The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right V: Post-War Blues

This is the fifth and last in a series. Here are parts one to four:

• The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right, I 
• The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right II: Maurras and Mussolini
• The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right III: Condemnation, Missed Opportunities, and Vindication
• The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right IV: Against Two Evils

I left my country,
I left my home.
My life, my sad life,
drags on without reason.

I left my sun,
I left my blue sea.
Their memories awaken
long after my farewell.

Sun!
Sun of my lost land,
of the white cities I loved,
of the girls I once knew.
—Enrico Macias, Farewell My Country.

As noted in our last instalment, the end of the war left the French Right in disarray. Petain and Maurras were in jail, while the Communists — despite their early collaboration with the Germans — were riding high. The sort of politics and politicians that had kept the Third Republic divided and weak rapidly reasserted themselves; de Gaulle retired into private life, and the Fourth Republic was born. Given the opposition of both the United States and the Soviet Union to the remaining European colonial Empires, the Fourth Republic transformed theirs into the “French Union,” in hopes that this imitation of the British Commonwealth would bring some relief from their erstwhile allies’ attention. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as the Communists were openly waging guerrilla warfare in French Indochina — recently reclaimed from the Japanese — and the Cold War had begun. American support in that conflict was half-hearted, and with a view to replacing France in the region.

The Orleanist claimant to the French throne, Henri, the Count of Paris — there were very few Legitimists at that time, looking to the eldest son of the deposed King of Spain, Don Jaime, as the rightful heir — had done his best to stay clear of both de Gaulle and Petain during the war. But there was no question that he and his family had opposed Hitler. Even before the war, he had always shown his independence even from Action Francaise, his largest body of organised supporters. Afterwards, he made no attempt to deal with their remnants, instead commencing his own newsletter in 1948. Two years later, the Fourth Republic would repeal the law of return that kept members of the Royal House out of the country, and the House of Orleans returned to France. Starting in 1954, the Count and de Gaulle began cultivating a close friendship — though to this day there are questions regarding who was trying to use whom in that friendship.

With Maurras in jail and the Count uninterested in them, the members of and sympathisers with Action Francaise — especially those who had refused to collaborate with the Germans while maintaining loyalty to Maurras and Petain — tried to regroup. As early as 1946, Jean Ousset, whom Gary Potter would get to know, founded the Cite Catholique; one of the leading clerical members of this organisation was Fr. Georges Grasset, who would also come to be known by many at Triumph. Another of the most prominent of these would later become Gary Potter’s mentor in among these circles, Henri Massis. Action Francaise having been banned as collaborationist journal in 1944, three years later Massis and a number of others participated in the founding of a “new” periodical, Aspects de la France, which of course shared its initials with the banned paper. One of the others involved in this revival was Pierre Juhel, whom this writer himself would meet a year before Juhel’s death in 1980. In December of 1949, the staff of the paper organised a meeting calling for the release of Maurras. Among the notables present were Pierre Boutang, Gabriel Marcel, Daniel Halévy, and resistance hero Colonel Remy.

Massis was also involved in the launch of a political and literary circle founded in 1948 a bookstore, the Librairie des Amitiés françaises run by Dr. Louis Rousseau, and associated with the Cercle des Amitiés françaises. This included members of the Académie Française like Henry Bordeaux, Jérôme Carcopino, Daniel-Rops, Antoine de Lévis-Mirepoix, and Maurice Genevoix, and such intellectuals as Daniel Halévy, Gabriel Marcel, Edmond Michelet, and Marshal Weygand.

Massis was also loyal to Marshal Petain. He was a cofounder in 1951 of the Association for the Defense of the Memory of Marshal Petain. Massis propounded the “shield” thesis, according to which Marshal Petain protected the French by opposing German demands — such as scuttling the fleet at Toulon. Keeping up both defence of the Monarchy despite the apparent growing Gaullism of the heir to the throne, the place of the Church in public life, and defence of Petain’s memory came to be three defining motifs among the French Right. The emerging colonial crisis provided a fourth, as the men of the Right were staunch supporters of France maintaining her empire overseas.

