on France, by forcibly associating her with their perversity.

 p182  "With the same object of eliminating all racial discrimination," General Giraud continued, "the Crémieux Decree, which in 1870 established a distinction between native Moslems and Jews, is abrogated."

He went on to say that the relations between Moslems and Jews in North Africa should be those of men who, from the economic point of view, supplement each other's efforts. "The Jews work in shops and the Moslems on the land. Neither is superior to the other, since France guarantees security and peace to both. I have lived too long in North Africa," said Giraud, "not to be convinced that this is possible, and indeed easy. I am confident that it will be accomplished through the good sense of all."

Three days later, Mr. Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons, commended this speech and gave special approval to the "abrogation of all racial distinctions between native Jewish and Moslem inhabitants."

General Giraud's policy was, however, strongly criticised at the time by Jews all over the world. His view was that, so long as the civil and property-owning rights of the Jews in North Africa were restored, they should be content to leave the question of their political privileges to be settled after the war by a reconstituted French Government. Since no election will be held till the war is over, this would entail no injury to their interests. The Committee of National Liberation, when it came into existence in North Africa, took another view, and the operation of the Loi Crémieux has since been restored.

Giraud was right in considering the avoidance of causes of jealousy between Moslems and Jews as a factor capable of affecting the safety of the Allied cause. Secret Axis propagandists, operating from German-occupied territory in Tunisia, had already seized upon General Eisenhower's statement that all anti-Jewish legislation would be abolished, for the purpose of spreading the impression among the Moslems that it was the American intention to set up a "Jewish domination" in North Africa.

Gradually the agitation about Vichy's legacy of legislation died  p183 a natural death. What took much longer to settle was the respective positions of the two Generals, Giraud and De Gaulle.

De Gaulle made no secret that he regarded the future leader­ship of France as depending upon the relation­ship established between them.

"Moi, je suis la France !" he would say, drawing his figure to its full height. By two and a half years of intensive propaganda, thanks to the facilities, funds and radio-time provided for him by the British Government, he had established himself in the minds of a large proportion of the French on the Continent of Europe as their natural leader.

Fortunately, within the month that followed Giraud's elevation to the supreme position in French North Africa, the British and American Governments used their joint influence to bring about a meeting of the two generals, when President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill arrived at Casablanca for their famous conference, which began on January 14, 1943.

In days when news is flashed round the world instantaneously, and within an hour even a photograph can be reproduced at the ends of the earth, it is extraordinary that the heads of the two Allied Governments, with all their staffs, should have been able to gather in the little villa-colony of Anfa, just outside Casablanca, without a whisper of their presence there getting into circulation. Not even in Algiers, only five hundred miles away, was there any suspicion, among the general public, of the presence of either of these great men on African soil until after they had been there for over a week.

The purpose of this consultation between the President and the Prime Minister was not to plan the campaign in North Africa. That had been done more than six months before in Washington. The business with which they were concerned at Casablanca was to organise the invasion of Europe which would follow upon victory in Libya and Tunisia.

Conscious as they were, however, of the tension existing between the two French organisations which were cooperating with them — De Gaulle's "Free French" Movement, which about this time  p184 changed its name to "Fighting French," and Giraud's civil and military administration of North Africa — it seemed to Roosevelt and Churchill a good thing to invite both these French leaders to attend the conference for the purpose of making a first contact there against the general background of the Allied cause with which both of them had thrown in their lot.

It was thought likely that the presence of the political heads of the two principal Allied nations would exercise a favourable influence upon what was expected to be a somewhat constrained encounter. The accuracy of this estimate was proved by the fact that, whereas Giraud accepted the invitation to Casablanca straight-away, De Gaulle was at first reluctant to come.

The head of the Fighting French felt that it would be humiliating for him to attend an Anglo-American conclave as a personage of secondary importance. The business of defining the relative positions to be occupied by Giraud and himself seemed to be settled in the wings of an international spectacle where all the limelight would be centred on the President and the Prime Minister.

A good deal of persuasion was necessary before General de Gaulle could be induced to accept. The result was that he came to Casablanca in a somewhat truculent mood, and by no means prepared to make concessions.

Giraud was the first to arrive. He flew from Algiers on the morning of Sunday, January 17th, accompanied by Colonel François de Linarès, the head of his Cabinet, and by Major Beaufre. A day or two later, M. Lemaigre-Dubreuil, who had been on a mission to the United States, joined General Giraud's staff at Casablanca.

