Charles de Gaulle

Source

• Born: 22 November 1890
• Birthplace: Lille, France
• Died: 9 November 1970 (aneurysm)
• Best Known As: President of France, 1958-69

Charles de Gaulle was the dominant political leader and grand figurehead of France during and after World War II. De Gaulle was a career soldier in the French Army who had been wounded and held prisoner during World War I. He rose to the rank of general and was serving as France's minister for National Defense and War in June, 1940, when France capitulated to Germany early in World War II. DeGaulle escaped to Britain, where he made a famous broadcast calling on the French people to resist (earning him the nickname of the "Man of June 18, 1940"). DeGaulle formed the Free French forces and led the provisional government that ruled France after it was retaken from Germany. After the war he was elected head of the French government, but left the post in 1946 and formed a new political party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (Rally of the People of France, or RPF). DeGaulle was in and out of politics until 1958, when he was called to form a government amid political chaos in France. He oversaw the constitutional reforms that led to the Fifth Republic of France, and became the first president of the new Republic in 1959. Proud, stubborn, and charismatic, he insisted on France's right to pursue an independent path from both Europe and the United States. He also settled France's difficult relations with its Algerian territory by granting self-determination to Algeria. He served as president for just over a decade until stepping down in April of 1969.

(b. Lille, 22 Nov. 1890; d. Colombey-les-deux-Églises, 9 Nov. 1970) French; Head of the Free French, Prime Minister 1958, President of the Fifth RepublicThough de Gaulle grew up in a family whose aristocratic origins, Catholicism, and monarchism were alien to democratic principles of the Third Republic, his father (a school principal) showed the independence of mind for which his son became celebrated by rejecting the divisive politics of anti-Dreyfusard nationalism. For someone of de Gaulle's class and culture, the army was the obvious, perhaps the only, career. Having attended the military academy of Saint-Cyr, he fought in an infantry regiment, was wounded and captured at Verdun in 1916, and spent the rest of the war in a German prisoner of war camp from which he tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to escape. Between the wars, he taught military history at Saint-Cyr, saw service in Poland and Lebanon, and was for a period close to Marshal Pétain, who became godfather to one of his children. His lack of respect for the orthodoxies which Pétain incarnated manifested itself in his advocacy, in his 1934 book Vers l'armée du métier, of a military strategy based on speed and movement. He was tireless in his advocacy of tanks and armoured divisions and attracted the attention of a number of leading Third Republic politicians, including Blum and Reynaud. In 1937, he was appointed colonel of a tank regiment.

De Gaulle's military advancement suffered between the wars from his noncon-formity and from what his enemies regarded as arrogance; if he had died in January 1940 he would be unknown today. Thus it was the military catastrophe of 1940, and his connection with Reynaud, which began the process whereby de Gaulle evolved from an isolated maverick into France's most celebrated twentieth-century leader. As France's armies succumbed to the 1940 German offensive, Reynaud appointed him Under-Secretary of War on 5 June in the hope that his strategic talents would stimulate the defence effort. It was, of course, too late to halt the collapse and on 16 June Reynaud handed over power — or what was left of it — to Pétain, who immediately sought an armistice with Hitler. There was no place for someone of de Gaulle's views in the new political order and he immediately flew to London in an English aircraft. On 18 June (the anniversary of Waterloo) he made the celebrated broadcast in which he announced that the loss of a battle did not mean the loss of war and called on all Frenchmen who were able to do so to join him in continuing the combat. The 18 June speech is the founding moment in de Gaulle's political career. It was a dramatic break with the conventions of his career — an officer must obey his commanding officer — and with the values which Pétain incarnated and which someone of his class could be expected to respect. Yet if the speech is the source of de Gaulle's subsequent legitimacy, it attracted little attention in a France which was stunned by defeat and it certainly did not establish de Gaulle as a leader. The vast majority of his compatriots sought refuge from their distress in Pétain's authority; even those who did not were far from willing to accept de Gaulle's claim to speak for France. Thus the early years of the Free French movement which he founded were far from easy. The humiliating failure of the Dakar Expedition of September 1940 demonstrated the refusal of many officials of the French Empire to accept his authority and so too did the bitter feuds within the Free French. His intransigence infuriated his protector Churchill and he was regarded with implacable suspicion by Roosevelt, who saw him as the kind of reactionary militarist against whom the war was being fought. Thus de Gaulle faced enormous problems in asserting his authority. That he was finally able to do so reflected his political skill in marginalizing rivals like General Giraud; his eloquence as a broadcaster to occupied France; and his ability to win over the internal Resistance to his cause by placing himself squarely on the side of democracy and social reform. By the time he returned to France in August 1944 (he had not been told in advance of the D Day landings) his authority as leader of Free France was unquestioned and he received a tumultuous reception when he walked down the Champs Elysées on 25 August. To the status he enjoyed as liberator was added the authority he possessed as head of a provisional government which contained representatives of all France's political forces, including the powerful Communist Party.

