Charles De Gaulle or the Intercultural Paradox of Fierce Patriotism

Human beings are full of contradictions.

The very qualities that make us valuable can also turn us into difficult creatures to deal with. Strong conviction can help achieve goals but can also develop into blind arrogance. Pride can prove inclusive and protective or exclusive and discriminatory. Stubbornness can obstruct cooperation or make sure a project stays on course. And often it is only in hindsight that we can tell which was which.

I was reminded of this while watching Antonin Baudry’s two-part La Bataille de Gaulle.

To begin with: both films (L’âge de fer/Résistance and J’écris ton nom/Liberté) are visually splendid, brilliantly acted and, yes, unabashedly heroic. As French critics have pointed out, the emotions, often accompanied by powerful music, occasionally run high enough to invite accusations of melodrama.

Even so, both films highlight a few intercultural paradoxes that not only played out in the past but continue to affect our lives in the present.

At the centre stands Charles de Gaulle, who would later become president of France, magnificently portrayed by Simon Abkarian. But in 1940, he is essentially nobody. France has been defeated, its government has sought an armistice developing into an ever-closer collaboration with the occupying Nazi armies and millions have resigned themselves to the idea that the war is lost for France.

Not so De Gaulle. He squarely refuses to accept this situation.

In the first film, there is something almost grotesque about his strong, individual conviction. With little power, few followers and questionable legitimacy, he behaves as if the France he envisages already exists – or, in fact, never ceased to be. And while this may seem close to preposterous in the circumstances:

De Gaulle fiercely defends sovereignty, freedom, and moral integrity: high values the Western world was eager to rebuild itself on after WWII.

Image courtesy of PICRYL - public domain.

So what was De Gaulle? A brilliant visionary? Arrogant? Spectacularly courageous? Or perhaps a megalomaniac? The uncomfortable answer must probably be: a bit of all of them at the same time.

The second film provides, however, an important correction to the larger-than-life image of De Gaulle; sure, he had the vision and became its towering symbol, but he wasn’t able to turn it into reality alone.

Jean Moulin, who later became the very face of the French Resistance, needed to align Resistance movements divided by ideology, personality and political ambition. And it is General Leclerc, whose name adorns streets and avenues in countless towns and cities in post-war France, who translated political aspiration into astonishing military fearlessness. Even the fictional character Livia seemed to me the representative of the many anonymous women and men without whose courage and sacrifice the celebrated names of history could never have attained their achievements.

And then there were, of course, the Allies.

The British do support De Gaulle, but not exactly unconditionally and never at the exepense of their relationship with the US. The Americans, who have their own vision of post-war Europe, treat De Gaulle with thinly veiled hostility. For years, Roosevelt had little confidence in his claim to represent France and was hardly inclined to accommodate his enormous sense of national sovereignty.

Yet they ultimately have to work together. This is one of the interesting contradictions of the entire story:

Cooperation does not necessarily require harmony.

Allies can distrust one another, irritate one another and pursue different interests - and nevertheless recognise that something larger requires them to work together. We only need to look at the UN, EU or NATO today to realise how true this is.

There is a wider paradox here as well.

De Gaulle could hardly have been more intensely French. His language was one of French sovereignty, French honour, French independence and French greatness. He did not fight primarily for some fully developed vision of the multicultural, human-rights-based Europe we know today. He fought for France.

Yet in doing so, he and the extraordinarily diverse people who eventually joined the same cause helped preserve the political space from which a freer, more democratic and increasingly intercultural Europe could emerge.

There is an uncomfortable contradiction here, too.

France fought against foreign domination while remaining a colonial power itself. Soldiers and territories from its African colonies made important contributions to the liberation of a country that did not yet grant them equal freedom. The films offer a refreshing perspective on WWII, away from the standard Hollywood interpretations. History itself, however, is much more complicated than the heroic narrative of any single nation alone.

In the end, this realisation only reinforces the point:

Interculturality does not require us to pretend that cultures are internally consistent. Nor does successful international cooperation require people to abandon the identities, convictions and interests that distinguish them.

This matters far beyond wartime history.

International teams operate on a much smaller stage than De Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt, Moulin or Leclerc. But they regularly encounter a version of the same problem. Strong conviction may be interpreted as arrogance. Open disagreement as hostility. Independence as unwillingness to cooperate. Pride in one’s own way of doing things as rejection of everybody else’s. Occasionally, such interpretations will be correct. But certainly not always.

Cross-cultural leadership therefore cannot simply be about smoothing out differences or teaching everybody to behave more alike.

It is much more about identifying what lies underneath behaviour we find difficult. About learning how people with very different assumptions, interests and ways of exercising authority can still work together without requiring one another to become the same.

This is one of the questions we explore at OEF!: not how to eliminate cultural differences, but how to make cooperation possible despite them – or even because of them.

OEF! Takeaway:

"Strong identity is not the opposite of interculturality – as long as it leaves room for other strong identities to coexist."

Stand your ground. Share the Footing.

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