THOUGH he will be remembered as the senior architect of Franco-German amity, Charles de Gaulle has believed throughout most of his life that Frenchman and German could never bridge their temperamental differences—let alone lay foundations for Europe's closest economic, political and military entente. In 1934, while a captain attached to the Defense Ministry, De Gaulle wrote a slim volum, The Army of the Future, which mirrored the conviction of most Frenchmen that the traditional hostility between France and Germany was "in the nature of things." The border between the two countries, wrote De Gaulle, "is an open wound; the wind...
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