The French Committee of National Liberation

On 4 June 1943 General Charles de Gaulle spoke on the radio from Algiers – for the first time not as the leader of an exile movement based in London, but as co-chairman of a new French authority. The day before, 3 June, he and General Henri Giraud had signed the act creating the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité français de la Libération nationale, CFLN). The committee replaced two rival centres of power: de Gaulle’s French National Committee in London and Giraud’s civil and military high command in Algiers. It was to exercise French sovereignty, direct the French war effort and administer those territories of the empire that were fighting on the Allied side until the country was liberated.

The claim, found in popular war chronologies, that on 4 June Giraud “became commander-in-chief of the Free French forces” simplifies these events. Giraud did not take command of de Gaulle’s troops. He kept command of the French army in North Africa – the former Vichy army, which had been fighting alongside the Allies since November 1942 – while the forces of Free France remained under de Gaulle’s orders. The two armies were merged only at the turn of July and August 1943, and in the months that followed Giraud himself was eased out of power.

Two Frances in Algiers

After the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942 the Americans in Algiers relied first on Admiral François Darlan and then, after Darlan’s assassination on Christmas Eve 1942, on General Giraud. Giraud, famous since his escape from German captivity, was a soldier of the old school who disliked politics and understood it poorly. As “civil and military commander-in-chief” he governed Algeria, Morocco and French West Africa through Vichy’s men, and his army had only recently sworn its oath to Marshal Philippe Pétain.

De Gaulle, who had been building Free France since June 1940, regarded this arrangement as unacceptable. It was not merely a personal rivalry. The Gaullists demanded the removal of the governors and generals who had accepted the armistice in 1940 and in November 1942 had ordered their men to fire on the Americans and British, and the repeal of Vichy’s laws, including the anti-Jewish statutes. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded the two generals to shake hands in front of the press photographers, but not to reach an agreement.

In the spring of 1943 Giraud’s position weakened. On the advice of Jean Monnet, a French economist who had come to Algiers from Washington, Giraud gave a speech on 14 March in which he broke with Vichy, declared its acts null and void and professed his attachment to the republic. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Jean Moulin brought about the creation of the National Council of the Resistance, which at its first meeting in Paris on 27 May demanded that de Gaulle head a provisional government and Giraud command the army. The backing of the underground tipped the balance. Negotiations on de Gaulle’s behalf were conducted by General Georges Catroux, a former Governor-General of Indochina, and in the second half of May Giraud agreed to his rival’s coming to Algiers and to the creation of a joint governing body.

De Gaulle arrives

On 30 May 1943 de Gaulle landed at Boufarik airfield near Algiers. He was received by Giraud and took up residence in the Villa Les Glycines, which had been placed at his disposal. That same day de Gaulle laid a wreath at the war memorial in the city centre, where a crowd of his supporters gathered spontaneously – the first Gaullist demonstration of such size in North Africa. In his account, the American vice-consul Kenneth Pendar compared the demonstration to Hitler’s rallies; the exaggerated remark captures well the distrust with which the Americans regarded the general.

On 31 May seven men sat down at one table: Giraud with his nominees, General Alphonse Georges and Monnet; de Gaulle with André Philip, a Socialist from the Resistance, and the diplomat René Massigli; and Catroux, who was regarded as a mediator. De Gaulle set two conditions: the commander of the army could not at the same time head the civil authority, and Vichy’s “proconsuls” had to go at once – the Governor-General of Algeria, Marcel Peyrouton, the Resident-General in Morocco, General Charles Noguès, and the Governor-General of West Africa, Pierre Boisson. Giraud refused, holding that in wartime power must be in one pair of hands, and he was unwilling to sacrifice the men who had helped him in November. De Gaulle walked out.