His authority was temporary. Resigned (briefly) to the role of the parties in the reconstruction of French democracy, he made no attempt to construct his own political machine in the run-up to the October 1945 election of a Constituent Assembly. The new Assembly was, however, dominated by party leaders who had no intention of introducing a system which would institutionalize de Gaulle's leadership. His relations with the Assembly collapsed and in January 1946 he abruptly resigned as head of the provincial government, in the (mistaken) hope that public pressure would force his return. When it became clear that this would not happen, he launched a fierce attack on the constitutional plans of the Assembly and in the famous Bayeux speech on 16 June 1946 set out his model of a presidential system able to protect the authority of government from the interference of the parties. Nine months later he founded a mass political movement, the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), whose purpose was to force the newly founded Fourth Republic to abdicate in his favour. The RPF was initially highly successful in attracting a mass public, and in the 1951 elections became the largest grouping in the National Assembly. But it did not succeed in its core aim of terrorizing the other parties into submission and gave de Gaulle a dangerous reputation as an anti-Republican demagogue. In 1954, the RPF had disintegrated and its leader retreated into morose retirement at his country home in Colombey-les-deux-Églises, where he wrote three volumes of well-regarded war memoirs. By the mid-1950s, he had disappeared from the list of those that public opinion believed to have a future in national politics.

He was brought back to power in May 1958 by the collapse of the authority of the Fourth Republic. Unable to find a solution to the brutal war in Algeria, and facing the nightmare scenario of a military coup, or even a civil war, the majority of the party leaders turned, as their predecessors had turned in 1940, to a leader who stood outside the existing system. The dual legitimacy de Gaulle possessed as saviour of French honour (1940) and restorer of French democracy (1944) made him acceptable to the defenders of French Algeria and to (most) of the democratic parties. But if Algeria was the cause of de Gaulle's return, it was not the only, or perhaps even the principal, focus of his ambitions. His goal was, as it had been since 1946, to construct a political order which would enable government to govern — and him to rule. On 28 September the constitution of the Fifth Republic, of which he is correctly seen as Founding Father, gained a massive approval in a referendum and seven weeks later an Electoral College elected him President. The new constitution gave the presidency more powers that it had possessed since 1877 and severely constrained the ability of the National Assembly to impede government.

De Gaulle was no reactionary imperialist and he knew his ambitions for France could not be realized so long as the Algerian crisis continued. He thus embarked upon a policy of self-determination which culminated in 1962 in the grant of full independence to an Algeria run by those whom France had been fighting for eight years. Although bitterly opposed by the French settlers and by the far right, the end of French Algeria received a massive backing from the electorate. Military peace was, however, soon followed by political warfare as the parties rebelled against de Gaulle's conception, and use, of presidential power and in particular against his proposal to base the presidency on universal suffrage. What de Gaulle regarded as the legitimization of the power of presidency, introduced by the impeccably democratic method of a referendum, was seen by the opposition as a direct assault on the principles of Republican democracy introduced by unconstitutional methods. After a bitterly contested campaign, de Gaulle won both the referendum and the parliamentary election which followed it. Three years later he became the first French president since Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in 1851 to be elected by popular vote.

