f.bedarida.winston churchill's image of france and the french

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# Institute of Historical Research 2001. Historical Research, vol. 74, no. 183 (February 2001)Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.

Winston Churchill's image of France and

the FrenchFranc ois BedaridaComite International des Sciences Historiques

Abstract

Although fascinated by France all his life, Churchill was more familiar with thecountry than with its inhabitants (he mainly knew members of the upper and

governing classes). His apprenticeship began early as he learned the language whichhe liked to speak so much. Both the warrior and the statesman in Churchill admiredthe military past and the grandeur of Britain's neighbour, but his strategy towardsFrance always combined realpolitik with genuine friendship. This article concentrateson three periods in Churchill's relationship with France: 191132, 193345 and194555. It concludes that Churchill's `nest hour' won him the lasting admiration ofthe French people.

In the exhilarating atmosphere of a triumphal day in Paris, on 11 November

1944 (the French capital had been liberated just a few weeks before),Churchill asserted: `For more than thirty years I have defended the causeof friendship, of comradeship and of alliance between France and Great

Britain. I have never deviated from that policy throughout the whole of mylife'. Since the two countries `have become indispensable to each other', hecontinued, `the alliance with France should be unshakable, constant, andeective'.1 However, some months earlier, in a letter to General de Gaulle, hehad used somewhat dierent language: `Ever since 1907, I have in good timesand bad times been a sincere friend of France, as my words and actions show,

and it is to me an intense pain that barriers have been raised to an associationwhich to me was very dear'.2 Even if we keep in mind the many stormswhich had burst between the head of the Free French and the primeminister, these two quotations undoubtedly express the intricacy and thecontradictions of Churchill's attitude towards his neighbours across theChannel. Between two poles on the one hand feelings and emotionalism,on the other realpolitik lies a large zone made up of both oscillations andcontinuities; and no wonder, since this article deals with a period extendingover more than three-quarters of a century.3

1 Winston S. Churchill: his Complete Speeches, 18971963 , ed. R. Rhodes James (8 vols., New York,1974), vii. 70301.

2 Charles de Gaulle, War Memoirs, ii: Unity, 19424 (1959), pt. 2, p. 345, Letter from WinstonChurchill to General de Gaulle, 16 June 1944.

3 It is to be noted that 2 excellent studies have recently appeared on that very topic: D. Johnson,


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Actually, it seems more appropriate, in Churchill's case, to concentrateupon his image of France rather than his image of the French, for the way in

which he pictured the French came more from historical imagination, if notstereotype, than from sociological observations. Although he knew the

country quite well, when it came to French society, he was only familiarwith the upper class the aristocracy and political elites or, at the otherend of the social scale, the small world of domestic servants. Consequently hehad no acquaintance with le Francais moyen in other words, he ignored thecommon people. Churchill had contact with some aristocratic families, buthe moved most frequently in political circles and was in touch with politicalgures on the left and right, from Clemenceau to Paul Reynaud, from

Aristide Briand to Georges Mandel, from Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie toPierre Mende s France. This was where his knowledge of the French ended.

Accordingly this article will examine three main topics: Churchill's appren-ticeship in France; his search for a dening French identity; and his grandstrategy.

If Churchill was so familiar with France, if he travelled and stayed there somuch and so often, it was because he had a twofold training: rstly anapprenticeship focused on the knowledge of language and culture, andsecondly a real worship of French history. In accordance with the traditionsof the English nobility, Churchill started to learn French while still a young

child at the age of eight or nine, both with a mademoiselle and at school.Whilst boarding at Brighton, he explained proudly in a letter of 1887 to hisfather, Lord Randolph Churchill, that he had just acted in Molie re's LeMedecin malgre lui, in which he took the role of Martine, Sganarelle's wife, akey gure of the comedy.4 A few weeks later he assured his mother: `I get onall right with Mademoiselle'. During his years at Harrow he used to get goodmarks in French in contrast with other subjects.5 Around the age offourteen or fteen he went as far as writing a French poem lamenting the saddestiny of Alsace-Lorraine.