For the next two days Algiers buzzed with rumours of a coup. On 1 June Peyrouton tendered his own resignation to de Gaulle, asking to be posted as a captain in the colonial infantry; de Gaulle immediately announced this to the press, and Giraud took it as a provocation. On 2 June Admiral Émile Muselier, whom Giraud had appointed head of the police and public order, brought additional troops into the city on the pretext of a Gaullist plot. According to Gaullist accounts, Giraud’s entourage even considered detaining de Gaulle. No confrontation followed. On the evening of 2 June Noguès resigned, and the next morning the two sides reached a compromise.

The act of 3 June

On the morning of 3 June 1943 the seven participants in the talks adopted the draft ordinance and declaration prepared by de Gaulle. The French Committee of National Liberation became the “central French authority”, which would direct the French war effort, exercise sovereignty over all the territories and armed forces hitherto subordinate to London and Algiers, defend French interests in the world and conduct foreign policy. It was to function until the day when, after the liberation of the country, power could be handed over to a provisional government in accordance with the laws of the republic. The declaration committed the committee to restoring all French liberties, the laws of the republic and the republican system, and to the complete abolition of the “arbitrary regime” that Vichy had imposed on the country. Pétain’s state was thereby declared unlawful.

The first committee had seven members. De Gaulle and Giraud became co-chairmen. From the Gaullist side came Massigli as Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Philip as Commissioner for the Interior; from Giraud’s side, Monnet as Commissioner for Armament and Supply and General Georges as Commissioner of State. The seventh member was Catroux, Commissioner of State for Muslim Affairs, who also replaced Peyrouton as Governor-General of Algeria. The committee’s secretariat was taken over by Louis Joxe, a Resistance activist.

On 4 June de Gaulle spoke on Radio Algiers, and the announcement of the committee’s creation went round the world. Churchill was in Algiers that day: after the Trident Conference in Washington he had flown to North Africa with General George Marshall to press the Americans for a landing in Italy. Together with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, he met members of the new committee and welcomed the compromise with relief, although he trusted de Gaulle no more than Roosevelt did.

On 7 June the committee was enlarged to fourteen members. De Gaulle’s side added, among others, René Pleven (colonies), Henri Bonnet (information), André Diethelm (production) and Adrien Tixier (labour); Giraud’s side added René Mayer (communications), Maurice Couve de Murville (finance) and Jules Abadie (education, health and justice). The heads of the territories were also replaced: in Morocco Noguès gave way to the diplomat Gabriel Puaux, who had opposed the armistice in 1940; in Tunisia General Charles Mast became Resident-General; and Jean Helleu became Delegate-General in the Levant. Boisson held on in Dakar for a few more weeks; he stepped down in the second half of June, and at the beginning of July he was replaced by the Gaullist Pierre Cournarie.

The quarrel over the army

The unity, however, existed mainly on paper. The two administrations and the two armies coexisted rather than merged, and the two-headed chairmanship allowed each side to block decisions. The sharpest dispute concerned the army. Giraud wanted to remain both co-chairman and commander-in-chief, subordinate in operational matters to the Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower. De Gaulle demanded that the army be subordinate to the civil authority – that is, to the committee – and that a field commander should not at the same time stand at the head of the government. On 9 June, when Giraud and Georges rejected his proposals, de Gaulle announced that he was withdrawing from the committee’s work, and for several days he stayed away. General Alphonse Juin, who returned from Tunisia for the purpose, tried to mediate.

In this dispute the Americans took Giraud’s side. Roosevelt, who had distrusted de Gaulle since 1940 and suspected him of dictatorial ambitions, wrote to Eisenhower on 10 June that he would not be easy until Giraud had “full control of the French Army in North Africa”, and that he could not countenance de Gaulle holding sway in West Africa; if necessary he was ready to send regiments and warships to Dakar. In further cables to Churchill the President even contemplated a complete break with the general. On 19 June Eisenhower, on Washington’s instructions, received both co-chairmen and declared that while the invasion of Sicily was being prepared Giraud must retain his existing powers and decide military matters in North Africa himself, and that American arms deliveries depended on it. De Gaulle replied that the organisation of the French army was a matter for the French, and that a commander’s authority resting on the favour of a foreign power would not last.