Backed by a supportive National Assembly and a loyal, and competent, Prime Minister Pompidou, de Gaulle was now free to realize his ambitions for French grandeur. While it is not true that, as his critics claimed, he regarded issues of economic and social policy as unworthy of his attention, it is the case that he was primarily interested in creating a role for France as an independent actor on the world stage and in challenging the right of the two super powers to determine the contours of the international system. He cultivated good relations with Third World countries, vigorously promoted France's independent nuclear deterrent, and sought to make France the leader of a European confederation of nation states. For de Gaulle the nation state was the only genuine political institution. It was this belief which led him, while accepting France's membership of both the Atlantic Alliance and the European Economic Community, to withdraw French troops from the integrated military command structure of NATO and to reject all attempts to turn the EEC into a supranational federation. The aggressive individualism of his foreign policy — vetoing Britain's applications to join the EEC, supporting Quebec separatism, condemning United States military involvement in Vietnam — caused much annoyance in Washington and London. Yet it revived France's status within the international system and unquestionably contributed to a revival of national self-confidence.

Such a confidence was decreasingly accorded to de Gaulle's domestic record. He was forced onto a second ballot in the 1965 presidential contest and nearly lost control of the National Assembly in the 1967 legislative elections. If this decline reflected the economic and social inequalities which industrial growth failed to eradicate, it also derived from what his critics regarded as an elective dictatorship and as the solitary exercise of power. Nothing, however, prepared him — or the public — for the explosion of protest which occurred in May 1968 as students and workers united against his rule. For a few weeks, the crisis left de Gaulle helpless and made a mockery of his boast to have given France the stability it had lacked since 1789. At the end of May he regained the political initiative in a dramatic broadcast in which he declared that the Republic would not abdicate and that he would fight to defend the France he had created. It was to be his last decisive intervention. Although the Gaullist Party won an overwhelming majority in the June parliamentary elections, it was a victory for law and order rather than for de Gaulle. De Gaulle tried to respond to the concerns of 1968, and to reassert his personal authority, by a referendum on Senate and regional reform. The referendum offered nothing to radicals and irritated some conservatives. What sealed his fate was the emergence of Pompidou as a credible successor and the recognition by erstwhile supporters that dropping the captain no longer threatened the survival of the ship. On 27 April 1969, 52.4 per cent of the electorate voted against the referendum proposal. The following day de Gaulle resigned office. He went back to Colombey-les-deux-Églises, where he died on 9 November 1970 and where, having refused a national funeral, he was buried.

A leader dedicated to order and grandeur, de Gaulle was also a rebel and a modernizer who throughout his life asserted the primacy of will over circumstances. His looming presence dominated France from the Second World War onwards and his legacy continues to shape the contours of French constitutional, and international, politics. In his lifetime, he aroused bitter hostility as well as passionate devotion. Today there is near universal acknowledgement of his greatness, and of his central role in the creation of modern France.

De Gaulle, Brig Gen Charles André Joseph Marie (1890-1970). Leader of the Free French during WW II and later president, de Gaulle graduated from the academy at Saint-Cyr to join an infantry regiment under Col Pétain. During WW I, he was thrice wounded, and captured at Verdun in 1916. He made several escape attempts. A staff officer between the world wars, he wrote Discord Among the Enemy (1924), The Edge of the Sword (1932), Towards a Professional Army (1934), and France and her Army (1938), which won him the political patronage of Paul Reynaud. Like Fuller and Guderian, de Gaulle advocated a fully professional army, with an armoured corps capable of swift manoeuvres. The conclusions he drew from Verdun were exactly the opposite to those of his army's high command, which advocated the Maginot Line.

De Gaulle attracted attention during the blitzkrieg of 1940, twice delaying Guderian with flank attacks by his 4th Armoured Division (see France, fall of). Promoted brigadier general (the rank he was to use thereafter), Reynaud invited him to join his government as under-secretary for national defence, an office he held for just ten days. On his way back from discussions in England, he learned of Reynaud's call for an armistice and returned to London where, on 18 June, he began his road to power with a broadcast calling for continued resistance. With no political legitimacy of any sort, he organized what became the Free French forces and set up a Committee of National Liberation, supported by Churchill.

De Gaulle gradually rallied French overseas territories to his cause and in 1942 he linked up, via Jean Moulin, with the scattered Resistance units of what was to become the FFI (Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur). This gave him much-needed political support within France, where the left was suspicious of his Catholicism and military background and the right regarded him as a traitor for defying Pétain, the leader of Vichy France. Both thought him a pawn in Churchill's hand, whereas in fact his relations with the western Allies were remarkably tense. It was a considerable relief for all concerned when he moved his Committee of National Liberation to Algiers in 1943. There he outmanoeuvred his political rival Giraud and assumed command of all Free French military forces.