The future of that Empire was beginning to look exceedingly bleak as the 50s wore on. The end in Indochina came with the defeat at Diehbienphu — a defeat for which the Americans were in large degree responsible. The valley of Dienbienphu was strategically located; if securely held by the French, it would allow them to cut off Vietminh infiltration into the Kingdom of Laos, and force them into a pitched open battel they could not win. But to do so, they would require air support which they did not have. President Eisenhower assured them that the US Airforce would indeed supply it, given that they were fighting Communism and so on. On March 17, 1954, the French made an airborne landing and secured a perimetre. But US air support was not forthcoming, the French troops received constant pounding from Vietminh artillery as a result, and a month and a half later the garrison was overwhelmed. The French government fell, the new premier initiated peace talks, and France withdrew from Indochina. The same year, the low-level guerilla war in Algeria began to heat up.

Indeed, French North Africa in general began to heat up. The two protectorates — the Sultanate of Morocco and the Beylik of Tunisia — had their independence restored to them as Kingdoms in March of 1956. Later that year, Egyptian dictator Gamel Nasser seized control of the British and French-owned Suez Canal. Fearful of Soviet support of Nasser, the British and French leaders sought assurances of American backup if they retook their property. Assured by Eisenhower that this would indeed be the case, they intervened and rapidly reseized their canal. But when the expected Soviet reaction occurred, Eisenhower reneged on his promises and declared neutrality. The British and French withdrew, and the Fourth Republic was irreparably disgraced. With every defeat, the armed forces grew ever closer to the Right.

Fearful that another Indochina debacle was in the offing for Algeria, elements of the Army and the local French settlers took control of Algiers on May 18, 1958. They called for the return of de Gaulle to power — a call taken up throughout the country. On May 28, 1958, de Gaulle accepted control of the French State. Believing that many of France’s problems were constitutional in nature, he spent the Summer draughting a new constitution. On September 28, the French electorate approved the new Constitution of the Fifth Republic, under which the country has functioned to the present.

What de Gaulle’s supporters at the time did not realise was that the General had decided that it was time to pull out of Algeria, despite the 1.4 million settlers or pieds-noirs living there. Many of these had never been to France in their lives. There were also thousands of Harkis — native Algerians loyal to France. What would become of them? As against that there was the growing unpopularity of the war among the French in metropolitan France. As the rebels were supported by both the Soviet Union and the United States, it was certainly difficult.

It was at this time that young Gary Potter came to Paris and came to know many of the figures we have been discussing. Tensions increased between de Gaulle on the one hand, and the Military, Pieds-Noirs, and Right in general on the other. When the first-named discovered in 1961 that de Gaule was engaging in secret independence negotiations with the Algerian rebels, the result was an attempted coup in Algiers and elsewhere against de Gaulle. Heavily suppressed, it in turn provoked among the defeated the formation of a “Secret Army Organisation” — OAS — dedicated to derailing Algerian independence. This terror campaign precipitated a swift and often nasty retribution from de Gaulle’s government. By 1962, however, when Algeria was given independence in July and almost all the Pieds-Noirs had to leave the country in a matter of two weeks, de Gaulle was firmly in the saddle. OAS violence went on sporadically for a few years, as did the retribution. A young naval lieutenant, Arnaud de Lassus, refused to salute de Gaulle. He went to work for Cite Catholique and became one of Gary’s life-long friends; this writer also knew him.¹

By the time Gary went back to the United States, his conversion had begun at the hands of men like these. His unique point of view kept developing, of course, and like his mentor, who were also in touch with Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Latin American schools of Catholic Conservative thought his horizons stretched far beyond either or both France and the United States. This would stand him well in the decades to follow.

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