Churchill couldn't stand De Gaulle?

By Thomas Abraham

LONDON, JAN. 6. Sir Winston Churchill, the legendary war time British Prime Minister, appeared to be almost as keen on removing the French leader, Gen. Charles de Gaulle from leadership of the French resistance, as trying to get rid of Hitler, hitherto secret documents released by Britain's public record's office show.

Though it is well known that Churchill and Gen. de Gaulle had a prickly relationship - both men possessed strong wills and egos - these papers show that Churchill wanted to ``eliminate him as a political force''. His concerns were shared by the U.S. war time leader, Franklin Roosevelt, but the British Cabinet was unwilling to dislodge Gen. de Gaulle from the leadership of the Free French forces.

Gen. de Gaulle fled to London in 1940 after the fall of France to the Nazis, and only returned to France in 1944 when Paris was liberated.

A series of telegrams that Churchill sent to his Cabinet in London in 1943, while on a visit in Washington, reveal the animosity between the allies. Churchill felt that Gen. de Gaulle was only interested in furthering his own career, and also that he hated Britain. ``He hates England and has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him everywhere,'' Churchill wrote to his Cabinet colleagues.

Describing him as a ``vain and even malignant man'', Churchill disputed Gen. de Gaulle's importance. ``He has never himself fought since he left France, and took pains to have his wife brought out safely beforehand.'' He added, ``I ask my colleagues urgently whether we should not now eliminate de Gaulle as a political force.''

Roosevelt was equally keen on getting rid of Gen. de Gaulle, and asked Churchill whether Gen. de Gaulle could not be sent as governor of the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. Roosevelt felt the same way about Gen. de Gaulle, and felt that he had ``dictatorial tendencies and messianic complex.''

Roosevelt described a speech that Gen. de Gaulle had made as ``like pages out of Mein Kampf (Hitler's autobiography). Both Roosevelt and Churchill felt that Gen. de Gaulle would eventually cut a deal with Russia or Germany.

The rest of the British Cabinet was, however, wary of trying to overthrow the French leader. Clement Atlee, Churchill's Deputy Prime Minister, and Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, pointed out that the Allies might no longer be able to count on the loyalties of 80,000 Free French soldiers if Gen. de Gaulle was dislodged. They also feared that the French people, who saw him as their leader, would be alienated by the removal. ''Nothing that Allied propaganda could do would convince the French that their idol has feet of clay and the removal of de Gaulle would probably have a disastrous reaction on the whole resistance movement.``

In the end, Churchill dropped his plan. But the deep animosity between the French leader and the '' Anglo-Saxon alliance`` of Britain and the U.S., did not end with the war. Gen. de Gaulle did his best to ensure that the U.S. influence in post war Europe was kept to a minimum, and even stayed out of NATO because he felt that it was too dominated by the U.S. Similarly, he vetoed Britain's entry into the European Common Market as long as he was in power.

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