Giraud took luncheon with General Indicates a West Point graduate and gives his Class.Patton commanding the American troops in Morocco on the day of his arrival, and the same afternoon, at five o'clock, had his first meeting with President Roosevelt, at which they exchanged views for an hour.

He then went to call on Mr. Churchill, in the white villa on a low hill where the Prime Minister was quartered. They were old acquaintances, for not only had Churchill visited Giraud when he was  p185 Military Governor of Metz, but he had met him at St. Omer in France in the early months of 1940.

It was with great cordiality that Winston Churchill received his visitor. "Here you are at last!" he said. "I am delighted to see you." And then, running his eye up and down the General's tall figure, he added, "You haven't altered in the least."

Another hour was spent in this visit, after which Churchill invited Giraud to inspect the guard of honour of Royal Marines which was posted in the garden of the house.

It was on this occasion that Giraud made a remarkable forecast. He told Churchill that if full-scale operations against the enemy in Tunisia were started by March 15th they would end in victory by May 15th. It was on May 15th that the German Commander-in‑Chief surrendered.

Next day, General Giraud devoted the morning to a long discussion with General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff. He was invited to luncheon by General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army.

The two generals exchanged formal salutes, and then the American suddenly asked, "Are you, by any chance, the Major Giraud whom I knew in 1918?"

"Why, of course, you are Captain Marshall!" replied Giraud.

Oddly enough, General Marshall had been a captain on the staff of an American division which, on July 18, 1918, attacked the Germans in the forest of Villers-Cotterêts. This American division had been linked with the Moroccan division whose Chief of Staff was Major Giraud, so that, twenty-five years earlier, the two soldiers had already cooperated closely against a common enemy.

That evening, Giraud, in the villa reserved for him, entertained at dinner General Sir Alan Brooke, Mr. Averell Harriman, Mr. Robert Murphy, and Mr. Harold Macmillan, the representative of the British Government in North Africa.

Tuesday, January 19th, was the day when he got down to the business which interested him most at Casablanca. This was the supply of American war material to the French Army.

 p186  He spent the morning inspecting various types of equipment with which the American Government proposed to supply his troops. These were mainly anti‑tank guns and automatic rifles, and at noon Giraud was received by President Roosevelt for a business talk as to the amount that would be necessary to transform the French North African Army into a modern fighting force again. With Mr. Roosevelt was Mr. Harry Hopkins, to register the arrangements made, for the purpose of bringing them within the operation of the Lend-Lease Act.

General Giraud was invited during that afternoon to take part in an international war council attended by the various Chiefs of Staff. . . . On the American side were present General Marshall and Admiral E. J. King, Commander-in‑Chief, U. S. Navy. The British were represented by the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound; Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, Naval Commander-in‑Chief of the Mediterranean; General Sir Harold Alexander, Commander-in‑Chief, Middle East; and Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, British Chief of Combined Operations, together with General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, and Field-Marshal Sir John Dill, head of the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington.

Giraud was asked to address this meeting of Anglo-American war leaders. He did so at some length, explaining the factors that brought about the fall of France in June, 1940, and the conditions upon which he counted for the renewal of the French nation's strangle against its conquerors.

He made an excellent impression upon his hearers. They themselves had been working together ever since the attack on Pearl Harbour which brought the United States into the war. It was the fourth time that similar meetings between the political heads of their two nations had been organised, and, both on those occasions and in the intervals between them, these high British and American staff-officers had been in such regular contact that they had grown into a closely coordinated team.

Into this set‑up Giraud had come as a stranger, with the additional disadvantage of inability to speak the common language of  p187 the rest. It was thus natural that the men with whom he should have to work in future should have weighed him well in their minds before deciding whether he was likely to prove a colleague with whom it would be easy to cooperate.

From his first appearance in this inter-Allied "club," Giraud made good his standing there, and he also gained the friendly esteem of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, whom he again saw, this time together, at five o'clock the same afternoon.

It was not until Friday morning, January 22nd, that General de Gaulle arrived by air from London. The delay had given General Giraud time to make himself acquainted with the Anglo-American team.

Accompanying De Gaulle were General Catroux, Admiral d'Argenlieu, Commandant de Boislambert, and M. Palewski, the General's secretary.

De Gaulle and Giraud, together with their staffs, met for luncheon, and in the afternoon De Gaulle went to call on President Roosevelt.

The next day, Saturday, was spent by the two French leaders in conference. Both of them had been urged by the President and the Prime Minister to find a basis for the combination of their efforts. They shut themselves up together to argue it out among Frenchmen.

