De Gaulle, Charles

De Gaulle, Charles 1890-1970

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles de Gaulle was the leading French statesman of the twentieth century. His military career spanned both world wars and his political career, interrupted by a temporary retreat from public affairs in the 1950s, occurred during the hardships of the 1940s and then a number of serious challenges to political stability in the 1960s. As a military commander, he advocated an aggressive, tactical approach to warfare; as a politician, he was often careful in internal matters but more outspoken in international affairs.

De Gaulle was raised in a Roman Catholic family, and at an early age he showed an interest in military affairs. He entered the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr at the age of nineteen and then joined the military in 1913, commissioned as a lieutenant. He fought in World War I (1914-1918), including at the famous 1916 battle at Verdun, and he spent almost three years as a prisoner of war. After the war, he taught at his alma mater and also attended the École Supérieure de Guerre (a war college). In 1925 Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951) promoted him to the staff of the Supreme Defense Council. Two years later de Gaulle began serving as a major in the occupation army for the Rhineland, an experience that illustrated the German potential for military action. Although the French prided themselves on what they saw as the impenetrable Maginot Line, in 1933 de Gaulle wrote an article arguing for a professionalized and armored French army.

When World War II (1939-1945) began, de Gaulle was commander of a tank brigade. In 1940 he was promoted to brigadier general, a position he held until his death. In the same year, he became the French undersecretary of state for defense and war, but he left the government almost immediately when Pétain became head of the government and indicated that he wanted an armistice with the Germans. De Gaulle went to England, where he began to encourage the French to continue fighting the Germans. In August 1940 he was sentenced to death by a French military court for treason. Although de Gaulle had no political base, he was deeply committed to a free France. He formed a shadow government, eventually known as the Free French Forces, although his military background was not attractive to French liberals and his condemnation of the Pétain government meant that French conservatives held little regard for him. He also had problems with the Allies, often because of his strong commitment to a free France. De Gaulle maintained contact with French resistance groups, and he broadcast radio appeals to his fellow citizens, creating increased national recognition of his leadership.

In 1943 he moved to Algiers, Algeria, where he formed the French Committee of National Liberation. He served as co-president of the committee with Henri Giraud (1879-1949), but successfully moved Giraud out of the role, signaling his political abilities. In August 1944 de Gaulle returned to Paris with the victorious Allied armed forces; he refused to meet with the envoy Pétain sent to establish peace, and de Gaulle became head of the new French government.

De Gaulle resigned, however, in 1946 because of his dissatisfaction with the power of the various political parties that formed a new Fourth French Republic. For twelve years de Gaulle argued against the republic because he saw it as too similar to the Third French Republic, which he thought had been unable to govern effectively. He organized a loose party, the Rally of the French People, which became powerful enough to win a sizable number of seats in the French National Assembly, but he left the group in 1953. His political activity ended temporarily in 1955, when he began to work on his memoirs, but in 1958 he returned to public life.

By the end of the 1950s, France was embroiled in a military and political conflict in one of its colonies, Algeria. De Gaulle presented himself as a candidate for prime minister in 1958, and the National Assembly authorized him to change the French constitution; in December 1958 de Gaulle was elected president of France. His changes to the nation’s constitution strengthened the position of the presidency, including giving the president ruling powers during emergencies. Despite that centralization of power, de Gaulle supported the democratic principles of the government; he also made sure he was a highly visible and even personable president, spending a great deal of time giving addresses and speaking with individual citizens. De Gaulle’s ministers were often friends from World War II, and they assisted him in maintaining a strong presidency.

Algeria presented a very difficult set of problems when de Gaulle became president, a situation that deeply split French liberals and conservatives. The former argued for Algerian independence, while the latter advocated that Algeria ought to remain a colony. The Algerian insurrectionists wanted only freedom, and de Gaulle recognized that he had to free the country. French military leaders in Algeria, however, moved against de Gaulle, forming the Secret Army Organization and taking control of Algeria in 1961. This organization indicated that it was ready to actually attack France, but de Gaulle used his presidential powers to thwart them; French citizens and the French military sided with de Gaulle. Although the Secret Army Organization continued to fight de Gaulle, using bombings and assassinations, de Gaulle’s broad support resulted in his ability to establish Algeria’s independence in 1962.

Once the Algerian situation was settled, de Gaulle moved to other national issues, including reinvigorating the economy, developing France’s own atomic bomb, and instituting constitutional changes to establish independence for France’s other colonies. Nevertheless, the position that he held upon his election in 1958 was no longer as secure because he had solved the Algerian problem. He again turned to constitutional changes as a means to strengthen his position. Previously, an electoral college consisting of local politicians elected the president; in 1962 French citizens chose between de Gaulle’s resignation and a constitutional amendment that allowed direct election of the president. The referendum was a decisive victory for de Gaulle, and his party gained control of the National Assembly later that year. As a result, de Gaulle was able to further his plans to develop France into an international power, focusing on independent actions. For example, the year after his reelection as president in 1965, he withdrew France from the military branch of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), although France remained part of the Atlantic Alliance, a political association.

In international affairs, de Gaulle sought to convince nations that neutrality was preferable to aggression, but that approach meant he was seen as opposing the United States because he wanted the United States to withdraw from Vietnam. He also encouraged stronger relations with the Soviet Union, Eastern European countries under Soviet rule, and the People’s Republic of China. De Gaulle argued that Europe had the potential to disengage from the influence of the United States. Internal strife, however, resulted in a serious weakening of de Gaulle’s position; in May 1968 university students and left-wing unionists in France nearly toppled the government, and de Gaulle had to return from an international trip to initiate a state of emergency. Although the coalition of leftist resistance quickly fragmented because the French Communist Party did not view the students as genuine radicals, de Gaulle did not emerge as a victor. French citizens opposed the rebellion and supported de Gaulle, but when in 1969 he again proposed a constitutional change, this time to reorganize the Senate, the voters rejected the proposal. De Gaulle resigned from the presidency, and Georges Pompidou (1911-1974), who had served as France’s prime minister from 1962 to 1968, became president. De Gaulle retired, planning to finish his memoirs; he died of a heart attack in 1970.

Charles de Gaulle’s stature, in France and internationally, seems to be readily apparent and yet resists interpretation. He was able to form a liberation army and government during World War II, and he brought France through the bloody war for independence in Algeria. Although he was at the center of so much military and political activity, he resisted personification of his work, asking his supporters not to use his name as a party identification; nevertheless, they were indeed known as Gaullists. His attempts to create an internationally independent France attracted a great deal of attention, but did not necessarily result in political influence.

SEE ALSO Battle of Algiers, The; Decolonization; Liberation; Nazism; Neutral States; Vietnam War; Weaponry, Nuclear; World War I; World War II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cogan, Charles. 1996. Charles de Gaulle: A Brief Biography with Documents. Boston: Bedford.

De Gaulle, Charles. 1971. Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor. Trans. Terence Kilmartin. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Lacouture, Jean. 1990-1992. De Gaulle. 2 vols. Trans. Patrick O’Brian and Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton.

Peyrefitte, Alain. 1994-2000. Cétait de Gaulle. 3 vols. Paris: Editions de Fallois, Fayard.

Williams, Charles. 1993. The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General de Gaulle. London: Little, Brown.

Philo A. Hutcheson