Charles de Gaulle (1890 - 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany during World War II and later served as the first president of the Fifth Republic. [1] After the fall of France in 1940 he broadcast an appeal from London urging continued resistance, becoming the symbolic leader of the French wartime opposition. [3] Returning to power during the Algerian crisis of 1958, he oversaw a new constitution and governed France until his resignation in 1969. [1]
Early life and military career
Charles de Gaulle was born on 22 November 1890 in Lille into a devout and patriotic Catholic family. [1] He was educated at the Collège Stanislas in Paris and at the military academy of Saint-Cyr, from which he was commissioned into the infantry. During the First World War he served under Philippe Pétain, was wounded several times, and was taken prisoner at Verdun in 1916, spending the remainder of the conflict in captivity. [1]
Between the wars de Gaulle emerged as an influential military theorist. Drawing on his studies at the École supérieure de guerre, he argued in writings such as Vers l'armée de métier for a professional army built around mechanized and armored forces, a doctrine that ran against the defensive orthodoxy of the French high command. [1]
World War II and Free France
When Germany invaded in 1940, de Gaulle commanded an armored division and was briefly appointed undersecretary of state for national defense. Rejecting the armistice sought by Pétain's government, he flew to London, and on 18 June 1940 broadcast a radio appeal calling on the French to keep fighting. [3] He organized the Free French Forces and was condemned to death in absentia by the Vichy regime. [1] As head of the French Committee of National Liberation he asserted French sovereignty among the Allies, and he entered a liberated Paris in August 1944 at the head of the provisional government. [3]
Return to power and the Fifth Republic
De Gaulle led the provisional government until January 1946, when he resigned over disputes about the weak executive envisaged for the Fourth Republic. [1] After years out of office, the political crisis provoked by the war in Algeria brought him back in 1958. He guided the drafting of a new constitution that created the Fifth Republic, with a powerful presidency, and took office as its first president in January 1959. [4]
Presidency and later years
As president, de Gaulle granted independence to Algeria in 1962 and pursued an assertive, independent foreign policy. He developed France's own nuclear deterrent, withdrew French forces from NATO's integrated command, and twice blocked British entry into the European Economic Community while promoting reconciliation with West Germany. [2] Reelected in 1965, his authority was shaken by the mass protests of May 1968. He resigned in April 1969 after losing a referendum on constitutional reform and retired to his home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, where he died on 9 November 1970. [1]
Legacy
De Gaulle's career gave rise to Gaullism, a durable political tradition emphasizing national independence, a strong state, and a leading role for France in world affairs. [2] The institutions of the Fifth Republic that he established have remained the framework of French government, and he is widely regarded as one of the most consequential figures in modern French history. [1]
