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Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle [a] [b] (22 November 1890 – 9 November 1970) was a French military officer and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France
As under-secretary of national defence and war, de Gaulle refused to accept the French government's truce with the Germans and escaped to London, where he announced the formation of a...
France’s war was about to change and in France’s future there now gaped a de Gaulle-shaped hole. For more than a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, and from in and out of office, de Gaulle rewrote French political culture.
- Helen Drake
- Overview
- Education and early career
- World War II
- Early political career
Charles de Gaulle led the Free French forces in resisting capitulation to Germany during World War II and became provisional president of France in the immediate aftermath of the war. Later he was an architect of the Fifth Republic and was president from 1959 to 1969.
When did Charles de Gaulle become famous?
Charles de Gaulle was undersecretary of state for defense and war when Marshal Philippe Pétain took over the government of France with the intention of signing an armistice with Adolf Hitler. De Gaulle left for London, where, on June 18, 1940, he broadcast an appeal to his countrymen to continue to fight under his leadership.
What were Charles de Gaulle’s policies as president of France?
Charles de Gaulle was determined that France should be treated as one of the great powers and not fall under the sway of any other country, particularly the United States. To that end, he made France a nuclear power, withdrew France from the military command of NATO, and followed his own views on foreign policy.
When did Charles de Gaulle lose power?
De Gaulle was the second son of a Roman Catholic, patriotic, and nationalist upper-middle-class family. The family had produced historians and writers, and his father taught philosophy and literature; but, as a boy, de Gaulle already showed a passionate interest in military matters. He attended the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr, and in 1913, as a young second lieutenant, he joined an infantry regiment commanded by Colonel Philippe Pétain.
De Gaulle was an intelligent, hardworking, and zealous young soldier and, in his military career, a man of original mind, great self-assurance, and outstanding courage. In World War I he fought at Verdun, was three times wounded and three times mentioned in dispatches, and spent two years and eight months as a prisoner of war (during which time he made five unsuccessful attempts to escape). After a brief visit to Poland as a member of a military mission, a year’s teaching at Saint-Cyr, and a two-year course of special training in strategy and tactics at the École Supérieure de Guerre (War College), he was promoted by Marshal Pétain in 1925 to the staff of the Supreme War Council. From 1927 to 1929 de Gaulle served as a major in the army occupying the Rhineland and could see for himself both the potential danger of German aggression and the inadequacy of the French defense. He also spent two years in the Middle East and then, having been promoted to lieutenant colonel, spent four years as a member of the secretariat of the National Defense Council.
De Gaulle’s writing career began with a study of the relations between the civil and military powers in Germany (La Discorde chez l’ennemi, 1924; “Discord Among the Enemy”), followed by lectures on his conception of leadership, Le Fil de l’épée (1932; The Edge of the Sword). A study on military theory, Vers l’armée de métier (1934; The Army of the Future), defended the idea of a small professional army, highly mechanized and mobile, in preference to the static theories exemplified by the Maginot Line, which was intended to protect France against German attack. He also wrote a memorandum in which he tried, even as late as January 1940, to convert politicians to his way of thinking. His views made him unpopular with his military superiors, and the question of his right to publish under his name a historical study, La France et son armée (1938; France and Her Army), led to a dispute with Marshal Pétain.
Britannica Quiz
At the outbreak of World War II, de Gaulle commanded a tank brigade attached to the French Fifth Army. In May 1940, after assuming command as temporary brigadier general in the 4th Armoured Division—the rank that he retained for the rest of his life—he twice had the opportunity to apply his theories on tank warfare. He was mentioned as “an admirable, energetic, and courageous leader.” On June 6 he entered the government of Paul Reynaud as undersecretary of state for defense and war, and he undertook several missions to England to explore the possibilities of continuing the war. When the Reynaud government was replaced 10 days later by that of Marshal Pétain, who intended to seek an armistice with the Germans, de Gaulle left for England. On June 18 he broadcast from London his first appeal to his compatriots to continue the war under his leadership. On August 2, 1940, a French military court tried and sentenced him in absentia to death, deprivation of military rank, and confiscation of property.
De Gaulle entered his wartime career as a political leader with tremendous liabilities. He had only a handful of haphazardly recruited political supporters and volunteers for what were to become the Free French Forces. He had no political status and was virtually unknown in both Britain and France. But he had an absolute belief in his mission and a conviction that he possessed the qualities of leadership. He was totally devoted to France and had the strength of character (or obstinacy, as it often appeared to the British) to fight for French interests as he saw them with all the resources at his disposal.
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In his country, to the politicians on the political left, a career officer who was a practicing Roman Catholic was not an immediately acceptable political leader, while to those on the right he was a rebel against Pétain, who was a national hero and France’s only field marshal. Broadcasts from London, the action of the Free French Forces, and the contacts of resistance groups in France either with de Gaulle’s own organization or with those of the British secret services brought national recognition of his leadership; but full recognition by his allies came only after the liberation of Paris in August 1944.
In London de Gaulle’s relations with the British government were never easy, and de Gaulle often added to the strain, at times through his own misjudgment or touchiness. In 1943 he moved his headquarters to Algiers, where he became president of the French Committee of National Liberation, at first jointly with General Henri Giraud. De Gaulle’s successful campaign to edge out Giraud gave the world proof of his skill in political maneuvering.
On September 9, 1944, de Gaulle and his shadow government returned from Algiers to Paris. There he headed two successive provisional governments, but on January 20, 1946, he abruptly resigned, apparently because of his irritation with the political parties forming the coalition government.
In November 1946 the Fourth French Republic was declared, and until 1958 de Gaulle campaigned against its constitution, which, he charged, was likely to reproduce the political and governmental inadequacies of the Third Republic. In 1947 he formed the Rally of the French People (Rassemblement du Peuple Français; RPF), a mass movement that grew rapidly in strength and that to all intents and purposes became a political party during the elections of 1951, when it won 120 seats in the National Assembly. The movement expressed de Gaulle’s hostility to the constitution, to the party system, and, in particular, to the French Communists, because of their unswerving loyalty to directives from Moscow. He became dissatisfied with the RPF, however, and in 1953 severed his connection with it. In 1955 it was disbanded.
May 4, 2020 · De Gaulle used his office not to amass personal power but to make France a power on the world stage. He oversaw the development of the nuclear deterrent, extracted France from Algeria, set under way significant economic reforms and modernization, and pursued an independent foreign policy in the Cold War (much to the exasperation of Washington).
- William I Hitchcock
- 2020
Jun 14, 2018 · Five decades on from de Gaulle’s departure from power and his death 19 months later, the general’s shadow hangs over his seventh successor as head of state, despite obvious differences in ...
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May 6, 2019 · De Gaulle’s star would not rise again until the Fourth Republic sank into the morass of the Algerian war of independence from November 1954. Successive short-lived governments escalated this paradigmatic war of European decolonization without any corresponding prospects of resolution.
