De Gaulle Born: France's Future Liberator and President

Charles de Gaulle was 49 when he made a BBC radio broadcast that almost nobody heard. France had surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. The French government under Marshal Petain had signed an armistice and established the collaborationist Vichy regime. De Gaulle, an undersecretary of defense who had fled to London, went on the BBC on June 18, 1940, and told the French not to accept defeat. Born in Lille on November 22, 1890, to a Catholic family of teachers and minor aristocrats, de Gaulle attended Saint-Cyr, France's military academy, and served as a junior officer in World War I. He was wounded three times and spent over thirty months as a prisoner of war. Between the wars, he lectured on military strategy and wrote books advocating for armored warfare and professional mobile divisions. The French High Command preferred static defense and the Maginot Line. The Germans, who had read de Gaulle's books, built the Panzer divisions that proved him right in six weeks in 1940. His broadcast from London was an act of extraordinary presumption. He had no army, no government mandate, and no legal authority. The few people who heard the broadcast were confused about who he was. Churchill supported him because he needed a French ally and nobody else had stepped forward. Over the next four years, de Gaulle built the Free French forces from almost nothing, fighting in North Africa, the Middle East, and eventually Europe. He clashed with Churchill and Roosevelt constantly, insisting that France be treated as a great power despite its occupation. His intransigence was maddening and effective. By the time Paris was liberated in August 1944, de Gaulle walked down the Champs-Elysees at the head of the French forces. He led a provisional government after the war, resigned in 1946 over constitutional disputes, spent twelve years out of power, returned in 1958 to found the Fifth Republic, survived multiple assassination attempts, granted Algeria independence, built France's nuclear deterrent, and withdrew from NATO's military command. He died on November 9, 1970, at 79. He had started with a microphone and a refusal to accept facts.