But in 1891 the situation took a turn for the worse when his motherplanned to send him to France in order to stay with a family during thesummer vacation. Winston rebelled immediately, arguing that he did not

want to ruin his holiday staying `with some horrid French family'. In the endLady Randolph gave up. She contented herself with entrusting her son to a`French tutor' from Cambridge, who coached him four days a week, whilethe teenager promised to `rechauer' [sic] his French.

The blow, however, fell at the end of the year. It was decided to sendWinston to France for four weeks during the Christmas holiday. In spite of

96 Winston Churchill's image of France

# Institute of Historical Research 2001.

`Churchill and France', in Churchill, ed. R. Blake and W. R. Louis (Oxford, 1996), pp. 4155; D. Dilks,`Churchill et la France: une aaire de coeur', Lecture at the British Embassy, Paris, 12 Nov. 1998.

4 R. S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, i: Youth (1967), pt. 2, p. 143, Letter 8 Oct. 1887.5 Letters dated 20 Nov. 1887 and 11 Dec. 1888 to Lady Randolph Churchill (ibid., pp. 149, 175).


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outbursts of lamentation and despair (`I beg and Pray that you will not sendme to a vile, nasty, fusty, beastly ``French Family'''),6 Lady Randolph this timeremained inexible and Winston landed at Dieppe on 22 December. He

judged the railway travel `tre s incommode' and took lodgings in Versailles,

where he was immediately enthralled by the number of the military cuirassiers, chasseurs, gunners (in all a 6,000-strong garrison). It was his rstcontact with the French army and the beginning of a lasting admiration. Herode horses, visited Paris, went to the theatre, and was cared for by two of

Lady Randolph's admirers, the marquis de Breteuil and Baron Hirsch. Theresult was that he was delighted with his holidays in France, although in hisopinion `the food is very queer'.7

Churchill was to enjoy speaking French throughout his life. Indeed hemastered the language much better than is commonly appreciated, even if his

own use of it was rather peculiar. (As for Clementine Churchill, she had arst-class knowledge of French, which she had taught for some time duringher impecunious youth.) With regard to Winston, his rich vocabulary, hisgift for colourful expressions, his mastery of rhetoric and his strong accent allcontributed to the winning of French hearts.8

The most famous of Churchill's speeches is probably the one addressed to`le peuple francais' that he delivered in French on 21 October 1940 in a

B.B.C. broadcast, while Britain was still under the threat of invasion:

Francais! Pendant plus de trente ans, en temps de paix comme en temps de guerre,j'ai marche avec vous et je marche encore avec vous aujourd'hui, sur la meme route . . .Maintenant nous attendons l'invasion promise de longue date. Les poissons aussi . . .N'oubliez pas que nous ne nous arre terons jamais, que nous ne nous lasserons jamais,que jamais nous ne cederons et que notre peuple et notre Empire tout entier se sont

voues a la tache de guerir et de laver l'Europe de la pestilence nazie et de sauver lemonde d'une nouvelle barbarie . . .

Allons, bonne nuit; dormez bien, rassemblez vos forces pour l'aube car l'aubeviendra. Elle se levera, brillante pour les braves, douce pour les de les qui aurontsouert, glorieuse sur les tombeaux des heros. Vive la France!9

A little known episode in 1942 testies to Churchill's command of French.Early in the year the prime minister summoned General de Gaulle in orderto vent his anger about the Free French policy, especially the taking over ofSaint-Pierre and Miquelon in spite of warnings from London and Washing-ton. Immediately Churchill started bombarding de Gaulle with scathingrebukes. As he grew more and more furious, his tone became so brutal and so

Winston Churchill's image of France 97


6 Letter from Winston Churchill to Lady Randolph Churchill, mid Nov. 1891 (ibid., p. 287).7 See the letters exchanged between Winston and his mother, Dec. 1891Jan. 1892 (ibid.,

pp. 28697).8 On one memorable occasion in 1914, Winston was so proud of his magnicent dress as ElderBrother of Trinity House that he said to a stunned French general: `Je suis oune fraire ehnay de laTrinitay' (quoted in H. M. Pelling, Winston Churchill (1974), p. 183, relying on I. M. Poore,

Recollections of an Admiral's Wife, 190316 (1916)).9 W. S. Churchill, L'Entree en Lutte: Discours de Guerre (1943), pp. 3457.