The dispute ended in a compromise adopted by the committee on 22 June. Giraud kept command of the troops in North and West Africa – the great majority of the French land forces – and de Gaulle command of the small and scattered forces in the rest of the empire. The unification of the two armies was entrusted to a Permanent Military Committee made up of the two generals and the chiefs of staff of the army, air force and navy. In practice, then, the status quo was preserved, but the committee did not adopt the American demands as its own decision. Shortly afterwards Roosevelt invited Giraud to the United States, bypassing the committee; the general left at the beginning of July.

From dual power to de Gaulle’s power

June 1943 also brought de Gaulle a heavy loss. On 21 June, at Caluire near Lyon, the Gestapo arrested Jean Moulin, the founder of the National Council of the Resistance, who died a few weeks later after torture. In Algiers itself, however, the balance was tilting towards the Gaullists. While Giraud was on his visit to the United States in July, the committee, freed from constant quarrels, began to work efficiently, and more and more soldiers of the Army of Africa transferred to Free French units. By a decree of 31 July the two armies were merged with effect from 1 August 1943: the Free French Forces ceased to exist as a separate formation, and Giraud became commander-in-chief of the unified French armed forces. At the beginning of August the principle was adopted that his taking command in the field would end his share in chairing the committee, while de Gaulle took charge of the National Defence Committee and of day-to-day policy as a whole.

On 26 August 1943 the Allies recognised the committee, but each in its own way. The United States recognised it only as the body administering those overseas territories that accepted its authority, and stipulated that this was not recognition of a government of France. Britain went somewhat further, recognising it as a body capable of directing the French war effort. Joseph Stalin used the broadest formula: the USSR recognised the committee as the representative of the state interests of the French Republic and the leader of all French patriots fighting against Hitlerism. Following the great powers, one Allied country after another announced its recognition.

The rivalry with Giraud was soon settled. An ordinance of 2 October 1943 introduced a single chairmanship, which de Gaulle assumed, and on 9 November, when the committee was reorganised, Giraud left it altogether, remaining only commander-in-chief. In November a Provisional Consultative Assembly met in Algiers – a stand-in for a parliament made up of representatives of the Resistance and former parliamentarians. In April 1944 the post of commander-in-chief was abolished; Giraud turned down the post of inspector-general offered to him and retired. On 3 June 1944, on the eve of the Normandy landings, the committee proclaimed itself the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Britain, the United States and the USSR formally recognised it only on 23 October 1944, after the liberation of Paris.

Place in the war

The creation of the French Committee of National Liberation ended the split that since November 1942 had divided the French fighting on the Allied side. For the first time since the Armistice of Compiègne there was a single French authority governing real territory – Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, West and Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, and possessions in the Pacific and the Americas – and an army several hundred thousand strong, armed by the Americans. From it grew the French Expeditionary Corps, which fought in Italy at Monte Cassino in 1944, and the troops that landed in Provence in August 1944. The committee also ensured the continuity of republican legality: when the Allied armies entered France, they were met by an administration prepared in Algiers rather than by the American military government that de Gaulle feared most.

The committee of 3 June 1943 was at the same time the last act of a rivalry that the Americans had themselves created by backing Vichy’s men in North Africa. Roosevelt wanted command of the army to remain in the hands of Giraud, who was well disposed towards the Americans, and the future system of government in France to be decided after the war by the liberated French. Things turned out otherwise: the support of the Resistance at home and de Gaulle’s political skill meant that within a year the dual power in Algiers turned into a provisional government under his leadership, and France returned to the ranks of the great powers as a state rather than as a defeated country under Allied occupation. The name of the Algiers committee also served as a model for the Polish Committee of National Liberation, set up by the communists under Moscow’s patronage in the summer of 1944 – a body of entirely different origins and character.