Russia at war 1941-1945

De Gaulle was anxious, almost from the outset, to give tangible form to the military cooperation between the Free French and the Soviet Union, and wanted to send to Russia a French division then stationed in Syria. But this apparently met with opposition from the British and, in April 1942, Dejean proposed that the French send to Russia thirty airmen instead, and thirty ground staff—to begin with.

Thus the foundations were laid for that French Normandie Squadron which arrived in

Russia later in the year. No doubt they were little more than a token force, but they represented an important political factor and a symbolic link between Russia and the French Resistance. The French airmen fought gallantly on the Russian Front, suffered very heavy casualties, and Russian military decorations were lavishly conferred on them.

Great publicity was given to this French unit.

In March 1942 a small diplomatic mission, headed by M. Roger Garreau, and with

General E. Petit as the Military Attaché, arrived in Moscow. Garreau was (at least at that stage) a strong supporter of de Gaulle and, in his conversations with the Russians, never made any secret of the disagreements between de Gaulle on the one hand and the British and Americans on the other.

[In this he was closely following de Gaulle's example in London. In talking to Soviet diplomats the General frequently complained about the British Government: thus, on

November 26, 1941, in reply to Ambassador Bogomolov's remark that he regularly read

his (de Gaulle's) paper, France, de Gaulle angrily snapped back: "That isn't my paper, that's the paper of the British Ministry of Information." On another occasion, on September 26, 1942, he told Bogomolov that the British were trying to build up Herriot as his rival, adding "with great irritation" that the British were trying all the time to overthrow him by making use of all sorts of other people. (Ibid., pp. 50 and 96).]

Garreau (like de Gaulle) attached the greatest importance to the support given by Russia to the Free French, and on March 23,1943, went so far as to tell Molotov that "but for the Soviet Government's support, Fighting France would not have survived the great

November (1942) crisis when various attempts were made in North Africa to set up quite a different government."

[Ibid., p. 118. ]

In June 1943 the question arose of recognising the French Committee of National

Liberation in Algiers, and on the 23rd, the British Ambassador, in a letter to Stalin, said that he had learned "with alarm" of the Soviet intention of recognising this Committee.

[ Ibid., p. 167.]

Under British and American pressure, this recognition was delayed, but when it was

finally granted in August 1943, the Soviet "formula" of recognition was much shorter and more straightforward than that of the British and American Governments, with its

numerous conditions and reservations. When, finally, in August 1944, the de Gaulle

Government established itself in Paris, the Russians pressed Britain and the United States for an early recognition as the French Provisional Government. So, on the whole, de

Gaulle had every reason to be satisfied with the backing the Soviet Government had

given him ever since 1941.

His decision to go to Moscow to see Stalin at the end of 1944 had been largely

determined by a good deal of irritation and annoyance caused him by the British and

Americans, by their "domineering" position in France, and by his desire to show that he had an independent policy and was nobody's satellite. The Russians, for their part, were interested in France in so far as this was a country in which the communists had played a leading part in the Resistance and were making their influence felt inside the French Government.

And yet, in the conditions prevailing at the end of 1944, the most important question for the Russians was to finish the war against Germany as quickly as possible, and Stalin expected the French communists to subordinate their own political interests to this end—

as we know, for instance, from the instructions Stalin obviously gave Maurice Thorez soon afterwards to approve the dissolution of the Patriotic Militias (the para-military communist organisations of the Resistance), and to co-operate with de Gaulle.

[See the author's France 1940-1955 (London, 1956), pp. 244-5.]

During de Gaulle's visit to Moscow Stalin made a point of urging the General half-

jokingly "not to shoot Thorez—at least not for the present"—since the communist leader was going to behave as a good patriotic Frenchman. Thorez, who had been in Moscow

throughout the war, had returned to France in November 1944—where he had just been

amnestied for his "desertion" from the French Army in 1939, and was later (in 1945) also going to be appointed one of the Ministers of State in de Gaulle's government.

De Gaulle's visit to Moscow was, above all, a move to break away from an excessive

dependence on Britain and the USA. In those pre-atomic days de Gaulle continued to