The war ended for the 1ère Armée more with a whimper than a bang. While Sixth Army Group had succeeded in eliminating the Colmar Pocket, morale in the 1ère Armée at the end of a tough winter campaign was low, especially as soldiers felt that the French population had disengaged from the war. Operation Cheerful saw the French army invading Germany as part of the Sixth Army Group, directed by de Gaulle to seize objectives to force the Allies to designate a zone d’occupation française. The liberation and occupation of Germany had witnessed a recurrence of violence inflicted on the civilian population by French soldiers as in Italy, earning for the French the nickname “Russians of the West.” De Gaulle’s post-Liberation celebration of victory sought to diminish the role of the Allies and the 1ère Armée, while celebrating that of the resistance and Leclerc’s 2e DB. None of this served either to repair French civil–military relations, badly damaged by the war, or to acknowledge the role played by the empire in France’s liberation, all of which stored up future tensions. Incorrigible to the last, de Lattre settled into an extravagant lifestyle at his headquarters in Lindau, which flouted the conditions of post-war austerity, and caused de Gaulle to recall him to France. Committed to the retention of empire as a symbol of French grandeur, de Gaulle insisted that France reclaim its Indochinese “balcony on the Pacific.” However, the fact that the French colonial infrastructure had been obliterated by the Japanese, allowing Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, with Chinese complicity, to fill Vietnam’s political vacuum would have made it difficult in the best of circumstances for a debilitated France to reassert its sovereignty in Southeast Asia. France’s return to its far-away colony was hobbled by an absence of a viable policy for Indochina, a situation worsened by political instability in Paris following de Gaulle’s surprise January 1946 resignation, a dysfunctional command tandem in Saigon that yoked two headstrong commanders in d’Argenlieu and Leclerc, each with different priorities, and political concessions made by France’s negotiators led by Salan under pressure from Leclerc to catch the tides to launch Operation Bentré – the reoccupation of Vietnam north of the 16th parallel.

While the French longed for Liberation, they also feared its destructive and divisive potential. Given diminutive conventional French forces, de Gaulle counted on popular resistance to symbolize the participation of the French people in their own liberation. However, the fear that a “national insurrection” would cause great slaughter, and benefit the communists, caused planners to define down the concept. The STO crisis and emergence of the maquis phenomenon seemed to offer political opportunities to various players. However, the réduits maquisards played at best a marginal role in the Liberation, while their destruction offered another “black legend” of betrayal by the Gaullists and the Allies, one promoted by the PCF. The liberation of Paris served as one of the Second World War’s iconic moments, both as a milestone in the rollback of Nazi power and as a consecration of France’s republican resurrection. De Gaulle’s GPRF moved rapidly to assume the levers of national power, forcing a resistance that had consecrated, democratized, and legitimized him to step back into the ranks. De Gaulle’s acclamation removed any lingering reservations, even in Washington, that he was the legitimate leader of France. The levée was finished, the emergency over, and former FFI would henceforth fight the Germans “amalgamated” as soldiers in the regular army, not serve the political ambitions of resistance leaders and communists facilitated by the interface services.

Small wars, or guerrilla wars, had an enormous impact in the age of Napoleon. Fought by peasants with access to land and resources, guerrilla wars in Haiti and Spain, in particular, reshaped the world in ways as profound as any of the major regular campaigns. They bled and demoralized the French and set the stage for the emergence of new nations in the Americas. This essay examines the two successful guerrilla wars in Haiti and Spain and compares them to two failed guerrilla wars in Calabria and the Tyrol in order to identify the key factors determining success or failure by guerrilla forces. Among the keys to success were: the geo-strategic importance of the theater of war; mobilizing ideologies; the presence of imperial troops for a long period of time with all of the resulting violence that implies; the reliance of imperial troops on requisitions in the countryside; the presence of strong allies; the impact of disease; and, above all, the presence of socio-economic conditions that both motivated peasants to take up arms to defend their families, land, and resources against long odds and that supplied peasants with the wherewithal to survive the French counterinsurgency.

In 1801-1802 Napoleon dispatched the largest colonial venture of his reign to Haiti. His goal was to remove the famous revolutionary Toussaint Louverture from office and, possibly, restore slavery. But within two years, the remnants of Bonaparte’s once-proud army were evacuated in defeated, and Haiti declared its independence.

By 1942, the Soviet Union and the United States had joined the conflict, further isolating Vichy. Resistance in France was growing, acknowledged by a change of name from la France libre to la France combattante to acknowledge a growing resistance movement inside France. Jean Moulin had been dispatched to organize and harness it to la France combattante’s political agenda, and to define its missions. While de Gaulle’s movement remained small, the FFL had demonstrated fighting resolve at Bir Hakeim, a small but symbolic step toward wiping away the stain of 1940. Vichy’s deepening collaboration with Hitler helped to put la France combattante on firmer political footing, and strengthened de Gaulle’s political standing. Nevertheless, as de Gaulle realized, the Americans in particular posed a more immediate threat to the achievement of his goal of reasserting French grandeur and global influence than did either the Germans or Vichy. It would require all of de Gaulle’s determination and political savvy to keep la France combattante from being relegated to one of the Second World War’s obscure footnotes in the wake of Operation Torch – the November 1942 Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa.