CHARLES DE GAULLE Born: November 22, 1890 Died: November 9, 1970
French Army general, head of the provisional French government
(1944–1946), and first president of the Fifth French Republic
(1959–1969). Charles André Marie Joseph de Gaulle, arguably the greatest
French statesman of the 20th century, was born on November 22, 1890, in
Lille, France, into a conservative Catholic but socially progressive
family. De Gaulle graduated from the French Military Academy of
Saint-Cyr in 1912 after joining the 33rd Infantry Regiment in 1909. He
fought in World War I and was twice wounded. Wounded a third time in
March 1916 at Verdun, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He passed
the remainder of the conflict as a prisoner of war in Germany.
Following the war, de Gaulle returned to Saint-Cyr to teach history,
and during 1919–1920 he served in the French military mission to Poland
as an infantry instructor. For services rendered to the Poles in their
war with Russia, he was awarded the highest Polish decoration and
received promotion to major. Returning to France, he taught and studied
at the École de Guerre (War College). He then served as aide to the
commander of the French Army, Marshal Henri Phillipe Pétain.
De Gaulle became a proponent of new military tactics centered on the use
of tanks for high-speed warfare. These concepts were based on his
personal experience in Poland. In 1934 he published a book describing
his ideas for a mechanized and highly mobile force of tanks, infantry,
and artillery with its own organic air support. In another book, he
described his concept of leadership. Unfortunately for France, his
reformist ideas had little impact in his own country, although they were
influential in Germany.
De Gaulle served in the occupied
Rhineland, in the Middle East, and on the National Defense Council as
major and then lieutenant colonel. He was promoted to colonel in 1937.
In May 1940 when the Germans invaded France, de Gaulle assumed command
of the 4th Tank Division. Achieving one of the few successes scored by
the French Army in the campaign, he was advanced to brigadier general on
June 1. A week later Premier Paul Reynaud made de Gaulle undersecretary
of state for national defense.
De Gaulle urged the government
to fight on in North Africa. His advice rejected, on June 17 he flew to
London and, a day later, spoke over the BBC to urge his countrymen to
continue the fight. The new Vichy government headed by Pétain declared
de Gaulle a traitor and sentenced him to death in absentia. De Gaulle
headed the Free French during the war, but his relations with Britain
and the United States were often difficult and almost always strained.
De Gaulle acted as if he were a true head of state, while the British
and U.S. governments persisted in treating him as an auxiliary. De
Gaulle was embittered by blatant British efforts to dislodge the French
from prewar positions of influence in Syria and Lebanon and by the
failure of the Anglo-Saxon powers to consult him in matters regarding
French national interests.
From August 1944 de Gaulle served
as the interim president of the French government in Paris until he
resigned in January 1946 after his proposals for a new constitutional
arrangement were rejected. He retired to write his memoirs, but in April
1947 he reentered the political lists with the newly formed
Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (RDF, Rally of the French People).
The RDF had only limited success, and de Gaulle withdrew from politics
again in May 1953. Finishing his wartime memoirs, he remained in contact
with political and military circles. Meanwhile, the Fourth Republic was
stumbling from one crisis to another. No sooner was the Indochina War
ended in 1954 than fighting broke out with nationalists in Algeria. In
May 1958 the Fourth Republic finally collapsed under the weight of the
Algerian War. De Gaulle then returned to power on June 1, 1958,
technically as the last premier of the Fourth Republic.
De
Gaulle received emergency powers for six months. In September the French
electorate approved a new constitution that tilted power toward the
executive as de Gaulle sought, thereby establishing the Fifth Republic.
General elections in November strongly supported de Gaulle coming back,
and in January 1959 he was inaugurated president.
At first de
Gaulle sought to achieve victory in Algeria and announced the
Constantine Plan, a major economic initiative to win the support of
Muslim Algerians. However, the plan came too late to succeed. De Gaulle
ultimately decided that there was no other option than to grant Algeria
its independence. Meanwhile, those who sought to keep Algeria French
mounted several assassination attempts on the president. A military coup
seemed possible. Indeed, de Gaulle had to put down several such
attempts, supported by European settlers in Algeria. He managed to
achieve a cease-fire in Algeria in March 1962. Backed by a referendum,
the country became independent in July 1962. In 1965 de Gaulle won a
second seven-year term as president, this time by popular vote.
