The Almost Impossible Ally: Harold Macmillan and Charles de Gaulle

289 Pages·2006·1.51 MB·English

by  Peter Mangold

The Almost Impossible Ally

The Almost Impossible Ally
Harold Macmillan and Charles de Gaulle
PETER MANGOLD
I.B.Tauris Publishers
LONDON • NEW YORK
Published in 2006 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road,London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by
Palgrave Macmillan a division of St.Martin’s Press,
175 Fifth Avenue,New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2006 by Peter Mangold
The right of Peter Mangold to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.Except for brief quotations in a review,this book,or
any part thereof,may not be reproduced,stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,
mechanical,photocopying,recording or otherwise,without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1 85043 800 5
EAN 978 1 85043 800 7
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:available
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd,Padstow,Cornwall
camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction Bathing at Tipasa 1
PART ONE:REBELS AND RIVALS,1320-1941
Chapter 1 Anglo-French Contemporaries 9
Chapter 2 Mesentente Cordiale 20
PART TWO:‘YOU HAVE DONE VERY WELL’,1942-44
Chapter 3 The Anglo-Saxon Alliance 31
Chapter 4 The Resident Minister 42
Chapter 5 June Crises 51
Chapter 6 Algiers Valedictory 64
PART THREE:A REVERSAL OF FORTUNES,1944-60
Chapter 7 Suez,Messina and Algeria 77
Chapter 8 The Old Companions 88
Chapter 9 In Search of Lost Friendship 99
Chapter 10 The General Strikes Out 108
CONTENTS
Chapter 11 Forcing the Way 118
Chapter 12 ‘The most tragic day of my life’ 130
PART FOUR:‘NE PLEUREZ PAS,MILORD’,1960-63
Chapter 13 Grand Designs 141
Chapter 14 The $64,000 Question 151
Chapter 15 Not Persuading the General 159
Chapter 16 Château de Champs 168
Chapter 17 Autumn Gales 176
Chapter 18 Trouble with Missiles 187
Chapter 19 Jupiterism and After 199
Chapter 20 ‘At the End of the Day’ 213
Notes 223
Bibliography 257
Index 267
vi
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Clare Brown,Piers Dixon and John Pearce for help at
various stages with this book. Christiane and John Tod generously provided
me with hospitality during parts of the research. I owe a particular debt of
gratitude to John Eidinow for providing the original inspiration and encour-
agement. The responsibility for the final text is,needless to say,my own.
I am also grateful to Jane Reilly for permission to quote from Sir Patrick Reilly's
Unpublished Memoirs.Extracts from the diary of Harold Macmillan are repro-
duced by kind permission of the Trustees of the Harold Macmillan Book Trust.
Peter Mangold
Stonor,June 2005.

Introduction
Bathing at Tipasa
T
ipasa lies some forty miles west of Algiers along the North African
coast.In the Second World War it was little more than a fishing village,
with a few houses, a sleepy post office, and an inn. Behind this was a
cliff, from which, half hidden by shrubs and wild lavender could be seen the
ruins of a partially excavated Roman town set on a promontory. It was here
that on 13 June 1943,Whit Sunday,two men came out from the Algerian cap-
ital to bathe and relax. Both had just been involved in a fierce power struggle
for control of what was to become France’s post-war government. It was a
curious scene. One, the British Resident Minister at Allied Forces
Headquarters,(AFHQ),bathed naked,as was the fashion among British troops
in North Africa. The other, a French general, sat in a dignified manner on a
rock with his military cap,uniform and belt.Afterwards Harold Macmillan and
Charles de Gaulle walked among the Roman ruins and dined at the inn. Like
the walrus and the carpenter they talked of many things - politics,philosophy,
religion, ancient and modern history. ‘It is very difficult to know how to han-
dle him,’Macmillan wrote the next day in his diary.‘I do my best,and I know
that he likes me and appreciated having somebody whom he trusts and with
whom he can talk freely.’1
Nearly twenty years later a very different scene unfolded in the ornate
Salon de Fêtes in the Elysée Palace in Paris. On 14 January 1963 President de
Gaulle gave one of his semi-annual press conferences to an audience of some
eight hundred people.They included not only journalists,the majority foreign,
but members of the French cabinet, senior civil servants, and foreign diplo-
mats. De Gaulle prepared himself meticulously for these occasions, memoris-
ing in advance answers to what were for the most part planted questions.This