Was General de Gaulle a “Revisionist”?

Already by 1984 Professor Robert Faurisson had noticed that General De Gaulle never pronounced the words “gas chambers” for the simple reason that he did not believe in them[1]; nevertheless it wasn’t until the occasion of the Papon trial that people finally start publicly to question De Gaulle’s attitude toward the extermination of the Jews by the Germans.

For some, the general knew – and, by the way, from Pius XII to Papon everybody knew – but he held his tongue to the extent of not making any allusion to the extermination of Jews in his War Memoirs. Thus De Gaulle showed an unforgivable lack of sensitivity that might be explained by a quasi-atavistic anti-Semitism. Terrified by such accusations, especially the accusation of anti-Semitism, other people reply that the general was not anti-Semitic at all, but that he simply did not know. He was simply unaware of the existence of extermination camps and their gas chambers; he was aware only of the deportation of the Jews and he deplored those events several times in his War Memoirs.

In fact, all of this is vague, confused, and perhaps even hypocritical:

• What are we talking about? What the general knew or what he did not know? Some people are confusing deportation with extermination in the gas chambers.
• Which time periods are we concerned about here? Some people confuse with astonishing sloppiness the war period, the period immediately after the war, and the period following the publicized (sometimes even pedagogic) great trials organized by the winners (among them, France).
• Why did the general have this attitude that some reproach him with? Because he was an anti-Semite? Because he didn’t know? Or more simply because he did not believe in the extermination of Jews in gas chambers or by any other means as Robert Faurisson claims?

Before studying in detail the arguments of each, let us remind ourselves of the chronology of some facts:

• January 1942: Wannsee conference when, according to official historians, the signal is given to unleash the extermination of the European Jews. As early as the second quarter of 1942 the deportation of Jews living in Western Europe, notably in France, begins. The destination is Auschwitz and its gas chambers.
• As early as 1942 Jewish associations inform the allies about the systematic extermination of Jews.
• 1945: Capitulation of Germany. A small percentage of the Jews deported by the Germans return to the West (among them, even before the end of the war, some Auschwitz inmates).
• From 1945 onwards: Trial of the Nazi leaders in Nuremberg. The French prosecutor is not in the least enthusiastic about bringing the accusation of genocide. The Nuremberg judgment is the reference used in the Gayssot amendment and is intended to repress any contesting of the official historical version concerning this topic.
• From 1947 onwards: Trial in Krakow and Warsaw of the high-ranking SS officers associated with the extermination camps (Auschwitz and elsewhere).
• 1949: Publication in French of the Memoirs of General Eisenhower.
• From 1948 to 1954: Publication in French of Winston Churchill’s Memoirs
• 1954: Publication of volume 1 of De Gaulle’s Mémoires de guerre (War Memoirs).
• 1956: Publication of volume 2 of De Gaulle’s Mémoires de guerre.
• 1959: Publication of volume 3 of the Mémoires de guerre.
• 1961: Eichmann, presented as the main organizer of the Final Solution, is put on trial in Jerusalem. One should note that the press was already investigating this trial for a while.
• 1963-1965: Frankfort trial, also named Auschwitz trial, in which SS subalterns from the camp were indicted.
• 1967: De Gaulle’s declaration about the Jews, “elite people, sure of itself and domineering.”
• 1970: The War Memoirs of De Gaulle are republished without any modification of the text until 1970 at least and so until his death.

The first one who replied to the charge brought against De Gaulle was Henri Amouroux. In the Figaro-Magazine of April 10, 1998 (pp. 30 and 32: “Is De Gaulle guilty?”), the notorious historian and member of the Institute of France questions the eventual responsibility of the general for “the French ignorance in the face of the genocide.” Amouroux acknowledges that the genocide of the Jews was “addressed in a little way or not addressed at all by General De Gaulle” in his War Memoirs. This can be explained, he states, because the extermination and the role of the Vichy government were not well known to the French of 1945. He backs his claim with the fact that in 1945 newspapers like Le Monde and Le Figaro did not contain any information about this topic.

General Charles de Gaulle

This analysis is really astonishing:

• First, we can ask ourselves how was the chief of Free France not aware of the extermination of Jews as early as 1942/1943? Anyway, this thesis goes against the official historical teaching.
• Second, Amouroux compares two periods: 1945, and 1954/1959, the period associated with the publication of the War Memoirs. Those periods are certainly close to each other, but also very different. Indeed as we saw, in the time between them there was a series of widely publicized trials against Nazi leaders in Nuremberg and SS chiefs in charge of the extermination camps (without forgetting the Jerusalem and Frankfort trials when we look at why there were no changes in the reprintings.)

Thus we must exclude the possibility that De Gaulle didn’t hear about the extermination of the Jews when he published his War Memoirs from 1954 to 1959. (Let me remind you that they were republished at least until 1970 without any correction of the original text.)

