Myth, Dialogue, and Co-operation in the ‘Freedom Papers’: De Gaulle and Anglo-French Correspondence (1941–44)

This article performs a close reading of a newly discovered archive of letters to and from Charles de Gaulle, written between 1941 and 1944, to show how de Gaulle engaged in a process of auto-mythification. The archive features wartime correspondence between de Gaulle and various leaders of the British government, intelligence, and military, such as Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1941) Anthony Eden, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Alan Brooke. The study illuminates the problematic nature of Anglo-French collaboration in terms of shifting cultural perspectives, particularly with regard to the notion of authority. Such notions are inevitably contested, and this collection of letters is an unusually effective resource to reconstruct the essentially dialogic aspects of this contestation. Through contextualization of the correspondence, including both contemporary and retrospective accounts of the war, the article enriches our understanding of the implicit and explicit conflicts between British and French forces and the rhetorical strategies utilized to further each writer’s aims.