Retreat from Greatness

NORTH AFRICA (See Cover)

On Nov. 7, 1942 U.S. and British troops invaded French North Africa. The world's hopes rose: this was the western Allies' first direct land blow toward Axis Europe. The hopes of Frenchmen soared: this was a blow for the liberation of France.

Militarily, the invasion was brilliantly conceived, effectively executed--despite some bumbles (see p. 14). But the world had looked for something more than military brilliance in North Africa. The oppressed peoples of Europe, from Dunkirk to Danzig, looked to North Africa for the hope and the pattern of freedom. The people of the U.S. and Britain looked there for the fulfillment of their proud assumption that they were the bearers and the protectors of freedom.

They looked in vain. From the North Africa of the U.S. and Britain, a great sickness seeped through the world. Disillusion struck the peoples of Occupied Europe. Shame struck the peoples of the U.S. and Britain. For the sickness, disillusion and shame, the U.S. was chiefly responsible. Allied policy in North Africa was chiefly American policy--a fact advertised to the world before the fruits of that policy ripened. Then it was all too clear that, in the first brush with the Nazi enemy, the U.S. had retreated from its professed high principles.

By last week, that retreat had been checked. On the face of events, it even appeared that the U.S. had regained some of the lost moral and political ground. If so, the U.S. had in some measure to thank an essentially non-political soldier and Frenchman, General Henri Honore Giraud, High Commissioner of North Africa by grace of an assassin and the Allies.

Toward Reform. The figure who embodied and heightened the shame of North Africa was Admiral Jean Franc,ois Darlan. History will decide whether Admiral Darlan deserved all that was said of him: that, because he had once sold out to the Axis, he was forever unfit for the company of free men. For the Allies, the important fact was that most free men so believed.

The coincidence that placed Admiral Darlan in Algiers on the day of the invasion also threw him into the Allied camp. Six weeks later, when a young Frenchman shot him down, he was inextricably involved in the Allies' North African position. Not one move had been made to loosen his hold, or to loosen the ties that bound the U.S. Government to him.

"Military expediency'' was President Roosevelt's phrase for the combination of accident and policy which had brought about this state of affairs. In a military sense, the coincidence and the policy had produced some reward: General Dwight Eisenhower's armies had gained security in the rear; their enormous difficulties of supply and establishment were less than they otherwise might have been; the Spaniards in Franco's Morocco were not the menace they might have been with encouragement from hostile Vichyites.

An obscured, almost forgotten figure during this period was General Giraud. He commanded the French troops in North Africa--but he did so under the resented direction and authority of Darlan. He loomed as the likeliest alternative to Darlan--but Darlan admitted no alternative while he lived. People in the U.S. and Great Britain had about decided to write off Henri Giraud.

Among the many things that Darlan's death changed, one was the world standing of General Giraud. It was a slow and curious transition, and it was not all brought about by Giraud himself. Partly because of his own predilections and tendencies toward authoritarian ways, more because of the still cloudy policy of the U.S., the stench of Darlan along with his mantle seemed to shift to Giraud. Did he, Giraud, not harbor and use the same Vichyites whom Darlan had placed or kept in power? So, for weeks, it seemed to the world.

Then matters suddenly changed. In recent weeks Giraud has ousted some of the more distasteful Vichy administrators. He sent eagle-beaked Yves Chatel, Governor General of Algeria, off to sympathetic Spain. He placed the anti-Vichy Rene Chambe in charge of propaganda. Charles Brunei, anti-Vichy former mayor of Algiers, was brought into the Council of War Economy. Reactionary General Jean Bergeret, Giraud's deputy civil commander, and Fascist-minded Jean Rigaud, political secretary of the North African war council, resigned. Previously Giraud had said: "I think after I announce my plans they will kick themselves out."

Giraud has released a stream of political prisoners, has promised the release of thousands more. He has also attempted to clarify his own political position and reach an understanding with General Charles de Gaulle, tall, stern, autocratic leader of the Fighting French.

Toward Union. Giraud once said: "I am above politics." But by last fortnight he was deep in politics. In a speech welcoming unity on his terms (TIME, March 22) he answered obliquely a Fighting French memorandum which proposed the basis of an operational union. In that speech Giraud promised liberated Frenchmen that they could, if they chose, revive the Third Republic. He announced the abrogation of Vichy's anti-Jewish laws. Last week posters portraying the weary features of Marshal Henri Petain were torn from the walls of public buildings. Not all traces of Vichy were expunged, but there was enough progress to set the stage for a De Gaulle-Giraud conference.