Responding to Gérard Boulanger, the defense lawyer during the Papon trial who remarked in his book Papon, un intrus dans la République, that De Gaulle never spoke about the extermination of the Jews in gas chambers or by other means (an observation that professor Faurisson has already made as we saw), Jean Foyer, a former minister of General De Gaulle and president of the Charles De Gaulle Institute, wrote in the November 8, 1977 issue of Le Figaro-Magazine, p. 11, that this was plainly false. Foyer then quoted the following excerpts from the War Memoirs (pagination from the paperback edition, Plon publisher; 1958 for the second volume and 1961 for the third volume):

• Volume 2, p. 49:

  “During the summer [1942], the persecution of the Jews, led by a special ‘commissariat’ working with the invaders, was worsening.”

• Volume 2, p. 109:

  “During the winter [1942], in spite of the public outrage, the protestations from bishops (Mgr. Salière in Toulouse, Cardinal Gerlier in Lyon), the condemnation of pastor Boegner, president of the Protestant French Federation, the persecution of the Jews redoubled.”

• Volume 2, p. 209:

  “During the same period [first semester of 1944], the shameful horrors of the Jewish persecutions are taking place.”

• Volume 3, p. 208:

  “[…] because the struggle was tarnished with crimes shameful for human kind.”

Unlike what Jean Foyer claims, it is very difficult to admit that those excerpts, even if we accept that they all concern Jews, refer to a massive “extermination” of the Jews according to a plan. Of course the general uses the epithet “horrible,” but he restrains himself from using the words “extermination” and “gas chambers.” Those excerpts seem rather to speak about a “shameful persecution,” here the deportation of women, men and children under “horrible” conditions. This description is quite banal, since everybody would admit that the prevailing conditions in Auschwitz were indeed deplorable when the deportation of Jews from France was reaching its peak.

Breaking with the official history and in support of an article of Georges Broussine (Le Point, June 20, 1998) – an article which didn’t bring anything to the debate – former minister and De Gaulle’s biographer Alain Peyrefitte stated (Le Point June 27, 1998):

“I can state from his own confidences that the general never confabulated on this kind of things [sic], and was not informed about the existence of extermination camps. In volume III of C’était De Gaulle (It was De Gaulle) I’m proposing to make public his private remarks. How could he be aware of their existence if Churchill and Roosevelt apparently were ignorant of it[2] Why didn’t they react?”

Meanwhile, Peyrefitte was protesting against the claim that the general “had omitted to speak about the Jews” in his Memoirs, but based his proof on the first three excerpts among the four quoted by Jean Foyer – and we have already stated that they are unconvincing.

Some took this promise for fact and did not even wait for the publication of volume 3 before using it as a source. In this case Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac (former departmental information manager of the Free France in London) writes in La lettre des Résistants et des Déportés Juifs (“The Letter of Resistance Members and Deported Jews”) Sep-Oct 1998:

“General De Gaulle will be able 20 years later to tell Alain Peyrefitte that until a very late date he had not known about the existence of the extermination camps.”

As we know, Alain Peyrefitte has passed away since then but fortunately he had time to correct the volume 3 [published by Fayard in 2000]. From it we retrieved the following:

1. In Warning [p. 8]:

   “Let’s remind ourselves however that General de Gaulle is committed only by what he wrote or what he stated publicly.”

   This is also our opinion.

2. In chapter 3, entitled “Israelis have nothing to ask us and we haven’t anything for them” [pp. 275 to 283]:
   • [p. 282] Press conference, November 27: The only thing we retained from it, deplored Peyrefitte, is the reference to Jews as “an elite people, sure of itself and domineering,” but De Gaulle also mentioned in the same conference “the abominable persecutions to which they were subjected during the Second World War.” Max Gallo already had recalled this in the June 20, 1998 edition of Le Point, without figuring that his clarifications were just aggravating the general case.
   • [p. 283, footnote] Completely at the end of chapter 3, Peyrefitte added a very long footnote which started with this reminder:

     “Three months before this press conference, De Gaulle was in Auschwitz (cf. ch. 5, p. 297); we forgot it!”

     On page 297, Peyrefitte describes the short presence of De Gaulle in Auschwitz during his official visit to Poland on September 9, 1967:

     “We are walking across the vestiges of the extermination camp. A monument recalls the memory of the 80,000 men, women and children of France who vanished here. The general leaves a sheaf of flowers. In the golden book of the camp, he writes: ‘What a sadness, what a disgust and, however, what a human hope!’”

     Secondly, Peyrefitte states in this footnote:

     “I had the opportunity to underline that, unlike what is often written or said, De Gaulle, in his ‘War Memoirs’, isn’t silent on what he calls a persecution, the three times he mentions it […]”

     He then quoted the three excerpts from the Memoirs and texts dating from 1940 which are thus irrelevant (De Gaulle was already speaking of “persecutions”).