Sunday, January 24th, brought the close of the conference. It witnessed that dramatic public handshake which the two generals exchanged at the suggestion of the President.

The day was one of the brilliant golden sunshine with which North Africa is associated in the imaginations of those who know that country only from hearsay. American and British troops in Tunisia were to see very little of that kind of weather for the next three months. In their minds winter in North Africa is mainly associated with cold winds, grey skies, drenching rain, and slimy mud. But Casablanca, on that historic Sunday, surpassed the most radiant conception of the travel-folder artist.

The place where all these statesmen and their war‑chiefs met is a residential suburb of Casablanca, called Anfa, from the name of the  p188 old Roman town that stood there eighteen hundred years ago.​e It is a gay little cluster of attractive white villas standing on a low green hill that rises from the flat plain just inland from the sandy seashore where the Atlantic rollers come creaming in.

These residences of the richer merchants of Casablanca are surrounded by thick hedges of purple bougainvillea, golden liana, crimson magnolias, and heavy-laden orange trees. Slender palms waved overhead, and far above them a dozen Spitfires kept up perpetual patrol.

Anfa is some three miles outside the modern, white-plaster town of Casablanca, whose inhabitants were quite unaware that distinguished visitors were so near. The owners of the villas had been politely requested to vacate them for a couple of weeks. Around the whole garden suburb and the neighbouring aerodrome a thick barbed-wire zareba had been erected, the entrances of which were strongly guarded by American sentries. Service in the villas was provided by Moorish domestics, who were not allowed to leave the camp.

The centre of the activities of the whole place was the large white Anfa Hotel, on the crest of the low hill. Its semi-circular design, with curved balconies, gave it an odd resemblance to the stern of a stranded liner. Had a German submarine surfaced a mile or so off this conspicuous building, any night of the ten that the conference lasted, and fired a few shells into the Anfa Hotel and the houses all around it, considerable damage would have been done to the Allied war effort. The President's Secret Service men wanted him to shift his quarters every forty-eight hours, but he insisted that he was too comfortable to move.

Mr. Roosevelt's villa was the largest of the group — a handsome white residence that might have been transported from Palm Beach or Santa Barbara. It was embowered in purple creeper, and had gay striped awnings to every window. A small swimming-pool in the garden had been converted into an air‑raid shelter, entered by a passageway elegantly walled with blue tiles. At each corner of the grounds high wooden towers had been erected, upon which American sentries stood like storks.

 p189  From the back of the villa the garden sloped downhill from the patio. It was planted with low box hedges and thick Bermuda grass, on which stood china figures of a cock and hen.

It was in this garden that the President and the Prime Minister received the Press on Sunday, January 24th, to give the world an account of their deliberations. As we gathered there, the only sign that the two great men were expected was two black-and‑white drawing-room chairs set out on the lawn, with a small microphone in front of them and a battery of movie cameras, manned by American soldiers, drawn up to one side.

There was also a small card table, at which sat the only lady present, Miss Louise Anderson, of Denver, an attractive blonde young woman wearing captain's badges on her shoulders, who was there to operate an automatic steno-typing machine.

As we waited, Mr. Harry Hopkins, who looked pale and drawn, was the first familiar figure to appear. He was followed by Mr. Harold Macmillan, the British Minister, and then Winston Churchill, in a dark-grey striped suit, zip‑fastened black felt shoes, and a soft grey felt hat, walked into the garden, with his usual smile and customary cigar.


[image ALT: A photograph of two men standing outdoors, apparently in conversation. The man on the left is British journalist and war correspondent George Ward Price, and he is looking meekly subservient despite his military uniform. The man on the right is British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and he looks curiously detached, looking toward the ground somewhat past Price.]

Author in conversation
with Mr. Winston Churchill at Casablanca

The right-hand lapel of his jacket was ornamented by a little diamond brooch consisting of a "V," about an inch high, together with the three dots and the dash which are the Morse signal for that letter. It had been given to him for luck, he said, just before he left London. The buttonhole of the corresponding lapel on the other side bore the enamel ribbon badge of a medal. I asked what this was.

"It is the American Distinguished Service Cross," replied Winston, "and was presented to me in the last war by General Indicates a West Point graduate and gives his Class.Pershing. It is given for distinguished service and great gallantry in the face of the enemy," he added with a whimsical smile. "In my case, the latter qualification was waived."