Thin-lipped, five-starred General Georges Catroux, Fighting French commander in Syria and Lebanon, was the preconference intermediary. Catroux loves France, Siamese cats, fancy bodyguards. He admires De Gaulle, is a brilliant conversationalist and colonial administrator. He was expected this week in Algiers to start early negotiations with Giraud. It was also expected that he might wind up later with a high administrative post, possibly succeeding stubborn Charles Nogues, Resident General of French Morocco. If Giraud and De Gaulle get together, then true progress toward French unity will have been made.

De Gaulle has behind him the support of most of the still-free French empire (except North and West Africa); and of the audible political factions inside France. He has strong support in Britain, where he has worked closely with British officials. A Hyde Park comic drew laughs last week by purposefully mixing up Free, Fighting and Flirtatious French; but to the British people and Frenchmen imprisoned in their homeland De Gaulle is respected as a gallant fighter who carried high the French tricolor when other Frenchmen faltered, compromised or lay low.

Giraud has the support of Frenchmen fearful of Communism and the postwar implications of other left-wing support of De Gaulle. He also has a backlog of 300,000 troops and the powerful support of the U.S. Government. What, if any, appeal he has to millions of Frenchmen who cannot but remember that disaster came to them under the Republic, only the liberation of France will tell.

Giraud's Future. The U.S. position in North Africa also has begun to clarify. The U.S. favors a De Gaulle-Giraud union to prevent embarrassments and as an obvious military aid. But Washington had not abandoned its long antipathy to De Gaulle. This antipathy has never been explained officially; unofficially, he is pictured as an impossible person, a hysterical figure who is altogether too friendly with Russia. Most incredible objection: De Gaulle would be a tool in British efforts to dominate the European continent.

Giraud has the blessing of both the U.S. State Department and of General Eisenhower. Apparently he is the U.S. choice for leadership of French forces which will take part in the reconquest of France. The course of events will show where America finally stands in relation to a France finally liberated. For the moment, and increasingly as De Gaulle moves toward union with Giraud, the France of world affairs is in Algiers, and the America manifested to Frenchmen is in Henri Giraud's elegant Moorish headquarters.

Murphy's Past. The one American most closely identified with U.S. policy in North Africa is bigfooted, quick-laughing, Wisconsin-born Robert Daniel Murphy. To him went most of the blame for the early North African bumbles. To him also went a large share of the credit for the success of the North African coup: he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Medal, confirmed in the job of Civil Affairs Officer on Eisenhower's staff. Before that coup was pulled off, he headed an effective fifth column in North Africa. His quick tongue spread promises far & wide. His natural gravitation toward the "right people" pulled him, like others, to Giraud. Not until after the war will the full story of Murphy's preparations be told. But some facts are available.

Several months before the invasion, Giraud was asked by Britain to participate in a North African venture (he had just escaped from Koenigstein Fortress). Giraud refused, but accepted a subsequent American offer. He kept a rendezvous with an Allied sub off the coast of France on the night of Nov. 2, 1942. He was taken to Gibraltar, where he met and conferred with Eisenhower.

Giraud was unhappy when he learned that he was not to be the generalissimo of the North African campaign. He also wanted to postpone the invasion (already held up a month by bad weather) for another three weeks in order to organize his own French corps in North Africa. Giraud's views did not prevail. But he went to North Africa.

Before the Gibraltar meeting, Murphy had been gumshoeing through North Africa. Several other bright young men of the State Department also looked over the field while ostensibly supervising food and oil shipments to Vichy. In addition, Lieut. General Mark Clark had sneaked in by submarine and conferred with local De Gaullists and General Emile Bethouart (present head of Giraud's mission to the U.S.).

Despite these preparations--and the boasts of their effectiveness--there was wild confusion when U.S. troops landed. To the surprise of Murphy and Eisenhower, Vichy and Petain were firmly entrenched in high places. And Darlan was in Algiers, visiting a sick son. Eisenhower then made his famed deal with Darlan, persuaded a furious Giraud to serve under the Admiral, and calmly dismissed the "small differences of ideas" among Frenchmen which these arrangements aggravated.