Internationally, de Gaulle sought to carve out a role as leader of a
Europe that would serve as a third force between the Soviet Union and
the United States. His anger over what he regarded as U.S.-British
domination of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led him to
remove France from the military structure of the alliance. In a most
controversial decision, France exploded an atomic bomb and developed its
own independent nuclear strike force. De Gaulle also lectured, and
sometimes berated, the United States on a wide variety of issues
including its Vietnam policy, which he opposed.
Regarding the
Middle East, de Gaulle, as with his predecessors, viewed Israel as a
natural ally. France had gone to war with Britain on the side of Israel
against Egypt in 1956, and France under de Gaulle remained Israel's main
arms supplier and also assisted Israel in the field of nuclear
research. Already in 1957 the two countries had signed an agreement for a
research reactor. This reactor was later upgraded with French
assistance, and another was secretly built with French support at
Dimona, near Beersheba, in the Negev Desert. This cooperation, however,
also benefited the French, who sought a nuclear force of their own.
Thus, both parties to the agreement assisted one another. France shipped
plutonium to Israel while getting heavy water from the United States
via Israel. Some experts believe that the cooperation was so close that
France's first successful nuclear test in 1960 made Israel a nuclear
power at the same time.
In return, Israel supplied France with
intelligence data about North Africa and the Near East. De Gaulle saw
Israel as a natural ally in the fight against Algerian rebels, who were
aided by Egypt. However, this did not prevent him from pressuring
Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion to make Israeli nuclear research
public and allow inspections in early 1960. De Gaulle later offered
fighter planes in exchange for halting work at Dimona. Israel refused
and continued work there with French assistance until the reactor came
on line in 1964.
Following Algerian independence and with
Ben-Gurion's departure from power in 1963, de Gaulle adopted a more
pro-Arab stance. France sought better relations with the Arabs, which it
hoped would improve relations with the communist bloc and the
developing world. Although France delivered 72 French Mirage II jets to
Israel in 1961, additional arms were not forthcoming. In 1965, a
high-ranking Egyptian general was welcomed in Paris. An urgent Israeli
appeal to France for help just prior to the 1967 Yom Kippur War went
unanswered. In a meeting on May 24, 1967, de Gaulle warned Israeli
special envoy Abba Eban that Israel must refrain from war. De Gaulle
went on to explain that the situation was much different than it had
been in 1956. He now saw himself as a mediator between East and West and
did not wish to jeopardize improved French relations with Arab states.
He assured Israel that France would stand by its side if Israel were
attacked but not if Israel were to initiate the fight. True to his word,
he was sharply critical of Israel's 1967 preemptive campaign, and
relations between the two states went into a deep freeze thereafter.
Domestically, the de Gaulle government introduced the concept of
dirigisme, a mixture of free market economy and state-directed
interventionist policies. The franc was devalued, and many high-profile
projects were undertaken, some in collaboration with Great Britain such
as the supersonic passenger plane Concord.
In May 1968,
massive demonstrations erupted in Paris and other major cities. They
were sparked by students, but workers and others soon joined.
Demonstrations and strikes were commonplace, and the nation was brought
to a virtual standstill. Although de Gaulle considered using the army to
crush the protests, Premier Georges Pompidou convinced him to dissolve
the National Assembly and hold general elections.
Forced to
decide between de Gaulle and the demands of the street, voters decided
in June to back de Gaulle with 358 of 487 seats in the French National
Assembly. Perhaps because of his success, Pompidou found himself
replaced as premier by Maurice Couve de Murville in July. In 1969 de
Gaulle proposed a constitutional change to convert the upper house
(Senate) into an advisory body. He had made the issue a personal
referendum on his leadership, and when it was defeated in a national
vote in April 1969 he stepped aside on April 28.
De Gaulle
retired to his home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises to write his final set
of memoirs. He died there on November 9, 1970. His concepts, vision, and
charisma endured and still influence French politics to his day.
Perhaps his greatest legacy to France was the constitutional structure
of the Fifth Republic.
Thomas J. Weiler
French Army general, head of the provisional French government (1944–1946), and first president of the Fifth French Republic (1959–1969). Charles André Marie Joseph de Gaulle, arguably the greatest French statesman of the 20th century, was born on November 22, 1890, in Lille, France, into a conservative Catholic but socially progressive family. De Gaulle graduated from the French Military Academy of Saint-Cyr in 1912 after joining the 33rd Infantry Regiment in 1909. He fought in World War I and was twice wounded. Wounded a third time in March 1916 at Verdun, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He passed the remainder of the conflict as a prisoner of war in Germany.
Following the war, de Gaulle returned to Saint-Cyr to teach history, and during 1919–1920 he served in the French military mission to Poland as an infantry instructor. For services rendered to the Poles in their war with Russia, he was awarded the highest Polish decoration and received promotion to major. Returning to France, he taught and studied at the École de Guerre (War College). He then served as aide to the commander of the French Army, Marshal Henri Phillipe Pétain.
De Gaulle became a proponent of new military tactics centered on the use of tanks for high-speed warfare. These concepts were based on his personal experience in Poland. In 1934 he published a book describing his ideas for a mechanized and highly mobile force of tanks, infantry, and artillery with its own organic air support. In another book, he described his concept of leadership. Unfortunately for France, his reformist ideas had little impact in his own country, although they were influential in Germany.
De Gaulle served in the occupied Rhineland, in the Middle East, and on the National Defense Council as major and then lieutenant colonel. He was promoted to colonel in 1937. In May 1940 when the Germans invaded France, de Gaulle assumed command of the 4th Tank Division. Achieving one of the few successes scored by the French Army in the campaign, he was advanced to brigadier general on June 1. A week later Premier Paul Reynaud made de Gaulle undersecretary of state for national defense.
De Gaulle urged the government to fight on in North Africa. His advice rejected, on June 17 he flew to London and, a day later, spoke over the BBC to urge his countrymen to continue the fight. The new Vichy government headed by Pétain declared de Gaulle a traitor and sentenced him to death in absentia. De Gaulle headed the Free French during the war, but his relations with Britain and the United States were often difficult and almost always strained. De Gaulle acted as if he were a true head of state, while the British and U.S. governments persisted in treating him as an auxiliary. De Gaulle was embittered by blatant British efforts to dislodge the French from prewar positions of influence in Syria and Lebanon and by the failure of the Anglo-Saxon powers to consult him in matters regarding French national interests.
From August 1944 de Gaulle served as the interim president of the French government in Paris until he resigned in January 1946 after his proposals for a new constitutional arrangement were rejected. He retired to write his memoirs, but in April 1947 he reentered the political lists with the newly formed Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (RDF, Rally of the French People).
The RDF had only limited success, and de Gaulle withdrew from politics again in May 1953. Finishing his wartime memoirs, he remained in contact with political and military circles. Meanwhile, the Fourth Republic was stumbling from one crisis to another. No sooner was the Indochina War ended in 1954 than fighting broke out with nationalists in Algeria. In May 1958 the Fourth Republic finally collapsed under the weight of the Algerian War. De Gaulle then returned to power on June 1, 1958, technically as the last premier of the Fourth Republic.
De Gaulle received emergency powers for six months. In September the French electorate approved a new constitution that tilted power toward the executive as de Gaulle sought, thereby establishing the Fifth Republic. General elections in November strongly supported de Gaulle coming back, and in January 1959 he was inaugurated president.