In 1936 I had made a tour of Morocco with a private party of which Mr. Churchill was a member. It was an instance of the retentive memory which is one of his great assets that his first remark as he shook hands was, "It's exactly seven years since we were here together."

 p190  Two more chairs were added to the couple which already stood facing the semi-circle now formed by about thirty uniformed newspapermen, and we noticed General Giraud and General de Gaulle, both in khaki, approaching the gathering separately. They got but a fleeting glance, however, for at this moment President Roosevelt himself came down the broad steps from the villa.

I had seen the President several times on public occasions before, and had had the privilege of a short talk with him in his room at the White House, but I have seldom watched anything so dramatic and so moving as his entry to this informal grading in the garden of an African villa. He was helped down the steps by two men, who looked like Secret Service agents.

Physical disability and political power could not be more dramatically combined in one personality. It seemed incredible that this powerful frame should have been suddenly stricken into immobility while swimming from a friend's yacht, and yet later on have become one of the most famous forms in history.

In silence, the President was helped to the chairs and slowly sat down on one of them. Then a miracle seemed to happen. There, suddenly, sitting alert and upright before us, was the familiar form of Franklin Roosevelt, his eye bright, his smile broad, his whole figure radiating energy and confidence, a cigarette carried in a long holder set jauntily in his firm jaw.

The tall, uniformed figure of the President's son, Elliott, bent over him for a moment.

"Have the microphone taken away. This is just a talk for the Press," said his father.

At this point the two French generals came literally into the picture. The President and Prime Minister had taken their seats on the second and last of the row of chairs, and with one of his characteristic smiles Mr. Roosevelt waved Giraud and De Gaulle into the other two — De Gaulle between him and Churchill, and Giraud on the President's right.

The photographers and movie men were instantly at work. "Parlons un peu pour donner de l'animation," whispered the President.

De Gaulle looked ill‑at-ease. His long, loose-knit frame sprawled  p191 back in his chair. He twisted a half-burnt cigarette in his fingers. Giraud wore a quizzical smile. One had the feeling that for both of them this posing before a multitude of lenses was an ordeal.

Then Roosevelt spoke again. His French was not quite so fluent this time. He suggested that it would be a good idea if the two generals shook hands before the battery of cameras. Winston took no part in these little asides, but sat smiling straight in front of him like a rather malicious Buddha.

The respective reactions of the French generals to the President's proposal corresponded to their manifest moods. Giraud rose promptly, with a half-amused smile, a smart, compact, vigorous, soldierly figure with pleasant, weatherbeaten face and shrewd, twinkling eyes.

De Gaulle stood up with a half-resentful air, and held out his hand to meet Giraud's, low down in front of the President. There was an expression almost of challenge on his pale, set face.

Both sat down again, but the cameraman asked for the handshake to be repeated, as some of them had missed it.

Once more the reluctant gesture was made. It was plain that Roosevelt was adroitly inducing the two men to make public demonstration of an understanding which did not yet exist between them.


[image ALT: A photograph of two tall middle-aged men in plain military uniforms, shaking hands before two other men, seated. The men are General Henri Giraud on the viewer's left and General Charles De Gaulle on the right. The seated men are United States President Franklin Roosevelt, partly obscured, and British Prime Minister, fully visible, with an impish grin and smoking a cigar. The famous handshake was staged at the Allied military conference at Casablanca in 1943.]

British Official Photograph

The famous handshake at Casablanca

This little comedy being concluded, the two French generals left the garden side by side, but not, one noticed, speaking to each other. When they had gone, Roosevelt, in his casual way, made some remarks about them.

"All that ought to be said about this meeting of Generals Giraud and De Gaulle," he remarked, "is that the Prime Minister and I, being in North Africa, felt that it would be opportune for these two gentlemen to meet, as one Frenchman with another. They have been in conference here for two days, and we have emphasised one thing to them — that our sole object is the liberation of France. They are in full accord with that aim, and they are working on that basis here, and getting to know each other better. We hope that we shall ultimately have a French army, navy, and air force cooperating in the restoration of French liberties."

 p192  So ended the public appearance of Giraud and De Gaulle at the Casablanca Conference. Their hands had met, but not their hearts. They had, in fact, at once come up against the main issue between them, which was that each wanted to be the dominant figure representing France among the United Nations. Each had brought with him to Casablanca a cut‑and-dried scheme under which he was to exercise supreme command of the French forces in the new theatre of war which the Allied landing had opened up.