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oensive that the interpreter, the diplomat Frank Roberts, attempted tomollify the terms used by the prime minister. Straightaway, however,Churchill turned to his interpreter telling him curtly: `You have no rightto modify what I said. I order you to translate word for word'.10

At the same time Winston was an expert on and connoisseur of Frenchculture. He admired France's brilliance in the arts and letters, her contribu-tion to the ideals of enlightenment, liberty and democracy. Moreover he wascaptivated by the traditions which lent the country a specic mark, avourand charm. In his memoirs Lord Moran related how, during a dinner at Yaltaon 5 February 1945, as the talk reverted to the granting to France of anoccupation zone in Germany, Stalin who scorned France and measuredcountries according to the number of military divisions had described it asa country without an army, to be ranked below Yugoslavia. Later, when

alone with his physician, Churchill let loose his indignation: `Do you supposeStalin reads books? He talks of France as a country without a past. Does henot know her history?'. Moran commented: `Winston loves France like a

woman. When Stalin said he did not know what France had done forcivilization, he felt bewildered. In Winston's eyes France is civilization'.11

History, his favourite province, had taught Churchill from his youth howmuch the French and British pasts were intermingled through rivalries, warsand sometimes alliances. He became acquainted very early with the greatneighbour's fate. The boy was only eight when he visited Paris for the rst

time in the company of his father. As he recalled sixty-three years later in aspeech delivered at Metz:

It was the summer of 1883. We drove together through the Place de la Concorde.Being an observant child I noticed that one of the monuments was covered withwreaths and crepe and I at once asked him why. He replied: ``These are monumentsof the Provinces of France. Two of them, Alsace and Lorraine, have been taken fromFrance by the Germans in the last war. The French are very unhappy about it andhope some day to get them back''. I remember quite distinctly thinking to myself ``Ihope they will get them back''.12

It was not only that Churchill's knowledge of French history wasmatchless, but that he was fascinated by the turns of fortune it exhibited:the end of French domination in Europe under Louis XIV, thanks to themilitary genius of Winston's glorious ancestor, John Churchill, and thespringing up of English power the beginning of Albion's success story. Onecannot help quoting here the famous page in the Life of Marlborough, whereWinston in magnicent style a kind of triumphant paean celebrated thedownfall of the Sun King and the rise of Britain on the European scene:



10 Sir Frank Roberts's testimony to the author, 5 April 1995. For a more detailed account of theepisode, see F. Bedarida, Churchill (Paris, 1999), p. 381.

11 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: the Struggle for Survival, 194065 (1966), p. 224.12 See M. Gilbert, `Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 194565 (1988), p. 247.


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If anyone in 1672 computed the relative forces of France and England, he couldonly feel that no contest was possible; and the apparent weakness and humiliation ofthe pensioner island was aggravated by the feeble, divided condition of Europe. Nodreamer, however romantic, however remote his dreams from reason, could haveforeseen a surely approaching day when, by the formation of mighty coalitions andacross the struggles of a generation, the noble colossus of France would lie prostratein the dust, while the small island, beginning to gather to itself the empires of Indiaand America, stripping France and Holland of their colonial possessions, wouldemerge victorious, mistress of the Mediterranean, the Narrow Seas, and the oceans.

Aye, and carry forward with her, intact and enshrined, all that peculiar structure oflaw and liberty, all her own inheritance of learning and letters, which are to-day thetreasures of the most powerful family in the human race.13

In conclusion, for Churchill, if France was not `la grande nation', she was agreat nation.

In order to understand how Churchill sympathized with and becameattached to France to such a degree, three components of his personalityhave to be taken into account: the statesman, the soldier and the painter (oneshould mention that he knew the country thoroughly according to MartinGilbert, in 1939 he had already crossed the Channel more than 100 times).

