Charles de Gaulle: A Thorn in the Side of Six American Presidents by William R. Keylor (professor emeritus, Boston University) studies the French leader’s antagonistic relationship with his American counterparts, first as leader of the Free French in the Second World War and later as president of France in the late 1950s and through the 1960s. Five of the presidents (Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson) found him to be an almost continuous “source of annoyance and irritation,” while only the sixth and last American president he dealt with, Richard Nixon, held “a respectful, even laudatory, view of the French president.”
Despite Winston Churchill’s efforts as prime minister during the war, the relationship between de Gaulle and the American presidents was poisonous from the very start. The Roosevelt administration both disliked (with reason) and distrusted de Gaulle as a would-be dictator and contested the legitimacy of his claim to be the leader of France as the head of the Free French. The American government first maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy France and then cultivated in succession Admiral Darlan and General Giraud as alternatives to de Gaulle. Churchill, who had sponsored de Gaulle in June 1940 when he was an almost entirely unknown junior French general, pressed both the Americans to recognize de Gaulle and de Gaulle to reach an understanding with Roosevelt. Both efforts were a struggle. As Keylor notes, De Gaulle often incensed Churchill by being an obstacle in the much-sought harmonious Anglo-American relations, including at the Casablanca conference in 1943.
Charles de Gaulle: A Thorn in the Side of Six American Presidents is a worthwhile study and provides interesting insights into the French leader’s “long and contentious relationship” with the United States.