851R.01/268: Telegram
The Consul General at Algiers (Wiley) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 5—6:18 p.m.]
331. Personal for the President and Secretary from Murphy. Your 322, February 23, midnight. Since my return from Morocco I have [Page 68] had conversations with General Giraud during the course of which I dwelt on our preoccupation regarding the possible effects of criticisms of slow political progress in his administration. After these conversations I am more convinced than ever of Giraud’s utter sincerity of purpose to cooperate wholeheartedly and unreservedly in our war effort, his desire to make a clean break with undesirable Vichy ideas and policies and his sound judgment on certain phases of the North African situation, especially the Moslem question. I explained that I believed he may have lost ground in some sections of public opinion abroad as well as in France itself because of his failure to implement his purpose by prompt administrative reforms and for his failure to eliminate from public office in North Africa several high ranking officials who are regarded as undesirable either because of their former affiliation with the Vichy Government or simply due to the fact that they participated in resistance to the arrival of our forces in November as well as in resistance to Giraud himself. I suggested that if some of these changes were delayed until after the arrival of the Catroux mission later this month credit for the changes made later would undoubtedly be attributed to de Gaulle rather than Giraud. Giraud is thoroughly alive to this situation and I am left in no doubt that he has not forgotten incidents for which Noguès, Michelier and Mendigal were responsible at the time of the arrival of our Forces. Appropriate action in this regard he promised will be taken when in his discretion the time is ripe.
He said quite rightly that it is often overlooked in editorial comment on the local North African situation that the population here has been worked on unremittingly by Axis propaganda during a period of over 2 years. Many false ideas and a lack of true understanding of the principles involved in the war resulted. It is not unreasonable that at a few months elapse to permit an evolution of ideas on the part of many army and navy officers, civilian officials and the business and agricultural world. North Africa is a Moslem and a colonial structure radically different from metropolitan France. It is essentially Arab rather than European.
The French people, Giraud said, will never tolerate the imposition of a government on them by a North African group nor by a group of émigrés. The French people and they alone will decide their political destiny. They may wish he stated a return to the Third Republic form of government or they may wish a communistic or other form but that will be for them—each Frenchman in his village—to decide.
My objective, said Giraud, is a simple one, to get on with the war and liberate the French people at the earliest moment possible, enabling them to make their own decisions. He expressed the opinion that the local political situation had been exaggerated out of all [Page 69] proportion to its true importance. The colonial structure which now exists was set up by laws of the Third Republic. Undesirable Vichy decrees are being and will continue to be eliminated in an orderly fashion. Anyone who knows me, said Giraud, realizes that I deplore and oppose racial discrimination. My program for the elimination discriminatory restrictions against the Jews is formed on a sound basis which will avoid disturbance in the Moslem world, especially in the French Armed Forces over 70 percent of whom are Arabs. In a speech yesterday he said I publicly announce the support of the Atlantic Charter98 and you know that I am working for a liberalized economy in this area.
Giraud said that the information he had received from the President (Department’s 305, February 20, 5 p.m.) from the War Department and his conversations with McCloy99 and Monnet left no doubt in his mind regarding our intentions respecting the French Army and that he is extremely grateful for the President’s support. He is proud of the showing of the French troops on the Tunisian front and said again that they had suffered over 5000 casualities.
Giraud said: You may assure the President that I will do my level best to justify his confidence in me. He knows that I have started from scratch in respect of political organization with an acute lack of civilian personnel. I am doing my best to find qualified people whose records will not embarrass the Allies. It is not an easy task. I know there has been criticism of the retention of so-called “Vichyites” even though such men may now be giving wholehearted support to the Allied cause. Thus General Bergeret who is Secretary General of the War Committee and an honest man who conscientiously devotes himself to the war effort will resign within a few days at my instance because I realize that the presence of a former member of the Vichy Government may be embarrassing to the Allies. I want to make it quite clear, that I stand for a clean break with undesirable Vichy ideas and policies. The world knows I never was associated with them. Bergeret’s dismissal will be followed by others in accordance with my policy of gradual change which recognizes that the paramount consideration is the conduct of the war. Civilian commotion in the rear must be avoided.
We discussed at length the concentration camp problem. Giraud said that he detested concentration camps and everything related to them. He had nothing to do with their exception [inception?]. He wishes to release the persons in these camps in an orderly fashion. Means must and will be found he said to enable them to earn a living or depart from the area. He had a report from the Allied Commission [Page 70] now investigating the camps in the Colomb-Bechar area to the effect that a number of the refugees stated that they would not accept employment in the British labor battalions offered them. I made it quite clear to Giraud that there has been a heavy fire of newspaper criticism and much misunderstanding regarding both the importance of these camps and the prevailing conditions. He is, I am convinced, just as eager as the critics to find a happy solution to this vexing problem.
It is believed that the Allied Command will contribute much to that end. In that connection it would be of great assistance if a reply from the Mexican Government regarding its intention in principle to accept a number of Spanish refugees in this area (Department’s 61, January 12, midnight and our February 4, 11 a.m.1) could be hastened Giraud declared as have other officials connected with this matter that they ask for nothing better than an opportunity to release the Spanish refugees and permit them to depart from this area avoiding embarrassing complications with the Spanish Government which regards many of these individuals as dangerous.
On the subject of the de Gaulle question Giraud stated that he stands for an agreement in principle with de Gaulle; that he hoped that the President and the Secretary realized that he constantly refrains from polemics on the radio and in the press notwithstanding that de Gaulle’s organization continues to indulge in public criticism and depreciation of the North African effort. He feels that it is unfortunate that a few individuals in the de Gaulle group seem to place personal recrimination before the war effort and seem to insist that they and they alone stand for whatever is good in French political life.
Repeated to London personal for Matthews. [Murphy.]
- Joint statement by President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill, August 14, 1941; for text, see Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, p. 367.↩
- John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War.↩
- Neither printed.↩