He showed considerable skill in getting the best out of the small, independently spirited Free French forces and the much larger and more conventionally minded French forces which came under his control after Allied conquest of North Africa. He landed in Normandy on 14 June, and on his return to Britain, announced that his provisional government was an established fact. He demanded that Paris be liberated by the Free French division under Leclerc, and swiftly installed himself there as the head of the provisional government. Lacking the political skills to obtain what he wanted, he resigned in 1946 and withdrew from public life.

Recalled by popular acclaim during the Algerian independence war, he founded the strongly presidential Fifth Republic. His immense personal authority enabled him to cut French losses and end the conflict, facing down mutiny and surviving assassination attempts. He tried to recover lost gloire with a somewhat petulant foreign policy illuminated by distrust of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, while asserting French leadership in the European Union. After a decade of prosperous stability, France exploded in nationwide street riots and strikes in 1968. He resigned in 1969 and died the following year, having pointedly refused burial in the Panthéon. An impossible ally in war and peace, his withdrawal of France from NATO's command structure has only recently begun to be reversed, while his exclusion of Britain from the European Union as an American ‘Trojan Horse’ was particularly short-sighted. But he gave France back her pride, twice, and deserves the place he occupies in the hearts of Frenchmen. It was entirely fitting that, when he died, a French newspaper headline proclaimed: ‘France is a widow.’

— Peter Caddick-Adams/Richard Holmes

de Gaulle, Charles (1890-1970) French general and statesman who organized the Free French movement while exiled in London during the German occupation of France in World War II. He was the head of government from 1944 to 1946 and again rose to power with the civil war in Algeria in 1958 and became first president of the Fifth Republic (1959-69). During his tenure France withdrew from NATO (1966).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The French general and statesman Charles André Joseph Marie De Gaulle (1890-1970) led the Free French forces during World War II. A talented writer and eloquent orator, he served as president of France from 1958 to 1969.

Charles De Gaulle was born on Nov. 23, 1890, in the northern industrial city of Lille. His father, Henri, was a teacher of philosophy and mathematics and a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, in which the Prussians humiliatingly defeated what the French thought was the greatest army in the world. This loss colored the life of the elder De Gaulle, a patriot who vowed he would live to avenge the defeat and win back the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. His attitude deeply influenced the lives of his sons, whom he raised to be the instruments of his revenge and of the restoration of France as the greatest European power.

From his earliest years Charles De Gaulle was immersed in French history by both his father and mother. For many centuries De Gaulle's forebears had played a role in French history, almost always as patriots defending France from invaders. In the 14th century a Chevalier de Gaulle defeated an invading English army in defense of the city of Vire, and Jean de Gaulle is cited in the Battle of Agincourt (1415).

Charles's great-great-grandfather, Jean Baptiste de Gaulle, was a king's counselor. His grandfather, Julien Philippe de Gaulle, wrote a popular history of Paris; Charles received this book on his tenth birthday and, as a young boy, read and reread it. He was also devoted to the literary works of his gifted grandmother, Julien Philippe's wife, Josephine Marie, whose name gave him two of his baptismal names. One of her greatest influences upon him was her impassioned, romantic history, The Liberator of Ireland, or the Life of Daniel O'Connell. It always remained for him an illustration of man's resistance to persecution, religious or political, and an inspiring example he emulated in his own life.

Perhaps the major influence on De Gaulle's formation came from his uncle, also named Charles de Gaulle, who wrote a book about the Celts which called for union of the Breton, Scots, Irish, and Welsh peoples. The young De Gaulle wrote in his copybook a sentence from his uncle's book, which proved to be a prophecy of his own life: "In a camp, surprised by enemy attack under cover of night, where each man is fighting alone, in dark confusion, no one asks for the grade or rank of the man who lifts up the standard and makes the first call to rally for resistance."

