Speaker Series on Timeless Leadership Lessons from World War II
for the Benefit of Harvard University Scholarship Fund
Part II: General Charles de Gaulle and Jean Moulin
Dr. Charles G. Cogan, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Opening Remarks: Mr. Robert Moulié, Chargé d'Affaires, Ambassade de France
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Printed one-page summary:
English
French
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Revenue
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$4,158.40
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109 Paying participants:
(100 x $39.55) + (NGO group of 9 persons X $22.60)
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The French Embassy invited 25 guests (diplomats and Canadian veterans). Total: 134 participants
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Expenses
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$478.40
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HST: 13% of $3,680 from (100 x $35) + (NGO 9 x $20)
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$207.92
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Credit card fees (0.05%)
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$350.00
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Courtesy gifts to speaker and host of two major events
purchased by David Baird
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$1,173.60
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HUCO share: cocktail reception, $645.60 for liquor + $528 for services & gratuities
Note 1: The French embassy's contribution $2,320 out-of-pocket
Note 2: Harvard Alumni Association paid the speaker's transportation cost, Boston-Ottawa
Note 3: David Baird paid the March 23's dinner for speaker and spouse.
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$932.65
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Hotel $596.01 + courtesy dinner $336.64
(speaker, spouse, HUCO speaker & HAA-NYC participant). Dinner bill was
$589.12 for 7 (less $252.48 paid by Alain for his meal and 2 HUCO directors who insisted on paying their share.)
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$3,142.57
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Total
Expenses
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$1,015.83
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Balance for HUCO Scholarship
Fund
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Volunteers
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We wish to thank the staff of the French Embassy for their outstanding professionalism and kindness for both events.
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The Speaker
Dr. Charles G. Cogan lectures and writes in English and French and is currently an
Associate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. A graduate of Harvard,
then a journalist, and then a military officer, he spent thirty-seven years in the Central Intelligence Agency, 23 of them on
assignments overseas (India 5yrs), Congo (2), Sudan (3), Morocco (4), Jordan (4), France (5). From August 1979-August 1984
he was, in the Directorate of Operations, the chief of the Near East South Asia Division, which stretches from Morocco to
Bangla Desh. From September 1984-September 1989, he was CIA Chief in Paris. After leaving the CIA, he earned a doctorate in
public administration at Harvard, in June 1992.
His fifth book, French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with “La Grande Nation” (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003),
was published as part of USIP’s “Cross-Cultural Negotiations Project.” A French-language version, with an update, is entitled,
Diplomatie à la française (Éditions Jacob-Duvernet, 2005). In recognition of the latter work, he was awarded in November 2006
the Prix Ernest Lémonon of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institut de France. A second printing, with an
Epilogue as an updating, was published in November 2008.
His most recent book, “La République de Dieu,” (Éditions Jacob-Duvernet, 2008), is a collection of essays on the idea of God;
on evangelism (“La République de Dieu”); on Islamic fundamentalism (“L’Islam médiéval”); followed by chapters analyzing a
number of conflicts between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world.
Dr. Cogan is an officer in the Légion d’Honneur since 2007. He is married to the former Susan Yoder.
They have three children: Lissa Parker, Abbie Perkins, and Geoffrey Cogan.
Synopsis
I will discuss the wartime role of Charles de Gaulle,
starting with his decision to defy the armistice/surrender of June 1940, and what was in
his background that could have produced such extraordinary behavior.
The disappointingly small following that de Gaulle attracted at first, as well as the
misbegotten attack on Dakar in September 1940 did not sway de Gaulle from his objective,
although the abortive expedition threw him into a brief depression.
A major problem for de Gaulle was how to connect with the gradually developing internal
resistance movement and to establish some sort of tenuous control over it. In this he was
greatly aided by Jean Moulin. Moulin had both the prestige of having held the position of
prefect as well as the center-left credentials that enabled him to establish contact with
the French Communist Party, which became the leading element in the active resistance following
the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. By June 1943, Moulin had unified the various
elements into a National Council of the Resistance, which pledged loyalty to de Gaulle as the leader
of France’s struggle against Germany. Though Moulin was captured and executed by the Germans in the
same month, the structure he created remained, albeit less under de Gaulle’s control, and this was a
factor in de Gaulle’s seizing power in Paris in August 1944 and pushing the Communists aside. By this
time de Gaulle’s popularity among the French people had reached its zenith, as Vichy France had lost
its raison d’être with the German seizure of all of France after the Allied invasion of North Africa
in November 1942.
De Gaulle, who though privately acknowledging that, despite the way World War II had ended, it
had left “a secret grief, and forever, in the depths of the nation’s conscience,” it was his continuing
objective to build up the French morale and return the state to its role of grandeur. That was the reason
behind his extraordinary speech at the Hotel de Ville in August 1944 when he said that the French people
had liberated Paris by themselves! To Franklin Roosevelt and those around him, this and other lofty statements
of de Gaulle reflected a “Joan of Arc” complex. This bring to mind an observation of Stanley Hoffmann that
there was in de Gaulle’s thinking “an element of mysticism that Americans did not appreciate.”
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