Hello ! I was just wondering if western government felt like France has fallen to communism from the inside (since it appeared they were paranoid about communists hidden in government position). Thank you
(If you know where I can find originals newspaper...)
Just to clarify, France didn't leave Nato - it remained bound by the 1949 treaty's mutual assistance provisions - but it did withdraw from the alliance's joint military command.
The US and other partners knew de Gaulle only too well to imagine that this was any kind of Communist plot: he'd maintained a strongly independent line as Free French leader in London during the war, and had already pulled out France's Mediterranean fleet in 1959 a year after returning to power.
Some measure of Franco-Soviet rapprochement was certainly on the cards: de Gaulle had concluded a 20-year Franco-Soviet alliance (against Germany) back in 1944, and in 1966 he visited Moscow and concluded a series of co-operation agreements. But this was generally acknowledged on all sides as part of his pursuit of independence rather than of any political tilt.
Nor were European allies at one in seeing the General's departure in a negative light: détente was already on the cards, Britain's Harold Wilson flying to Moscow three weeks after de Gaulle; the deepening Vietnam conflict was starting to concern US friends, and West Germany would soon be undertaking its own initiatives to ease a continental division that limited western business opportunities.
There's an interesting contemporary US analysis here.
I'll let someone else speak for the UK, West Germany, etc. Relations between France and the US suffered even further, following the general trajectory of the postwar era, especially in the 60s when the interests of France and the US increasingly diverged. This was exacerbated by a strong dislike for De Gaulle among many prominent American officials. It was only when Nixon came to power that Franco-American relations began to improve, and even then, it was never quite the same as it was during the Truman/Marshall Plan era. Which was quite natural when you think about it-Europe just wasn't in the same place or psychology that they were in the late 40s. By 1968, so much had changed, yet the US hadn't caught up when it came to relations with its NATO allies.