Military Career

De Gaulle's career as defender of France began in the summer of 1909, when he was admitted to the elite military academy of Saint-Cyr. Among his classmates was the future marshal of France Alphonse Juin, who later recalled De Gaulle's nicknames in school - "The Grand Constable," "The Fighting Cock," and "The Big Asparagus."

After graduation Second Lieutenant De Gaulle reported in October 1912 to Henri Philippe Pétain, who first became his idol and then his most hated enemy. (In World War I Pétain was the hero of Verdun, but during World War II he capitulated to Hitler and collaborated with the Germans while De Gaulle was leading the French forces of liberation.) De Gaulle led a frontline company as captain in World War I and was cited three times for valor. Severely wounded, he was left for dead on the battlefield of Verdun and then imprisoned by the Germans when he revived in a graveyard cart. After he had escaped and been recaptured several times, the Germans put him in a maximum security prison-fortress.

After the war De Gaulle went to general-staff school, where he hurt his career by constant criticism of his superiors. He denounced the static concept of trench warfare and wrote a series of essays calling for a strategy of movement with armored tanks and planes. The French hierarchy ignored his works, but the Germans read him and adapted his theories to develop their triumphant strategy of blitzkrieg, or lightning war, with which they defeated the French in 1940.

When France fell, De Gaulle, then an obscure brigadier general, refused to capitulate. He fled to London, convinced that the British would never surrender and that American power, once committed, would win the war. On June 18, 1940, on BBC radio, he insisted that France had only lost a battle, not the war, and called upon patriotic Frenchmen to resist the Germans. This inspiring broadcast won him worldwide acclaim.

Early Political Activity

When the Germans were driven back, De Gaulle had no rivals for leadership in France. Therefore in the fall of 1944 the French Parliament unanimously elected him premier. De Gaulle had fiercely opposed the German enemy, and now he vigorously defended France against the influence of his powerful allies Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. De Gaulle once stated that he never feared Adolf Hitler, who, he knew, was doomed to defeat, but did fear that his allies would dominate France and Europe in the postwar period.

By the fall of 1945, only a year after assuming power, De Gaulle was quarreling with all the political leaders of France. He saw himself as the unique savior of France, the only disinterested champion of French honor, grandeur, and independence. He despised all politicians as petty, corrupt, and self-interested muddlers, and, chafing under his autocratic rule, they banded against him. In January 1946, disgusted by politics, he resigned and retreated into a sulking silence to brood upon the future of France.

In 1947 De Gaulle reemerged as leader of the opposition. He headed what he termed "The Rally of the French People," which he insisted was not a political party but a national movement. The Rally became the largest single political force in France but never achieved majority status. Although De Gaulle continued to despise the political system, he refused to lead a coup d'etat, as some of his followers urged, and again retired in 1955.

Years as President

In May 1958 a combination of French colonials and militarists seized power in Algeria and threatened to invade France. The weakened Fourth Republic collapsed, and the victorious rebels called De Gaulle back to power as president of the Fifth Republic of France. From June 1958 to April 1969 he reigned as the dominant force in France. But he was not a dictator, as many have charged; he was elected first by Parliament and then in a direct election by the people.

As president, De Gaulle fought every plan to involve France deeply in alliances. He opposed the formation of a United States of Europe and British entry into the Common Market. He stopped paying part of France's dues to the United Nations, forced the NATO headquarters to leave France, and pulled French forces out of the Atlantic Alliance integrated armies. Denouncing Soviet oppression of Eastern Europe, he also warned of the Chinese threat to the world. He liberated France's colonies, supported the Vietnamese "liberation movement" against the United States, and called for a "free Quebec" in Canada.

De Gaulle had an early success in stimulating pride in Frenchmen and in increasing French gold reserves and strengthening the economy. By the end of his reign, however, France was almost friendless, and his economic gains had been all but wiped out by the student and workers protest movement in spring 1968.

De Gaulle ruled supreme for 11 years, but his firm hand began to choke and then to infuriate many citizens. In April 1969 the French voted against his program for reorganizing the Senate and the regions of France. He had threatened to resign if his plan was rejected and, true to his word, he promptly renounced all power. Thereafter De Gaulle remained silent on political issues. Georges Pompidou, one of his favorite lieutenants, was elected to succeed him as president. Charles De Gaulle died at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises on Nov. 9, 1970.

