Talk of attempted coups d’état is novel for Washington but remains in France’s recent historical memory. In the “Generals’ Putsch” of April 1961, elite regiments took control of Algiers, threatening to overturn the government in Paris. There, thousands of citizens filled the streets, prepared to resist. But had a U.S. Army spy already saved French democracy? —W.S.
The spring of 1957 found both Charles de Gaulle and Ronald D. Flack of Cloquet, Minnesota, in bad ways. The French hero of World War II was vegetating in isolation in a tiny French village hours from Paris, his political movement dispersed and future bleak. For Flack, a recent University of Minnesota grad, the view was even bleaker: piles of paperwork at a Wisconsin J. C. Penney, as he awaited his draft notice.