This article will rstly consider the statesman. With his wide historicalgrasp and his long political experience, Churchill shrewdly distinguished twoFrances, divided and frequently conicting through their heritage and

their values, but he shared the same respect for both of them. On the onehand, there was a France of liberty, on the other a France of delity aFrance of the Revolution and a France of tradition. One was the homeland ofthe Enlightenment and free thought, the other of Christianity and faith. Toillustrate his analysis, Winston picked up two symbolic gures which heassociated in a talented diptych: hence the parallel between Clemenceau andFoch drawn with insight in Great Contemporaries, a volume of essayspublished in 1937:

The truth is that Clemenceau embodied and expressed France. As much as anysingle human being, miraculously magnied, can ever be a nation, he was France.Fancy paints nations in symbolic animals the British Lion, the American Eagle, theRussian double-headed ditto, the Gallic Cock. But the Old Tiger, with his quaint,stylish cap, his white moustache and burning eye, would make a truer mascot forFrance than any barnyard fowl. He was an apparition of the French Revolution at itssublime moment, before it was overtaken by the squalid butcheries of the Terrorists.He represented the French people risen against tyrants tyrants of the mind, tyrantsof the soul, tyrants of the body; foreign tyrants, domestic tyrants, swindlers, humbugs,grafters, traitors, invaders, defeatists all lay within the bound of the Tiger; and

against them the Tiger waged inexorable war. Anti-clerical, anti-monarchist, anti-Communist, anti-German, in all this he represented the dominant spirit of France.There was another mood and another France. It was the France of Foch ancient,



13 W. S. Churchill, Marlborough: his Life and Times (4 vols., 19338), i. 82.


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aristocratic; the France whose grace and culture, whose etiquette and ceremonial hasbestowed its gifts around the world. There was the France of chivalry, the France of

Versailles, and above all, the France of Joan of Arc. It was this secondary andsubmerged national personality that Foch recalled. In the combination of these twomen during the last year of the War, the French people found in their service all theglories and the vital essences of Gaul. These two men embodied respectively theirancient and their modern history. Between the twain there owed the blood-river ofthe Revolution. Between them towered the barriers which Christianity raises against

Agnosticism. But when they gazed upon the inscription on the golden statue of Joanof Arc: ``La pitie qu'elle avait pour le royaume de France'' and saw gleaming theMaid's uplifted sword, their two hearts beat as one. The French have a dual nature ina degree not possessed by any other great people.14

As one can see, with hindsight Churchill's analysis appears as sagacious as it isjudicious. This dual visage of the `une et indivisible' French Republicfascinated him throughout his life.

Basically Churchill was, and remained, a soldier to the core. No wonderthen that he identied France with her military, past and present. From theearly days of the entente cordiale he was an admirer of the French army. Inspite of the 1940 defeat, he retained a soft spot for the `poilus'. For him, thesuccesses of Bir Hakeim and the Garigliano erased the shame of the debacle.Deeply imprinted in his mind were the memories of past victories, from

Bouvines to Verdun. Let us also remember that for a long period of time hisstrategy was based upon the combination of the might of the Royal Navy and

the French army.In the speech delivered at Metz on 14 July 1946, mentioned above, he

evoked, with a shade of thrill, his vivid memory of the French manuvres towhich he had been invited in 1907:

I was already a youthful Minister of the Crown. In those days the soldiers wore bluetunics and red trousers and many of the movements were still in close order. When Isaw, at the climax of the manuvres, the great masses of French infantry stormingthe position, while the bands played the Marseillaise, I felt that by those valiantbayonets the rights of man had been gained and that by them these rights and also theliberties of Europe would be faithfully guarded.15

When Hitler's rise started threatening the European scene, Churchill railedendlessly against MacDonald's blunder in thinking that the main danger forpeace was French military power, instead of opening his eyes towardsGerman ambitions. It was at this time that Winston exclaimed in thehouse of commons, `Thank God for the French army!', to the strongdispleasure of many M.P.s. In September 1936, when he was more isolatedthan ever, he attended the French manuvres and visited the Maginot line,

paying compliments to the French military leaders, his friend GeneralGeorges and the commander-in-chief, General Gamelin. In 1939 he travelled



14 W. S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (1st edn., 1937), pp. 2367.15 Gilbert, Never Despair, p. 247.


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to Paris for the 14 July parade and again inspected the Maginot line,including the most secret underground equipment. It was only after Sedan,

when he paid a dramatic visit to Paris on 16 May 1940, that he measured thedimensions of the French collapse and of the military disaster.

