De Gaulle becomes sole President of the CFLN

On 9 November 1943 in Algiers General Charles de Gaulle announced the new membership of the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN), the body that had acted as the government of Fighting France since June 1943. General Henri Giraud was missing from the reconstituted committee. De Gaulle’s former rival kept only the post of Commander-in-Chief of the French armed forces, with no share whatever in political power. His place was taken by members of the resistance at home and by politicians of the Third Republic who in 1940 had not supported Marshal Philippe Pétain.

A popular chronology states that on this day de Gaulle “became president” of the committee. That is a simplification. Since 3 June 1943 he had been its co-president together with Giraud, and an ordinance of 2 October 1943 had introduced a single presidency, which he had taken. So 9 November brought him no new title; rather, it finally ended the dual leadership: Giraud left the committee, and de Gaulle became the sole political leader of Fighting France.

From dual leadership to a single president

The committee had been created in June 1943 as a compromise between two centres of power. De Gaulle brought from London the Free French movement, a political base and the support of the underground at home, which Jean Moulin had united in May 1943 in the National Council of the Resistance. In North Africa Giraud had an army, an administration and – above all – the backing of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who distrusted de Gaulle. The two presidents signed ordinances jointly, but each could block the other’s decisions.

Over the summer of 1943 the balance shifted towards the Gaullists. Giraud was a good soldier but a poor politician: he had no programme, surrounded himself with men associated with Vichy and was slow to restore the rights abolished by Pétain’s regime. In August the principle was adopted that the Commander-in-Chief could not at the same time head the civil authority. The turning point was Corsica. In September Giraud sent troops there and cooperated with the Communist-led National Front, and the committee learned of the operation only after the uprising had already broken out. Although the expedition succeeded, most of the commissioners concluded that the co-president had acted behind their backs.

The ordinance of 2 October 1943 established a single president of the committee, elected for a year and eligible for re-election. De Gaulle was chosen. A separate decree subordinated the Commander-in-Chief to the civil authority: he was to be appointed by the committee and would command only the forces placed at his disposal. This was a return to the principle of the French law of 1938 on the organisation of the nation in time of war. Giraud kept his seat on the committee, but his political role was virtually over.

The assembly in Algiers

The immediate reason for the reorganisation was the opening of the Provisional Consultative Assembly. It had been established by an ordinance of the committee of 17 September 1943 as a substitute for a parliament: it did not make laws, but it could give opinions, question the commissioners and put forward motions. Its first session was held on 3 November 1943 in the Palais Carnot in Algiers, the former seat of the Algerian Financial Delegations.

The assembly’s membership was meant to reflect the France that had not accepted defeat. The largest group – about forty people – consisted of delegates of the resistance movements at home, nominated by the National Council of the Resistance. Some of them reached Algiers only after a dangerous journey through Spain or by air from England. Alongside them sat representatives of the resistance outside France; twenty former deputies and senators who on 10 July 1940 had not voted full powers to Pétain; and representatives of the elected assemblies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Among the parliamentarians were the Socialists Vincent Auriol and Félix Gouin, as well as Communists who after 1939 had been imprisoned in North Africa and released only after the Allied landings. The sessions were at first chaired by the oldest member, the trade unionist Georges Buisson. On 10 November the assembly elected Gouin as its president.

On 6 November, three days after the inauguration, the committee asked de Gaulle to change its membership so as to include figures from the assembly, to ensure the unity and cohesion of the committee, and to subordinate military to civil authority. The last point was aimed squarely at Giraud.

The new committee

The committee announced on 9 November was built on three principles: representatives of the resistance, representatives of the political parties and experts. Among those who stayed on from the previous line-up were General Georges Catroux (Commissioner of State for Muslim Affairs), René Massigli (foreign affairs), René Pleven (colonies), Jean Monnet (a mission in Washington on supplies), René Mayer (communications) and Henri Bonnet (information). André Philip moved to relations with the assembly. Giraud left, as did General Alphonse Georges, commander of the North-Eastern Front in 1940, whom Churchill had brought to Algiers as an ally of Giraud.

New men joined the committee. The Commissioner for the Interior – in practice responsible for liaison with the occupied homeland – was Emmanuel d’Astier de La Vigerie, founder of the Libération-Sud movement. Henri Frenay, founder of the Combat movement, took charge of prisoners and deportees, and the lawyer François de Menthon, a co-founder of Combat, of justice. Finance went to the young Radical Pierre Mendès France, education to the lawyer René Capitant, war and air to the Socialist André Le Troquer, and the navy to the right-wing deputy Louis Jacquinot. The post of Commissioner for Coordination went to the Radical Henri Queuille, a long-serving minister of the Third Republic.

There were no Communists in the new committee, although de Gaulle had invited them. The French Communist Party wanted to choose its own commissioners, while de Gaulle reserved the choice of individuals for himself. The Communists joined the committee only in April 1944. Even so, the line-up of 9 November was the first true coalition government of Fighting France: it included men from London, from Algiers and from the underground, from Socialists to the right, but all of them acknowledged the authority of a single president.

Giraud remained Commander-in-Chief and was still important to the Allies, since it was he who was rebuilding the French army in North Africa with American weapons. The first of these divisions were preparing to move to Italy, where the Allies were just then attacking the Winter Line; at the end of November the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division began landing at Naples. Deprived of any voice in political affairs, however, the general had become a soldier subordinate to a government headed by his rival.

The first test: the Lebanese crisis

The new committee almost immediately had to deal with a crisis in the Levant. Since 1941, when Syria and Lebanon had passed under Free French control after the fighting against Vichy forces, the French had promised both countries independence but had delayed handing over power. On 8 November 1943 the Lebanese parliament, elected in the summer of 1943, removed the provisions on the French mandate from the constitution. On the night of 10–11 November the Delegate General, Jean Helleu, had President Bechara El Khoury, Prime Minister Riad Al Solh and several ministers, including Camille Chamoun, arrested, suspended the constitution and entrusted power to Émile Eddé.

Strikes and demonstrations broke out in Beirut and other towns, and there were dead and wounded in clashes with troops and police. Britain, which since 1941 had guaranteed the independence of the Levant, demanded the release of the prisoners and threatened to impose martial law. The committee in Algiers sent Catroux to Beirut and recalled Helleu, and on 22 November the arrested politicians returned to their posts. Lebanon celebrates that day as its Independence Day. For de Gaulle, who had at first defended the principle of French authority, it was a painful concession and yet another reason to distrust the British.

Its place in the war

The reorganisation of 9 November 1943 ended the dispute that had divided Fighting France since the Allied landings in North Africa. From then on de Gaulle was its sole political leader, and the committee was a government based on the resistance and the old republican parties, not on the men of Vichy on whom the Americans had placed their bets in November 1942. Roosevelt still did not recognise the committee as the government of France, and a few weeks later France was not represented at all at the Tehran Conference, where the Big Three discussed the future of Europe.

Giraud held on as Commander-in-Chief until April 1944. By a decree of 4 April de Gaulle abolished the post and offered him the position of Inspector General of the Army; Giraud refused and retired. At the same time two Communists, François Billoux and Fernand Grenier, joined the committee. On 3 June 1944, at the assembly’s request, the committee proclaimed itself the Provisional Government of the French Republic, and after the liberation the assembly moved to Paris. Britain, the United States and the USSR recognised this government only on 23 October 1944. Members of the committee of 9 November 1943 – among them Mendès France, Pleven, Mayer, Queuille and Capitant – went on to help shape the politics of post-war France for years to come.