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17384 - GENERAL CHARLES de GAULLE
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| After Charles de Gaulle fled a prostrate
France in June 1940, the Vichy government sentenced him to death for
treason. Yet when this arrogant and defiant man strode through a liberated
Paris four years later, most Frenchmen acclaimed him as the living
embodiment of national pride and courage. Charles de Gaulle was born
in Lille on November 22, 1890. Deciding on a military career, he attended
the French military academy at St. Cyr and became an infantry officer.
He suffered three wounds during World War I - the last one at Verdun,
where the Germans took him prisoner.
The slaughter de Gaulle witnessed on the Western Front compelled him to devote the interwar years to reforming French strategy and tactics. He made himself unpopular by warning that France's future safety lay not in static defenses like the Maginot Line, but in an army based on mobile armored forces and ample air support. While the French high command rejected this vision, the German Army developed a land warfare doctrine that resembled de Gaulle's. The merciless blitzkrieg that Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht unleashed against France on May 10, 1940, brought Colonel de Gaulle bittersweet vindication. He received command of the newly formed 4th Armored Division, followed by promotion to brigadier general. Though short of tanks and other equipment, de Gaulle bloodied the Germans at Laon and Abbeville. On June 5, Premier Paul Reynaud named de Gaulle as under-secretary for national defense, but France was too close to collapse to be saved by a political gesture. De Gaulle escaped to England by plane on June 17. One day later, de Gaulle delivered a radio appeal to his people: "The flame of French resistance must not die." On June 28, the British government recognized de Gaulle as the leader of the Free French movement. As the heel of Nazi tyranny dug deeper and deeper, popular support for de Gaulle grew in France. Following the Allied landings in Normandy, de Gaulle returned to his homeland on June 14, 1944. His finest hour came on August 26, when he made his formal entry into Paris to the cheers of the populace. De Gaulle was president of the French provisional government from
October 1944 to January 1946. He served as president again from
1958 to 1969, and died in 1970. |
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