Further Reading

De Gaulle's War Memoirs (3 vols., 1954-1959; trans. 1955-1960) is available in a single volume as The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle (1964). The first volume of his postwar memoirs is Memoirs of Hope (trans. 1971). His The Edge of the Sword (1959; trans. 1960) is a personal credo on the qualities of leadership. Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle (1964; trans. 1966), is one of the best biographies, written by an astute French observer. Jean R. Tournoux, Pétain and De Gaulle (1964; trans. 1966), is a study of the relationship of the two men from World War I. A biography in three parts, examining De Gaulle's roles as soldier, savior of his nation, and statesman, is David Schoenbrun, The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle (1966). Other more specialized studies include Jacques de Launay, De Gaulle and His France: A Psychopolitical and Historical Portrait (trans. 1968); Anton W. DePorte, De Gaulle's Foreign Policy, 1944-46 (1968); and Raymond Aron, De Gaulle, Israel, and the Jews (1968; trans. 1969).

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Charles de Gaulle, 1967. (credit: Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos)

(born Nov. 22, 1890, Lille, France — died Nov. 9, 1970, Colombey-les-Deux-Églises) French soldier, statesman, and architect of France's Fifth Republic. He joined the army in 1913 and fought with distinction in World War I. He was promoted to the staff of the supreme war council in 1925. In 1940 he was promoted to brigadier general and served briefly as undersecretary of state for defense under Paul Reynaud. After the fall of France to the Germans, he left for England and started the Free French movement. Devoted to France and dedicated to its liberation, he moved to Algiers in 1943 and became president of the French Committee of National Liberation, at first jointly with Henri-Honoré Giraud. After the liberation of Paris, he returned and headed two provisional governments, then resigned in 1946. He opposed the Fourth Republic, and in 1947 he formed the Rally of the French People (RPF), but severed his connections with it in 1953. He retired from public life and wrote his memoirs. When an insurrection in Algeria threatened to bring civil war to France, he returned to power in 1958, as prime minister with powers to reform the constitution. That same year he was elected president of the new Fifth Republic, which ensured a strong presidency. He ended the Algerian War and transformed France's African territories into 12 independent states. He withdrew France from NATO, and his policy of neutrality during the Vietnam War was seen by many as anti-Americanism. He began a policy of détente with Iron Curtain countries and traveled widely to form a bond with French-speaking countries. After the civil unrest of May 1968 by students and workers, he was defeated in a referendum on constitutional amendments and resigned in 1969.

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Gaulle, Charles de (1890-1970). Soldier and statesman. He was born in Lille; his family was of the lesser nobility, Catholic, and intensely patriotic. Educated at Catholic establishments, he began his military career when he entered Saint-Cyr in 1909. Serving as a junior officer in World War I, he used his time as a prisoner-of-war to study military and German history. His analysis of German military leadership, La Discorde chez l'ennemi (1924), stressed the importance of maintaining harmony between civilian and military leadership.

Throughout the inter-war period de Gaulle distinguished himself by his writing and lectures. Le Fil de l'épée (1931) examined the qualities needed for leadership. Vers l'armée de métier (1934) put forward the need for a small, highly trained professional army. La France et son armée (1938) begins with the words: ‘La France fut faite à coups d'épée’, and fits in well with his 1924 remark: ‘l'histoire est ma passion.’ But these books did not endear him to his colleagues, especially when he challenged the prevailing military orthodoxy. His career languished, and it was with difficulty that he was promoted to the rank of colonel.

However, when on 10 May 1940 the Germans launched their offensive, de Gaulle found himself at the centre of battles around Laon and Abbeville. On 6 June he was made under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence. In the turmoil of defeat, when Pétain came to power, de Gaulle left for London and on 18 June, supported by Churchill, he made his famous broadcast proclaiming the existence of La France Libre. Although a little-known general without an army, he established himself as the leader of the French Resistance, both inside and outside France [see Occupation and Resistance]. He entered Paris in triumph in August 1944 and directed the provisional government.