If, after Churchill the soldier, we turn to Churchill the painter, Francemeant for him enchanting places and landscapes. This was the case not onlyfor Paris, with its imposing monuments, or for the famous historicalbattleelds scattered from Flanders to Lorraine, but also for the smalltowns and villages with their ancestral way of life, their squares and theirfountains, their open-air markets and their playgrounds. France also meantglistening colours, carefully cultivated elds and vineyards, long straightroads lined with plane trees, the ocean and the Mediterranean. It was indeedthe South which held the most allure for him: Provence and the Co te d'Azur,

where he stayed so often, were the main places for his painting (Clementinealways hated le Midi),16 even if he did also paint many canvasses of the Basquecountry or of the Sorrento-Amal peninsula in Italy or of the Atlasmountains in Morocco. For years Winston toyed with the idea of buying amansion overlooking the Mediterranean in that corner of France where apart of his heart lay, but this `villa des reves' never materialized. Neverthelessthe Co te d'Azur, from Cannes to Menton, was, until his last years, hisfavourite abode, rivalled only by the Aix-en-Provence region for which hehad a special liking and where he used to meet up from time to time with his

friend and contributor William Deakin.

The time has now come to examine, with a close and critical mind, the waysin which action and aection combined or conicted when Churchill was inpower. Was realpolitik in harmony with emotion? In other words, how can wedisentangle representation and reality? Here three stages have to bedistinguished: 191132, 193345 and 194555. The rst stage began withthe Agadir crisis in the summer of 1911 and the appointment of Churchill asFirst Lord of the Admiralty. For him it was a metamorphosis, a turning point

in his life. His way of thinking, his strategy and his career were completelyoverturned. Up to that point he had supported a line of appeasement andretrenchment, even irting one or twice with the idea of a rapprochementwithGermany, but thereafter he became a convert to the motto `Si vis pacem, parabellum': the very symbol of a passionate and uncompromising patriot.

During the Agadir crisis Churchill wholeheartedly backed France againstWilliam II's claims, to the point of writing to Lloyd George that Britainshould at all costs prevent France `from being trampled down and looted bythe Prussian junkers'.17 At the same time he wrote a premonitory memor-

andum for the Committee of Imperial Defence in which he described how



16 A. Montague Browne, Long Sunset: Memoirs of Winston Churchill's Last Private Secretary (1995),p. 147.

17 Letter from Winston Churchill to David Lloyd George, 31 Aug. 1911 (quoted in R. S.Churchill, Young Statesman: Winston Churchill, 190014 (1967), p. 531).


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operations would unfold on the continent in the event of a major Europeanwar involving, on one side, the Central Powers Germany and Austria onthe other side the Triple Entente countries France, Britain and Russia. In thisdocument, in which he argued that the key battle would take place between

the German and French armies, Churchill forecast that the German forceswould invade Belgium and cross the Meuse twenty days after the declarationof war, but that a change in fortunes forty days into the war would restoreFrance's chances and that she could exploit this opportunity for winning adecisive battle.18

During the Great War the entente cordiale strengthened. On 10 September1914 Churchill was the rst cabinet minister to cross the Channel. In Francehe inspected the defences around Dunkirk and sent the Royal Marines there.Some weeks later, during the rst Ypres battle, at the time of the `course a la

mer', he put all his energies into stimulating the ghting spirit. After theDardanelles asco, Winston decided to join the army in order to go and ghton the front line in France, serving rst with the Grenadier Guards in Artois,then in the trenches in Flanders, on the Franco-Belgian border, as alieutenant-colonel commanding a battalion of Scots Fusiliers. There, hisstylishness manifested itself in the wearing of a French infantry helmet,instead of a Tommies' helmet. In 191718, after his appointment as Ministerof Munitions, he worked in close co-operation with his French counterpart,

Louis Loucheur, taking every possible opportunity to travel to France (he

even managed to have at his disposal a cha teau near Saint-Omer). In March1918 Churchill was lucky enough to be on the spot at the Allied head-quarters at the time of the dramatic exchanges between the British andFrench high commands, following the success of the German oensive andthe opening of a large breach in the Allied front. In contrast he played nopart in the peace negotiations, for he was then completely taken up with hisactivities as Secretary of State for War and his obsession with an interventionin Russia.

