Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle refused to accept France's surrender in 1940, led it from London with almost nothing, and came back in 1958 to write a constitution that is still in force. Born in Lille in 1890 into a Catholic, monarchist and intensely patriotic family, he was wounded three times in the First World War and taken prisoner at Verdun, attempting to escape five times. He spent the interwar years writing about mechanised warfare and arguing for an armoured professional army, against a general staff committed to fortifications; the Germans read him more carefully than the French did. He commanded a tank division in May 1940, counterattacked at Montcornet with some success, and was made a junior minister days before the government sued for peace. He flew to London and broadcast on 18 June that the flame of French resistance must not go out, to an audience of very few. He was sentenced to death in absentia. What he built from that — the Free French, and after 1943 a provisional government — was an assertion that the French state had continued and that Vichy was void, and he made the Allies accept it against considerable resistance from Roosevelt. He resigned in 1946 rather than accept a constitution with a weak executive, and waited twelve years. The Algerian crisis brought him back in 1958 with the power to write his own: a strong presidency, later directly elected. He then gave Algeria independence, which the officers who recalled him regarded as betrayal, survived several assassination attempts, took France out of NATO's command structure and built its own nuclear force, and resigned in 1969 over a lost referendum.
- Lived: 1890 CE – 1970 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: general, head_of_state