In January 1946 he resigned in protest against the way the new constitution was evolving. There began a long period of unsuccessful political activity and isolation, from which he only emerged when the Algerian War created a crisis in 1958. Acting with superb tactical skill, he imposed himself on a country fearful of civil war and created the Fifth Republic, with its strong presidential powers. From 1958 to 1969 the history of de Gaulle is the history of that Republic. He assumed a prestigious place in world affairs, but his position in France was severely shaken by the events of May 1968. The following year he promoted a complicated referendum on constitutional reform which was defeated. He resigned and withdrew from public life, dying the following year.

During his first retirement he wrote his Mémoires de guerre (3 vols., 1954-9), and after 1969 he worked on his unfinished Mémoires d'espoir (2 vols., 1970-1). Since 1946 many volumes have been published of his Discours et messages and since 1970 Lettres, notes et carnets. His writings and speeches have been much praised for their style. He was influenced by such classical authors as Montesquieu, by Romantic writers including Michelet and Chateaubriand, and by more recent figures: Barrès, Péguy, Bergson. Some of his words are frequently quoted, above all the opening of the Mémoires: ‘Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.’ His friend and colleague André Malraux claimed that he was ‘le dernier grand homme qu'ait hanté la France’.

[Douglas Johnson]

Bibliography

• B. Ledwidge, De Gaulle (1982)
• J. Lacouture, De Gaulle, 3 vols. (1984-6)

The World Wars

During World War I de Gaulle served with distinction until his capture in 1916. In The Army of the Future (1934, tr. 1941) he foresaw and futilely advocated for France the mechanized warfare by which Germany was to conquer France in 1940. In World War II he was promoted to brigadier general (1940) and became undersecretary of war in the cabinet of Premier Paul Reynaud.

De Gaulle opposed the Franco-German armistice and fled (June, 1940) to London, where he organized the Free French forces and rallied several French colonies to his movement. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a French military court. The Free French forces were successful in Syria, Madagascar, and N Africa. In June, 1943, de Gaulle became copresident, with Gen. Henri Honoré Giraud, of the newly formed French Committee of National Liberation at Algiers. He succeeded in forcing Giraud out of the committee, and in June, 1944, it was proclaimed the provisional government of France.

The Postwar Period

De Gaulle's government returned to Paris on Aug. 26 and was recognized by the principal Allies. He was unanimously elected provisional president of France in Nov., 1945, but he resigned in Jan., 1946, when it became obvious that his views favoring a strong executive would not be incorporated into the new constitution. Many of the rightist elements had gathered under the Gaullist banner, and he became (1947) head of a new party—Rassemblement du Peuple Français [Rally of the French People]—which claimed to speak for all Frenchmen and to be above factional strife but which, nevertheless, took part in subsequent elections. The party had some temporary electoral success, but in 1953 de Gaulle dissolved it and went into retirement.

Algeria and Internal Affairs

In 1958, after the military and civilian revolt in Algeria had created a political crisis in France, he was considered the only leader of sufficient strength and stature to deal with the situation. He became premier with power to rule by decree for six months. During this time a new constitution, which strengthened the presidency, was drawn up (1958). The constitution also provided for the French Community, the first step toward resolving imperial problems. De Gaulle was inaugurated as president of the new Fifth Republic in Jan., 1959. He decided to allow Algeria self-determination. This decision led to several revolts in Algeria by French colonists who opposed independence. Finally in 1962 an agreement was reached that provided for Algerian independence.

In domestic affairs de Gaulle attempted to restore French national finances by devaluing the franc and creating a new franc worth 100 old francs. Much of de Gaulle's program consisted of an attempt to raise France to its former world stature. He argued for French parity with the United States in NATO decisions and promoted French development of atomic weapons. In 1966, he withdrew French troops from NATO and ordered the withdrawal of NATO military installations from France by Apr., 1967.

The Final Presidency

De Gaulle was reelected to a second seven-year term in 1965. Although he rejected limitations on French sovereignty, he supported participation in the Common Market but strongly opposed British membership in it. He fostered ties with West Germany and established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. In May, 1968, student demonstrations protesting French political and educational systems were followed by huge workers' strikes that nearly toppled the Gaullist government. Nevertheless, in elections held in June, the Gaullists were returned to power. In 1969, after being defeated in a referendum on constitutional reform, de Gaulle resigned as president.

