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His famous 1967 "vive Le Quebec Libre" speach,in Montreal,somehow implying Quebec was not free, didn't exactly endear him to Anglophones.
Personnally, I think De Gaulle is an @sshole. He is the guy who put pressure on High Command to "test German defences" in France... Leading to the disaster of Dieppe.
The worst part is that he must have somehow knew about the upcoming failure as there was not a single damned soldier from the Free French Forces asigned to the assault.
You bet ! The following day, Prime Minsiter Lester B. Pearson broadcasted a message on the CBC that was basically telling De Gaulle to get the f*ck out of Canada. And it worked... The SOAB was supposed to go to Ottawa but rather decided to turn around and head straight back to Paris. Good ridance.
Personnally, I think De Gaulle is an @sshole. He is the guy who put pressure on High Command to "test German defences" in France... Leading to the disaster of Dieppe.
The worst part is that he must have somehow knew about the upcoming failure
as there was not a single damned soldier from the Free French Forces asigned to the assault.
Why didn't Roosevelt and Churchill fully trust de Gaulle, I remember something about Churchill calling de Gaulle a mischief-maker, among other things in a letter to Roosevelt, any idea why?
Somebody made a good point about DeGaulle being an anti-communist. He was and that probably endeared him to Churchill. It is unfortunate but true that the most effective partisans in France tended to be the Communist. Further, they pretty much stayed out of it until the Soviet Union was attacked. The Commitern was pretty well established in France before the war and with a decent crowd of sypathizers and members. After Hitler went into Russia, a war that Communist ideology previously had said was a capitalist devouring each other became a threat to International Communism. Groups that were indifferent or worked to keep the war between the capitalist (an approximation, to be sure) threw their political support behind the effort against Germany. It had a lot to do with WW2 being "the good War". There were few groups against it, on the allied side.
DeGaulle had to tread a thin line between being allied with the Anglo effort and also being independent enough to earn and keep the respect of his countrymen. Otherwise, what happened after the war in Greece, Yugoslavia and other parts of Europe could have happened in France. It didn't and DeGaulle had a lot to do with that.
Canadians may be bitter about Dieppe, but blaming De Gaulle is pure crockery. Point the finger at Mountbatten instead.
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I'm not a big fan either but I don't have any idea what he did or didn't know about the Dieppe "raid". The responsibility for the fiasco ultimately must rest with Mountbatten and the combined chiefs of staff. It was a hell of a way,particularly for the Canadians,to show that you couldn't capture a well defended port intact.
On a lighter note I was not aware of the then Canadian PM's response to De Gaulle's trouble making. Well done him. De Gaulle was acting as if the seven years war(not sure what you call it in Canada) had just finished,Wolfe and Montcalm had been dead for 200 odd years!
Also in 1967, the President of France, Charles de Gaulle made a visit to Quebec. During that visit, de Gaulle was a staunch advocate of Quebec separatism, even going so far as to say that his procession in Montreal reminded him of his return to Paris after it was freed from the Nazis during the Second World War. President de Gaulle also gave his "Vive le Québec libre" speech during the visit. Given Canada's efforts in aid of France during both world wars, Pearson was enraged. He rebuked de Gaulle in a speech the following day, remarking that "Canadians do not need to be liberated" and making it clear that de Gaulle was no longer welcome in Canada. The French President returned to his home country and would never visit Canada again. Nevertheless, with the rise of French-Canadian nationalism in Quebec, the Pearson government would give influential francophone Liberals, who decried so-called English-speaking domination, more power in Ottawa and the federal bureaucracy.