     And Peyrefitte concludes in this note:

     “The real question concerning all those texts is to know why they were occulted.”

To summarize, Peyrefitte didn’t hold his promises; he just recalled some excerpts from the Memoirs that Jean Foyer already had quoted and these do not refer to an extermination of the Jews.

But the general’s two former ministers are not just producing unconvincing quotes; they are also omitting some excerpts that would enlighten us better about what the general thought about this question:

• Volume 3, p. 126: De Gaulle makes the human assessment of Vichy without speaking of the Jews:

  “[…] 60,000 people have been executed, more than 200,000 have been deported and only 50,000 of them will survive. Vichy’s tribunals condemned in addition 35,000 men and women; 70,000 ‘suspects’ were interned; 35,000 civil servants were revoked; 15,000 military were degraded under the assumption of being resisters.”

• Volume 3, p 274: De Gaulle makes the human assessment of the war, again without referring to Jews:

  “Have just died in the hands of the enemy, 635,000 French, including 250,000 on the battle field; 160,000 fallen under bombardments or slaughtered by the occupants; 150,000 victims of the brutalities in the deportation camps; 75,000 deceased as prisoners of war or labor conscripts. In addition, 185,000 men became invalids.”

  We see that in this category, which could include the exterminated Jews, De Gaulle uses the words “brutalities” (and not “assassination” or “extermination”), and “deportation camps” (not “extermination camps”).

• Volume 3, p. 290/291: De Gaulle issues the bill of indictment against Vichy and again he speaks about the persecution of Jews (more precisely of the “handing over” of the Jews to Hitler and of the “anti-Semitic measures,” words that do not necessarily concern the extermination of Jews), but he adds that those are “secondary facts” beside the essential facts of the capitulation, the abandonment of the allies, and the collaboration with the invaders. And he regrets that those secondary facts received, in the debates of that time, a priority that they did not deserve.

  “All the faults that Vichy was led to commit: the collaboration with the invaders; the fight led in Dakar, in Gabon, in Syria, in Madagascar, in Algeria, in Morocco, in Tunisia against the Free French or against the allies; fights – in full coordination with the German police and troops – against the resistance; handing over to Hitler of French political prisoners and foreign Jews who sought asylum here; assistance provided to the enemy war machine (manpower, resources, fabrication, propaganda ) were all stemming infallibly from this poisoned source. So I was annoyed to see the High Court, the parliamentary circles, the newspapers to abstain largely from stigmatizing the ‘armistice’ and, on the contrary, to lengthily cease themselves with secondary or minor facts. And yet were they putting in evidence those who touched the political struggle rather than the fight of the country against the enemy from outside. Too often the debates were taking the shape of a partisan trial or sometimes of a settling of scores while the affair should have been looked at only from the point of view of national independence. The old plots from la Cagoule, the dispersion of the parliament after its abdication, the detention of members of the parliament, the Riom trial, the oath imposed upon magistrates and civil servants, the labor charter, the anti-Semitic measures, the prosecution of the communists, the fate imposed upon political parties and unions, the campaigns led by Maurras, Henriot, Luchaire, Déat, Doriot, etc… before and during the war, here’s what was taking a more prominent place in the debates than the capitulation, the abandonment of our allies, the collaboration with the invaders.”

The last excerpt, let’s remind ourselves, is taken from volume 3 published in 1959, and republished without any further correction until 1970. We can, without caricaturing, summarize the general’s position like this: The persecution of the Jews with the collaboration of Vichy (as we saw, the general keeps himself from talking about extermination) was certainly odious and deplorable, but it can be considered as an accessory fact with an importance similar to the Cagoule affair (about which not one Frenchman in a hundred could say more than three words).

We can still refer ourselves to a choice made by Admiral De Gaulle, the son of the general, from speeches and messages delivered between 1946 and 1969 and published in 2000:[3] The only interesting excerpt can be found in a speech made on April 30, 1947 in Bruneval during the inauguration of the fighters’ memorial. It is still consistent with the style we found in the Memoirs:

“The six-hundred-thousand men and women from our homeland who died on the battle field, at the execution post, or of misery in the camps, died for France and for France only.”

Conclusions

It seems we can reasonably conclude from this that:

• De Gaulle had a lot of difficulties in recognizing any specific character of the “anti-Semitic measures” taken by Vichy and the occupying force;
• De Gaulle did not believe in the extermination of the Jews either in the gas chambers or by other means, and this is the reason he never used the words “extermination” or “gas chambers.” In short, De Gaulle was a revisionist. The explanations given by historians and by those who have tried to defend the general’s memory (while betraying his thoughts?) cannot satisfy free and critical minds tired of dogmas, official truths, and politically-correct thought and lies.[4]

Notes

This article is the synthesis of an article published in Akribeia, no. 3, October 1998, pp. 241-245, from a complement published in Akribeia no. 6, March 2000, pp. 99-104, and from a non-published complement.