Murphy's friend, General Giraud, is a typical product of a French military system which forbids officers to vote but does not necessarily keep them out of politics. In a turgid study of the fall of France (TIME, Jan. 25), Giraud inveighed against corruption in politics, the lack of principle in business, the domination of trade unions, the collapse of home life. Like others stunned by the French retreat from greatness, Giraud tended to blame industrialization, showed no sympathy for materialistic individualism. His proposals for homespun reforms were in close sympathy with Marshal Petain's attempts to substitute "Work, Family, Country" for "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

But in one great respect, Giraud differed from Petain: Giraud hated Germans long before they raped France, and he is forever exhorting his troops to kill Germans. And, like all good Frenchmen of whatever political stripe, he loves France. While in a Nazi prison, he laid down his hope for la patrie in a letter to his seven children:

"The spirit is created in France; the training takes place in the colonies; the materiel comes from friendly countries."

Giraud's Present. In North Africa Giraud holds labored French-English telephone conversations with Eisenhower, whom he considers "a fine man." He hates desk work, bats around whenever possible in a U.S. twin-motored bomber. He runs himself on a Spartan 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. schedule, last week treated himself to a trip to the Tunisian front.

In a jeep Giraud banged along over 500 miles of rough terrain. At one point a mine blew up a jeep directly ahead of him. Heedless of danger, Giraud rushed forward, found that a Foreign Legion lieutenant, one of his close friends, had been killed. In other mined areas he strode about, heedless of possible explosions, explaining that if sappers walked there generals could, too.

In the field Giraud conferred with Eisenhower, Lieut. General George Patton and General Sir Harold Alexander, helped direct the capture of Gafsa (see p. 14). A German plane flew low over his own jeep but did not strafe it. Giraud shrugged his shoulders, thinking of his baraka (a supernatural ability to escape death). Wherever he went he asked: "Le Boche--where is he?"

Giraud does not conceal his dependence on Murphy and the U.S. (at Casablanca, a memorandum supposedly prepared by Giraud for submission to De Gaulle turned out to be resting in Bob Murphy's coat pocket). The recent Giraud speech on French unity showed definite signs of U.S. influence; there were reports that he framed it as he did partly because the U.S. threatened to withhold equipment from his French troops. But such manifestations did not necessarily prove that Henri Giraud was a mere opportunist. He probably gave a better explanation in Algiers, just after his unity speech, and just before he left for Tunisia, when he said:

"I think I've done my duty by politics. I'm going to the front."

Giraud is irritated by politics, believes that if men do their work there is no need to look into their personal politics during wartime. But at least three men around Giraud warrant close inspection:

>Marcel Peyrouton, hardboiled, flabby-jowled onetime sponsor of Vichy's version of the Nuernberg Laws and later Ambassador to Argentina, has been Giraud's chief political administrator. Peyrouton has done a good job under his new masters.

> Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil, French industrialist who helped to prepare the way for the U.S. landings, once had interests in the Fascist-edited Parisian newspaper Le Jour. The Fighting French denounce him as a onetime member of the Cagoulards, an extreme rightist society which is still potent in North Africa.

>General Auguste Nogues of Morocco, was North Africa's most truculent military figure under Vichy. A shrewd man with twinkling eyes, he is feared and respected by the natives. He has shown no warmth toward Germany, none toward the U.S. or Britain. Last week he climbed on Giraud's unity bandwagon.

The Curbs. North Africa last week was no sunlit monument to U.S. diplomacy. From Algiers, TIME'S Foreign News Editor Charles Christian Wertenbaker cabled:

"Whatever the leaders say, there is no doubt that what is being fought out here is not only the government of North Africa but the government of postwar France. The democratic process does not exist. That is, the vast majority of Africans do not have the vote and the people of France are prisoners. Hence the only curb on French leaders is U.S. and British public opinion, expressed chiefly through the press; and what's happened here recently seems to me a victory of U.S. and British public opinion over secret diplomacy.

"Recent concessions should not be mistaken for liberalism on the part of French North Africans or their leaders. One official in a key position said approvingly to me the other day:

" 'The best people here are the Royalists. They believe the Third Republic is dead and they want a constitutional monarchy.'

"Vigilant and vocal public opinion in the U.S. and Britain may force further liberalizing moves. But if the people are fooled into accepting the form for the substance, and if North Africa loses its primary importance for the U.S. and Britain as a war theater, then the extreme Right [i.e., the faction of anti-democratic Frenchmen] may have its day."

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