De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890-1944 [Hardcover]

Jean Lacouture (Author)

Book Description

Series: De Gaulle | Publication Date: December 1990

Jean Lacouture's monumental life of Charles de Gaulle has been hailed in France as one of the supreme works of contemporary biography: a meticulous and moving record of de Gaulle's life, and a sympathetic but even-handed evaluation of a great leader and statesman.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This first installment of a two-volume biography is a searching, masterful exploration of Charles de Gaulle from his birth in 1890 to the liberation of Paris in 1944. Lacouture describes de Gaulle's family background, education, exploits as a soldier in the first World War and his service as staff officer between wars, when his published writings brought him into conflict with orthodox military opinion. Exiled in London during WW II, de Gaulle proclaimed himself the incarnation of France, put himself at the head of the Free French movement, organized the Resistance and sought a decisive role in the Allied war effort. Lacouture traces de Gaulle's equivocal relations with Churchill, who alternately supported him and abandoned him in exasperation, and Roosevelt, who ignored and humiliated him, and concludes with a moving account of de Gaulle's vindication in August 1944 when he marched into a liberated Paris. By the author of Vietnam: Between Two Truces , this major biography presents de Gaulle in all his thorny grandeur. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this "Year of De Gaulle" (who was born 100 years ago and died 20 years ago), it is pleasing to note the publication in English of the first volume of a solid (massive) two-volume biography of the general first published in France in 1984. Lacouture, whose earlier De Gaulle ( LJ 9/15/66) was called by Brian Crozier "perhaps the best book in French on De Gaulle," is a distinguished French journalist who has thoroughly read all of De Gaulle's own writings and interviewed many of his contemporaries. The resulting account gives readers a clearer understanding of the general's career up to the 1944 liberation of Paris. Volume 2, is eagerly anticipated: it is scheduled for publication in 1991 and will cover his controversial years in power (and include the complete bibliography for this work). While it seems too early to apply the term "definitive" to any De Gaulle biography, this version should become the standard due to its thoroughness, style, French perspective, and critical insight. Highly recommended.
- William C. McCully, Park Ridge P.L., Ill.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 615 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (December 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039302699X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393026993
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Giant, March 9, 2008

By 

Mr Bassil A MARDELLI "Antoun" (Riad El-SOLH , Beirut Lebanon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890-1944 (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

Although De Gaulle's entries have the ring of memoirs written after the event, they may well have been spoken.
Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French parlance.
The General has always been a reference for Middle East scholars and politicians alike ...........

Jean Lacouture is a great writer, and I love to read his books.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good look at the early life of DeGaulle, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890-1944 (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

This is an excellent volume on the life of the great French Leader. This book chronicles the early years including DeGaulle's time as a German Prisoner of War during World War I. The book concludes with DeGaulle's triumphant return to Paris after the liberation in 1944 and is hailed as a national hero. While DeGaulle is really a controversial world figure, he is still a person of great historical importance in the world and France in particular. This book is a great read and is well researched and presented. A must read for anyone who wants to know about the life of Charles DeGaulle.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Both Vols. Best biography in English so far, March 29, 2009

By 

Goldman - See all my reviews

This review is from: De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890-1944 (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

It's probably too early to write a good scholarly biography of De Gaulle. "The test of time" might require centuries; and the truth about highly questionable individuals -- Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dishonest Abe Lincoln, Henry VIII Tutor, and William III of Orange and then men of 1688 -- is flatly denied centuries later by would-be hagiographers, ideological propagandists, and molders of plaster saints. It might be too early because De Gaulle, like Eisenhower, so carefully guarded his private life -- who was always an actor on a stage, playing the self-created role of "General de Gaulle" -- that we're likely not to get the "inside view" of the man anytime soon. Perhaps just as well, he himself quoting, in _Le Fil de l'Épée_ that "no man is a hero to his valet". It might be too early also for the simple reason that the French State doesn't open their files to historians for 50 years.

The author of this two volume study is a journalist, not a historian; yet given a time when the university is swamped with the plague of Cultural Marxists and Sixty-Eighters, maybe it takes a journalist to do the job. That said, the two volumes of this work are probably the best biography that we have so far, at least in English. A pity that it could not have been published as the French edition in 3 vols. One would have wish a bit more about the first 50 years of his life, and more about his views on strategy and command of the military. How close was he to Petain in the 20s? To Charles Maurras? Did he really wish the restoration of the Monarchy? The 2nd vol begins to run thin with the events of 68, as one ought expect for a work published when it was.

Still, the best most complete study so far, to be put alongside Daniel J. Mahoney's study of De Gaulle's political philosophy, _De Gaulle: Statesmanship, Grandeur, and Modern Democracy_, to say nothing of De Gaulle's war memoirs and _Mémoires d'Espoir_. André Malraux's _Les Chênes qu'on abat_ is worth a look.

At the risk of being a hagiographer myself, my own rationale why one can't read enough about this man follows:

The Greatest Man of the 20th Century, who saved his country not once but four times from disaster and shame: 1940, 1958, Algeria 1962, and 1968. A man who gave his country its first workable constitution since 1789. They say the cemeteries are full of people who thought they were indispensable; the cemetery at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises holds one. And when the French rejected him in 1946, he left power to prove to them that they indeed couldn't get along without him; by 1969 his constitution was strong enough to survive without him, and has done well for 50 years.

So yes, an arrogant man, but with much to be arrogant about. He had a respect for two other arrogant yet right men: Churchill and MacArthur. He was said to have thought of himself as St. Joan of Arc; if so, he wasn't far off the mark. And he ruled without trampling on human rights or democracy (1958: "68 years old is too old to begin a career as a dictator").

One who had an uncanny prophetic ability -- foreseeing the French military defeat on 1940. The French High Command ignored his _Le Fil de l'Épée_, _Vers l'Armée de Métier_, and _La France et son Armée_. The GERMAN General Staff did read these books, and so in 1940 France was defeated from a playbook written by a Frenchman. The real father of Blitzkrieg, he was as important for military history and theoretical strategy as for politics.

He foresaw that the 4th Republic wouldn't work, that the 5th would, that Viet-Nam would be a disaster, that it was time to quit Algeria. He knew fully well that Wilsonianism was facade for American hegemony, and so opposed it. He knew also quite well that when push came to shove, the US and the USSR weren't going to risk the nuclear destruction of their cities, and they would use instead Europe for their battlefield; hence his wise opposition to NATO and his pushing a "Third Force". He foresaw that Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular would collapse from within, and one need only wait them out. He saw clearly the danger also of Anglo-Saxon _cultural_ hegemony -- that continental Europe has a better tradition. He noted clearly one of Huntington's fault lines, the one Huntington omitted, the one that runs along the English Channel: The Brits and Irish don't belong in Europe. Nor Quebec in Canada.

And his greatest achievement: the reconciliation with Germany, overcoming the fault line between Mitteleuropa and Atlantic Europe, as old as the Treaty of Verdun, AD 843. This reconciliation is the cornerstone of European unity -- though he would have wanted a confederation of the countries rather than the current bureaucratic leviathan in Brussels. Of course it took the 2nd Greatest Man of the 20th Century, Adenauer, to bring this reconciliation about. "Unfortunate the country that needs a hero"? -- the view of Brecht, a hopeless utopian. We're always unfortunate.

Read about him.