Giraud was Commander-in‑Chief of the French Army, Navy, and Air Force in North Africa, and he also demanded to exercise authority at least equal to that of De Gaulle in the political administration of the French Colonial Empire.

De Gaulle took his stand on the principle that, according to the traditions of the French Republic, the Commander-in‑Chief must be subordinated to the supreme political authority of the nation. He wanted to apply this rule to the relations between Giraud and the Committee of National Liberation which was to act as locum tenens for the French Government.

He was prepared to agree to the proposal that Giraud should have command in the field — this was only natural, since Giraud was a full army general with great experience of active service, while De Gaulle held the rank of divisional commander only.

What De Gaulle wanted was political power. He had no ambitions for military leader­ship. The role for which he had cast himself was that of regenerator of the constitutional and administration system of France. He was content that Giraud should be General Indicates a West Point graduate and gives his Class.Grant, provided he were Abraham Lincoln.

Other difficulties arose with regard to practical measures. Giraud wished the Fighting French detachments that were training in England, or spread about those parts of the French Empire under De Gaulle's authority, to be amalgamated with the regular French Army in North Africa.

This was a reasonable suggestion, since the French forces there numbered about 300,000, whereas the Fighting French formations were less than 20,000 strong.

At Casablanca it proved impossible to settle any of these problems.  p193 The only matter on which agreement could be reached was an arrangement for keeping in contact by means of a permanent De Gaullist mission, under the leader­ship of General Catroux, to be established in Algiers.

At this time, Catroux was De Gaulle's Delegate-General in Syria. His chief at first proposed that he should retain the post while acting as liaison officer between the Fighting French Movement and General Giraud. After a good deal of argument this suggestion was ruled out as impracticable.

Later on that same Sunday, January 24, 1943, the two generals issued a joint communiqué, significant by reason of its terse and non‑committal character. It read as follows:

We have met; we have talked. We have registered our entire agreement on the end to be achieved, which is the liberation of France, and the triumph of human liberties through the total defeat of the enemy.

This end will be attained by the union in the war of all Frenchmen, fighting side by side with all their Allies.

Giraud then returned to Algiers, and De Gaulle to London. Of the two, Giraud was the better satisfied with his excursion. Later in the same week he expressed to visitors his complete confidence in the promises made to him by the President that the French Army in North Africa should be reequipped from America. Three months from that time, indeed, this war material was pouring into Algiers. Mr. Stettinius, then head of the Lend-Lease organisation, announced that up to April 13, 1943, the value of the munitions sent to the French forces was 75 million dollars.

As soon as the more urgent requirement of building up reserves for the British and American troops actually engaged with the enemy had been met, a stream of ships, bringing aeroplanes, tanks, trucks, A. A. guns, antitank guns, field-artillery, field-kitchens, repair-shops, engineering equipment, and everything that a modern army needs, began to arrive in Algiers Bay. There was not room for all this material on the quays of the port itself, and it was dumped in a series of assembly-parks scattered at intervals of several miles along the coast. There French soldiers and the young men of the  p194 Chantiers de la Jeunesse worked day and night to unpack the crates and fit together their contents. Despite the danger of enemy air‑raids, which were frequently made on Algiers, the work went on all night by flood-light, put out only when the approach of enemy aircraft was reported.


Thayer's Notes:

a Not just any descendant of Louis Philippe, but the Orleanist pretender to the throne of France, Henri d'Orléans, Count of Paris. He had not been living in Algiers, but after the Allied landing, his partisans had brought him there on December 8th. See a bit further on, pp177 f.

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b As of writing (2021), the books have not been closed. The involvement of British intelligence is still an active theory, as are that of Gaullist elements in Algeria, Astier de la Vigerie and monarchist supporters, and even the tangential involvement of the Comte de Paris. In keeping with the official French appraisal of Darlan as a Vichy traitor, Bonnier de la Chapelle was rehabilitated by a French court in 1945, and in 1953 he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance (!) by the French president. De Gaulle later said that the assassination was in the interests of France.

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c The same psychological path will be familiar to American readers: when a few years later President Kennedy was assassinated, some believed that Oswald was a mere scapegoat.

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d On December 8, 1942.

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e That Anfa existed in Roman times is very uncertain; the idea apparently rests only on the opinion of Leo Africanus writing in the first half of the 15c. It is an old town, however, already mentioned by Idrisi in the 12c as a commercial port exporting grain (GeographyI.73); it was probably founded by the native Berber inhabitants.


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