Gaulle, Charles de

Gaulle, Charles de (1890–1970) most important leader of the Free French during the Nazi occupation De Gaulle was the military and political leader of the Free French Forces and the French government in exile during World War II. After the war, he was the moving force behind the creation of France's Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was raised in an intensely nationalistic family and was educated at the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr. He joined an infantry regiment under Colonel Henri-Philippe Pétain in 1913 and quickly made an impression with his intelligence and initiative. With the outbreak of World War I, he also proved himself a courageous officer, participating in the defense of Verdun, in which he was wounded three times. De Gaulle was captured by the Germans and served two years and eight months in a prisoner of war camp, making five valiant, though unsuccessful, attempts to escape. After World War I, De Gaulle served as a member of a military mission to Poland, then became an instructor at Saint-Cyr. He underwent two years of special training in strategy and tactics at the École Supérieure de Guerre, the French war college, and upon his graduation in 1925 was promoted by Pétain to the staff of the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre, the Supreme War Council. It was a most prestigious appointment. Now a major, De Gaulle served during 1927–29 in the army occupying the Rhineland. During this period, he became alarmed by the danger he believed Germany continued to pose. After his Rhineland assignment, he served for two years in the Middle East, then, as a lieutenant colonel, served for four years as a member of the secretariat of the Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale, the National Defense Council. While serving in the field as well as in staff posts, De Gaulle also turned his attention to the formulation of military theory and doctrine. In 1924, he wrote a study of the relation of the civil and military powers in Germany, "Discord Among the Enemy." He also lectured on the subject of leadership, publishing these lectures in 1932 as The Edge of the Sword. Two years later, he published a study of military theory, The Army of the Future, developing in this work the idea of a small professional army based on a high degree of mechanization for maximum flexibility and mobility. This was, in fact, German policy between the wars, but it was directly opposed to the defensive, static strategy favored in France and embodied most dramatically in the Maginot Line. Never content to allow his ideas to be taken as merely academic, de Gaulle appealed directly to political leaders in an attempt to persuade them to his point of view. This provoked great discord with de Gaulle's commanders and senior officers, including Marshal Pétain himself, who protested de Gaulle's right to publish a historical study titled France and Her Army. De Gaulle prevailed, and the work was published in 1938. When World War II began, de Gaulle was put in command of a tank brigade of the Fifth French Army. He was quickly promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general in the 4th Armored Division— it was the highest military rank he was to hold—and proved himself a very able tank commander. He was named undersecretary of state for defense and war on June 6 by French premier Paul Reynaud, who sent him on several missions to England to explore ways in which France might continue to prosecute the war against Germany. De Gaulle remained in England after the Reynaud government fell and was replaced by the collaborationist Vichy Government of Marshal Pétain, de Gaulle's former military mentor. On June 18, 1940, de Gaulle broadcast from London his first appeal to the French people to resist Germany. As a result of this and subsequent broadcasts, a French military court tried de Gaulle in absentia, found him guilty of treason, and sentenced him on August 2, 1940, to death, loss of military rank, and confiscation of property. De Gaulle responded by throwing himself with even greater energy and determination into organizing the Free French Forces as well as a shadow Free French government in exile. It was an extraordinary, audacious undertaking; for de Gaulle was all but unknown outside French military circles. Even the people of France did not recognize him as a political figure. All that sustained him in this enterprise was his self-confidence, his strength of character, his natural ability to lead, and his conviction that the French nation must not be allowed to perish. Throughout the war, until the liberation of France, de Gaulle continued to broadcast. From exile, he directed the action of the Free French Forces and other resistance groups in France. He worked closely, though not always smoothly, with the British secret services in this effort. Indeed, as his relations with the British government and military became increasingly strained, de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers in 1943 and became president of the French Committee of National Liberation. He served at first under General Henri Giraud but skillfully engineered Giraud's ouster and emerged as sole leader of the committee. It was de Gaulle, not Giraud, who headed the government in exile and marched into Paris on September 9, 1944, after its liberation. De Gaulle led two successive provisional governments as the war wound down and in the immediate postwar period. However, on January 20, 1946, he suddenly resigned over a dispute with the political parties forming the coalition government. He opposed the Fourth French Republic as too likely to repeat the errors of the Third Republic and, in 1947, formed the Rally of the French People (Rassemblement du Peuple Français, RPF), which won 120 seats in the national assembly in the 1951 elections. Soon growing dissatisfied with the RPF, de Gaulle severed his connection with it in 1953, and it disbanded in 1955. De Gaulle retired for a time and, during 1955–56, wrote three volumes of memoirs. When insurrection broke out in Algiers in 1958 and threatened to bring civil war to France itself, de Gaulle was brought back to the national limelight as prime minister designate and, on December 21, 1958, was elected president of the republic. He served for the next 10 years amid much turbulence, controversy, and opposition from the nation's leftwing political leaders. After his retirement, he continued writing his memoirs but died of a heart attack the year after he left office.