Conversely, during the period when Churchill was Secretary of State for

the Colonies (19212), Franco-British rivalry and quarrels ourished,especially in the Middle East, a region looked upon from London as aBritish preserve. In these years Winston's francophilia did not hold outagainst imperial interests, which for him always came rst. Consequently theentente cordiale deteriorated a great deal: a situation which did not changemuch during the twenties, although Winston did spend several months inCannes at the luxurious villa Reve d'Or (not counting several visits toMimizan, Saint-Jean de Luz and Cap d'Ail). However, it was in Paris in1921 that the rst exhibition of his paintings was held, under the pseudonym

of Charles Morin.In 1933 the year Hitler seized power a new phase began, characterizedby major changes. The extent to which Churchill relied on the French army



18 `Military aspects of the continental problem', 13 Aug. 1911 (the document is reproduced in fullin W. S. Churchill, The World Crisis (6 vols., 192331), i. 604).


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has been outlined above. He depended on it rstly to hold in check Nazidiplomacy and its claims, and secondly, with the darkening of the inter-national arena, and in case of war, to ght the Wehrmacht in alliance withthe Royal Navy and the R.A.F. From a political point of view, Winston

vigorously advocated an entente between the two great democracies opposingtyranny. For that reason he came to Paris in September 1936 to deliver anoutstanding lecture at the Theatre des Ambassadeurs where he celebrated theprinciples of liberty and democracy and asserted that Britain and France, twocountries faithful to these ideals, `should stand shoulder to shoulder againstaggression'.19 This was a theme that would return constantly in Churchill'srhetoric.

In 1940, the new prime minister, whatever his amazement and grief at thesight of the French debacle and withdrawal from the common struggle (such

an eventuality had never been considered either by him or by the chiefs ofsta), remained faithful to the alliance against all the odds in spite of Oranand Dakar, in spite of the secret talks with Vichy emissaries. Churchill'sdetermination to be true remained unbroken, as testied by the famousspeech, in French, of 24 October 1940 quoted above. This intention was alsorevealed in the speech delivered on 10 November 1942 at the banquet for

Lord Mayor's Day, in which Churchill eloquently expressed his hopes forFrance within the future Europe. Evoking the French suerings under theenemy's heel, he asked this crucial question: was France, a country endowed

with such a glorious history, bound to sink into the ocean of the past orwould she recover and win back her rank within the Èuropean family'? ForWinston the answer was unequivocal: Ì have faith in the revival of France'.And he concluded that his only goal was to see a strong and free France,surrounded by her empire and reunited with Alsace-Lorraine.20

But behind the conventional warm language of the public speeches,inevitably inuenced by circumstance, we have to examine thoroughlyocial papers and practical action. There is one highly signicant document,a condential memorandum that Churchill addressed to Roosevelt in May

1943, in which he expounded his plans for the future. After emphasizing thenecessity of a `fraternal association' between Britain and the United States(the `special relationship'), he outlined the conguration that should be set upafter the war, comprising a `Supreme World Council' formed by the `BigThree' U.S.A., Britain, U.S.S.R. and three `Regional Councils' (Europe,

America and the Pacic). With regard to Europe, Winston advised therebuilding of à strong France, whatever we might think about French desertsor the probable diculty of achieving our purpose'. It is easy to read betweenthe lines and see strong reservations about France (with de Gaulle's shadow

perhaps in the background), but the crux of the matter probably lies in onesentence: `The prospect of having no strong country on the map between



19 The lecture was given on 24 Sept. 1936 (Rhodes James, vi. 578890).20 W. S. Churchill, The End of the Beginning: War Speeches Made During 1942 , comp. C. Eade (1943),

Speech of 10 Nov. 1942.


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England and Russia is not attractive'.21 Others would say soon: between thewhite plains of Russia and the white clis of Dover.