Bibliography

See De Gaulle's War Memoirs (tr., 3 vol., 1955–60; repr. 1984) and Memoirs of Hope (tr. 1972); biographies by P. Masson (1971), B. Crozier (1973), D. Cook (1984), and C. Williams (1995); A. Werth, The De Gaulle Revolution (1960), P. M. Williams and M. Harrison, De Gaulle's Republic (1960), R. Aron, An Explanation of De Gaulle (1965), J. Hess, The Case for De Gaulle (1968), A. Hartley, Gaullism (1971), P. Alexandre, The Duel: De Gaulle and Pompidou (1972), J. Lacouture, De Gaulle (2 vol., 1990–92).

1890 - 1970

President of France, 1958 to 1969; instrumental in ending French colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa.

Charles de Gaulle, one of republican France's great statesmen, earned his place in French history by the spirited exercise of leadership in the face of national adversity - first when he placed himself at the head of the Free French movement in 1940 to meet the challenges of the German occupation in World War II, and again when he took the lead in reshaping French political institutions in 1958 to meet the challenges of the Algerian war of independence, European integration, and the cold war. Faced, in both periods, with the contradiction of ensuring France's well-being in Europe and sustaining a precarious hold on remnants of the French Empire, de Gaulle did not deviate from his primary objective for long. The relative ease, therefore, with which he could divest France of claims to empire helped pave the way for full independence in the Middle Eastern mandates of Lebanon and Syria by 1945 and for the decolonization of Algeria by 1962.

De Gaulle established this priority early in his military career when he reluctantly deferred his passionate interest in French defense strategies to complete a tour of duty in the Middle East from 1929 to 1931. While there, he hinted at the charismatic didacticism that was to become the hallmark of his speeches. This was when, overriding the contradictions that separated colonial administrators from the political aspirations of their subjects, he urged Lebanon's youth to build a progressive state with the help of France. Returning to the Middle East during World War II, after its liberation in 1941 by British and Free French forces, General de Gaulle was incensed when he saw how Britain, with tacit American backing, was exploiting French weaknesses to support the Lebanese and Syrian nationalist movements. Ultimately, however, he refrained from exerting what would have been a corrosive resistance to Allied demands for France's retreat from empire in the area.

When de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, he had to deal with the French army's repression of Algeria's nationalist struggle against a colonial social order. This morally and materially debilitating war also affected France's relations with neighboring Arab states as well as with the United States, Britain, and the international community. De Gaulle initially mapped out a progressive future for what was to be a felicitously integrated Franco - Algerian society. He concentrated, however, on turning the sometimes dangerously rebellious military around to building France up as a nuclear power independent of its erstwhile allies and able to lead with Germany in the development of the European community. With these priorities uppermost in his mind, de Gaulle agreed in 1962 to the nationalist demand for a fully independent Algeria, and France subsequently closed this chapter in the history of empire with the absorption of a massive flight of colonists from across the Mediterranean.

In the aftermath of the Algerian peace, de Gaulle favored a resolution with the Arab world to complement French links with Israel. In the last years before he resigned his presidency in 1969, he assumed France's heightened stature would justify the role of arbiter in the Arab - Israel conflict, but he failed to make allowances for the complexity of the problem and the greater involvement of the super-powers.

Bibliography

De Gaulle, Charles. Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor, translated by Terence Kilmartin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971.

Lacouture, Jean. Charles De Gaulle. Vol. 1: The Rebel,1890 - 1944, translated by Patrick O'Brian. Vol. 2: The Ruler, 1945 - 1970, translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1990 - 1992.

— JOHN P. SPAGNOLO

A French political leader and general of the twentieth century. De Gaulle headed the Free French Resistance to the Nazis in World War II and served briefly as president of France after the Nazis were driven out. He was called back as president in the 1950s under a new constitution that he himself specified. In office, he solved the crisis over Algeria that was dividing the country. He also made aggressive moves to strengthen France's international position, such as acquiring nuclear weapons. De Gaulle was known for his grand and imperious manner.

Quotes:

"Old age is a shipwreck."

"Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains, they drown in every drop."

"Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so."

"For glory gives herself only to those who have always dreamed of her."

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."

"When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. So we were often angry at each other."

See more famous quotes by Charles De Gaulle