What if Henri Giraud became President?
- Sea Lion Press
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
By Steve Payne and Jeff Provine
This article was originally posted on Today in Alternate History (twitter)and the original article can be found there. Please check that blog for more like this.
Charles de Gaulle fled to Britain in 1940 to continue the fight against Germany after the surrender of the French Government. He would spend the next four years as leader of 'Free France' consisting of exiles and colonies who wished to align themselves with the Allies and not the Vichy collaborationist government. Felix Eboue, the Black governor of Chad, was one of the first to declare for De Gaulle, which gave him a base in French Equatorial Africa. Other military figures, such as Georges Catroux, also switched sides. Free French forces would fight against Vichy forces in the colonies, slowly taking them all with British help, take control over the French resistance and run a campaign of recognition that would culminate in the Liberation of Paris, which as a point of pride was primarily done by French forces (though the allies also insisted on the troops in question being white which proved difficult as the vast majority of Free French Solders were Black Africans, a scratch Regiment had to be formed for the task that included Spanish exiles and North Africans).
But de Gaulle was in an incredibly vulnerable position, financially reliant on the UK and representing an unrecognised landless state. As such he was arrogant and obstinate, someone who grated on his allies because he insisted on trying to present himself as a big power and according to Churchill "He had to be rude to the British to prove to French eyes that he was not a British puppet. He certainly carried out this policy with perseverance."
As a result both Churchill and Roosevelt at various times wished to replace him as leader of the French exile state, Roosevelt in particular refused to recognise de Gaulle's provisional government until 1944 and wanted instead Henri Giraud as leader. Giraud was a General who had escaped from a POW camp and had been targeted as a result, with the Gestapo ordered to kill him on sight. At American request, upon joining Free French forces after the liberation of Algeria, he was made co-president of the French Committee of National Liberation with de Gaulle.
Giraud had the full support of both the British and the Americans because he was far more willing to cooperate but struggled to gain the support of the Free French. He needed to establish a broad-based coalition to oust de Gaulle but could not do so, because de Gaulle's supporters were far more active in talking to the media and included trade unions and resistance members whereas Giraud only had support amongst the Army. Moreover while Giraud had impeccable anti-German credentials he had been relatively friendly with the Vichy government, living there for some time, whereas de Gaulle had opposed Pétain from the moment of the armistice. That ambiguous relationship towards what many French people viewed as the enemy, to the extent of Giraud only reluctantly revoking Vichy laws such as the imprisonment of North African Jews, hurt him as did his overall lack of political vision, which meant he was often assumed to represent a continuity with Vichy.
While he was reactionary, that lack of vision was more because Roosevelt and Giraud viewed the liberation of France as primarily a military objective and not a political one. Roosevelt expected that France would be under Military occupation post liberation and so the role of the Free French was to provide an army and not a government, Giraud was a five star General compared to de Gaulle's two and so would serve that role better. Giraud attempted to reconcile himself with de Gaulle, who had previously served under him, but the latter was overwhelming hostile to him, blaming the French High Command for the Fall of France and insisting that new forces defecting from Vichy France must join the Free French forces whereas Giraud wished to keep the existing Hierarchy with him at the top.
Giraud was quickly viewed as at worst an American Puppet and at best a Military man unsuited for politics and he did little to avoid that reputation. In 1943, he made a visit to North America where he made a series of speeches in Detroit and New York defending his record of perceived anti Semitism which received a mixed reception (an answer in Canada where he claimed that while the National Socialist system was bad, it was not wholly bad and some of it's achievements had been magnificent was particularly unwelcome), and in his absence de Gaulle kept campaigning among the French in Algeria. Likewise, when he and Eisenhower plotted for the liberation of Corsica, one of Giraud's greatest military achievements, he neglected to inform the French Committee of National Liberation until after the mission had started, further alienating them. In November 1943, de Gaulle forced him out of the Committee and was the lone man in charge by time of the Liberation of France.
Giraud quickly left politics all together and died in 1949. But it is not impossible for him to manage to leverage his good relations with the English speaking allies to oust de Gaulle instead. The problem is that he would be visibly and obviously put into that position by the Americans rather than by the French and that would colour French reactions to it. Below is one take on what the aftermath of a Giraud Presidency would look like.
French five-star general and President of the Republic Henri Giraud died in Dijon in 1949. He was seventy years old and had been at the center of power struggles in France throughout her troubles in the twentieth century.