As for Churchill's behaviour and actions, there is no doubt that at Yalta hemade every possible eort to restore France among the leading European

countries. He felt that, without the counterweight of a strong France on thecontinent, relations with the Soviet Union would be still more unsure. This iswhy he `fought like a lion' in order that France should be given a zone ofoccupation in Germany and a seat at the Allied Control Council in Berlin an originally unplanned move. Some time later, when the U.N.O. was beingframed, British pressure played a major role in securing for France one of theve permanent seats on the Security Council. Among other friendly gestures,one may mention the order given by the prime minister to the R.A.F. in thespring of 1944 to minimize the bombing of French cities and choose the

targets very carefully, as he had received several reports about the sueringsof the civilian population.22 The nearer to victory, the more Churchillbecame anxious about the state of Europe, particularly when Americantroops had departed and Britain would remain alone facing the Russianempire. He believed that no stability could exist in Europe if France was notunited and powerful. In this he concurred with Eden's belief that France wasa `geographical necessity'.

During the last phase of Churchill's career 194555, with six years inopposition, four in power his attitude towards France was directed by two

conicting paradigms. The rst was the `special relationship', which Winstondesperately attempted to cultivate. This was one of the two aims of thefamous Fulton speech of March 1946. It is a mistake to interpret the speechonly as a warning against the `iron curtain' and a denunciation of Soviettyranny, for the Anglo-American alliance was an equally important concern.On another plane, it should be acknowledged that in the `three circles' theory which was to become axiomatic in British policy France was relegated toa secondary position; the entente between English-speaking countries camerst, then the empire and Commonwealth, while the third party Europe

was composed merely of a conglomeration of undierentiated nations. ButChurchill never managed to restore the special relationship, either withTruman (who was completely allergic to his rhetoric and grandiose visions)or with Eisenhower, on whom he had pinned his hopes following thecompanionship of the war years. Eisenhower, however, remained deaf to

Winston's suggestions and preferred to rely, like Truman, on a system ofmultilateral relations within N.A.T.O.

Secondly, Churchill was inuenced by concerns about the future ofEurope, and France came to his mind rst. For Churchill the key to peace

lay in reconciliation between France and Germany. At Zurich University, on



21 Churchill and Roosevelt: the Complete Correspondence, ed. W. F. Kimball (3 vols., 1984), ii. 2223,Letter of 28 May 1943.

22 See J. Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, 193955 (2 vols., 1985), ii. 107, 27April 1944; M. Gilbert, The Road to Victory (1986), p. 784, 30 May 1944.


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19 September 1946, he unveiled with emotion an imposing plan appealingfor union. The remedy, he said, `is to re-create the European family . . . andprovide it with a kind of structure under which it can dwell in peace, insafety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe'.

Then he went on:I am going to say something that will astonish you. The rst step in the re-creation ofa European family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this wayonly can France recover the moral leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of

Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany.23

In 1948, during the rst European Congress in the Hague, Churchillreiterated the same views, but when he returned to Downing Street in1951, he very soon lost all interest in the European construction. WhileFrance and Germany became reconciled, British policy during the fties wasto keep aloof from the continent and revel in `splendid isolation'.

If on the whole Churchill is to be ranked among `les amis de la France', inspite of the many bones of contention, the French have maintained areciprocal regard for him to this day. Certainly, one can mention venomousattacks, such as Alfred Fabre-Luce's lampoon, or preposterous grievances, asdeveloped by Yves Rochas in a recent book.24 All in all, however, the imageof Churchill in the French collective memory is a attering one. Anindication of this high reputation is given by a public opinion poll carriedout in 1990 on the occasion of the centenary of General de Gaulle's birth.

Among the questions posed was one asking the respondents to draw up a listof the major gures of the twentieth century. Out of fteen names Churchillranked third after de Gaulle and Kennedy, and before Gandhi, Hitler,

Eisenhower and Roosevelt, leaving Lenin, Mao or Adenauer far behind.25

The conclusion is obvious: if Hitler, Stalin or Mao are in a relatively lowlyposition, and if Churchill is so aectionately considered and enjoys such afavourable image, the reason is that the French people remain grateful to thehero of 1940.



23 The Speeches of Winston Churchill, ed. D. Cannadine (1989), pp. 31013.24 A. E. A. Fabre-Luce, La Fumee d'un Cigare (Paris, 1949); Y. Rochas, 1940: Churchill et les Franc ais

un Ete Fertile en Legendes (Paris, 1998).25 Institut Charles de Gaulle, De Gaulle en son Siecle: Sondages et Enquetes d'Opinion (Paris, 1992),

p. 26.

f.bedarida.winston churchill's image of france and the french

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