His lifetime of national service was lit up by acts of incredible personal sacrifice and tremendous courage that included capture in both World Wars. He was leader of the Free French Forces during a remarkable period that included a great escape from a high-security POW prison and then commanded French troops in North Africa during Operation Torch. As part of a notorious Italian-style side-switching deal with the Allies, he briefly served under the de facto head of the Vichy Government and High Commissioner of France in Africa (head of civil government) for North and West Africa, Admiral Darlan, who was assassinated in Algiers only weeks later. A political opportunist, collaborator with Germany and notorious Anglophobe, it is highly doubtful that Darlan's own career would have survived Petain's repression of the Resistance movement. There was speculation that the assassin, Bonnier de la Chappelle, was acting on behalf of a monarchist group seeking to restore the Bourbon pretender.
General Eisenhower, who was the Operation's Supreme Allied Commander, famously referred to Giraud as "gallant and honest, but politically uninterested." A more complete assessment would have probably been "reluctant," and Darlan's assassination certainly changed the leadership calculations, bringing him the authority and prestige he had previously lacked. Despite Eisenhower's mischaracterization, Giraud became President of the French Committee of National Liberation (Free French Forces), Chair of the Provisional Government after VE Day, and subsequently President of the French Republic. A man who fully reconciled himself to America and the Soviet Union's new roles as superpowers that would dwarf France and the UK, he had the good sense to recognize the end of Europe's colonial era and accepted it. Decorated with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit, both military and civil, his passing was near-universally regretted across the Free World.
Former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, fast approaching his own demise and knowing what was coming in Paris, said with a touch of bitterness that America had "lost a true friend." This was because Giraud's passing was noticeably ignored by his former leadership rival, the embittered governor of Madagascar, two-star general Charles de Gaulle. Of course it was only because of FDR's manoeuvrings that Giraud had been living in Dijon, and de Gaulle (who he considered "well-nigh intolerable") in a distant backwater of the French Union. Moreover, it was Giraud's controversial decision to abandon Indochina that widened the gulf with the so-called Gaullists. However, due to his untimely demise, he did not have sufficient time to resolve the final status of French North Africa and, most importantly of all, Algeria. Of course the irony was that his unlikely rise to power had begun with the expatriate French factions based in North Africa. De Gaulle was enraged that American-backing had enabled Giraud to gain pre-eminence in the power struggle for leadership of the Free French movement.
Not yet sixty years old, the ever-ambitious de Gaulle was a Republican pretender. Convinced he was the l'Homme du destin, he had every intention of making a political comeback, and of course the rapid departure of his two chief adversaries only opened the door to his eventual return. The "Darlan" deal, bombing of the French fleet by British at Mers-el-Kebir, and loss of Indochina were unhealed wounds in the traumatized French psyche that de Gaulle ripped open to seize power. Promising to restore the glory of France, his return during the Eisenhower presidency would create a gaping fracture in the Free World. Most appalling of all was his diplomatic recognition of Franco's Fascist Spain. This deep divide in the West was because of his punitive sense of antagonism towards Britain and America for initially recognizing Vichy France and later sponsoring Giraud instead of backing him during exile in London. It was a deep humiliation that would not be forgotten, let alone forgiven, resulting in a great deal of friction right up until his death in 1970. His lasting influence in the Francophone world survived his death notably with Quebec's decision to follow his advice and secede from the Confederation of Canada.
De Gaulle's action strained relations with other members of NATO, but he was hardly shy about his feelings of France not being able to trust the English speaking countries. As post-war Europe rebuilt itself, de Gaulle found a new chance for a French-led alliance through the West European Union. Born out of the Schuman Declaration that organized French and West German coal and steel production under a single authority, the union grew through economics and politics into a major power by the end of the twentieth century. Influence drew in Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, which gradually brought in more nations and formalized in 1993 to seize on the opportunity to scoop up former Soviet Bloc nations. The UK was invited to join, but resisted, creating a complex border across Ireland that nearly reignited the Troubles. Instead, NATO declined to a more English-speaking alliance as the UK and US watched to see whether France and Russia would again go to war over Eastern European territory.
Jeff Provine, among other works, has written a story in the Sea Lion Press anthology N'Oublions Jamais and runs the blog On this Day in Alternate History.