At first de Gaulle sought to achieve victory in Algeria and announced the Constantine Plan, a major economic initiative to win the support of Muslim Algerians. However, the plan came too late to succeed. De Gaulle ultimately decided that there was no other option than to grant Algeria its independence. Meanwhile, those who sought to keep Algeria French mounted several assassination attempts on the president. A military coup seemed possible. Indeed, de Gaulle had to put down several such attempts, supported by European settlers in Algeria. He managed to achieve a cease-fire in Algeria in March 1962. Backed by a referendum, the country became independent in July 1962. In 1965 de Gaulle won a second seven-year term as president, this time by popular vote.
Internationally, de Gaulle sought to carve out a role as leader of a Europe that would serve as a third force between the Soviet Union and the United States. His anger over what he regarded as U.S.-British domination of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led him to remove France from the military structure of the alliance. In a most controversial decision, France exploded an atomic bomb and developed its own independent nuclear strike force. De Gaulle also lectured, and sometimes berated, the United States on a wide variety of issues including its Vietnam policy, which he opposed.
Regarding the Middle East, de Gaulle, as with his predecessors, viewed Israel as a natural ally. France had gone to war with Britain on the side of Israel against Egypt in 1956, and France under de Gaulle remained Israel's main arms supplier and also assisted Israel in the field of nuclear research. Already in 1957 the two countries had signed an agreement for a research reactor. This reactor was later upgraded with French assistance, and another was secretly built with French support at Dimona, near Beersheba, in the Negev Desert. This cooperation, however, also benefited the French, who sought a nuclear force of their own. Thus, both parties to the agreement assisted one another. France shipped plutonium to Israel while getting heavy water from the United States via Israel. Some experts believe that the cooperation was so close that France's first successful nuclear test in 1960 made Israel a nuclear power at the same time.
In return, Israel supplied France with intelligence data about North Africa and the Near East. De Gaulle saw Israel as a natural ally in the fight against Algerian rebels, who were aided by Egypt. However, this did not prevent him from pressuring Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion to make Israeli nuclear research public and allow inspections in early 1960. De Gaulle later offered fighter planes in exchange for halting work at Dimona. Israel refused and continued work there with French assistance until the reactor came on line in 1964.
Following Algerian independence and with Ben-Gurion's departure from power in 1963, de Gaulle adopted a more pro-Arab stance. France sought better relations with the Arabs, which it hoped would improve relations with the communist bloc and the developing world. Although France delivered 72 French Mirage II jets to Israel in 1961, additional arms were not forthcoming. In 1965, a high-ranking Egyptian general was welcomed in Paris. An urgent Israeli appeal to France for help just prior to the 1967 Yom Kippur War went unanswered. In a meeting on May 24, 1967, de Gaulle warned Israeli special envoy Abba Eban that Israel must refrain from war. De Gaulle went on to explain that the situation was much different than it had been in 1956. He now saw himself as a mediator between East and West and did not wish to jeopardize improved French relations with Arab states. He assured Israel that France would stand by its side if Israel were attacked but not if Israel were to initiate the fight. True to his word, he was sharply critical of Israel's 1967 preemptive campaign, and relations between the two states went into a deep freeze thereafter.
Domestically, the de Gaulle government introduced the concept of dirigisme, a mixture of free market economy and state-directed interventionist policies. The franc was devalued, and many high-profile projects were undertaken, some in collaboration with Great Britain such as the supersonic passenger plane Concord.
In May 1968, massive demonstrations erupted in Paris and other major cities. They were sparked by students, but workers and others soon joined. Demonstrations and strikes were commonplace, and the nation was brought to a virtual standstill. Although de Gaulle considered using the army to crush the protests, Premier Georges Pompidou convinced him to dissolve the National Assembly and hold general elections.
Forced to decide between de Gaulle and the demands of the street, voters decided in June to back de Gaulle with 358 of 487 seats in the French National Assembly. Perhaps because of his success, Pompidou found himself replaced as premier by Maurice Couve de Murville in July. In 1969 de Gaulle proposed a constitutional change to convert the upper house (Senate) into an advisory body. He had made the issue a personal referendum on his leadership, and when it was defeated in a national vote in April 1969 he stepped aside on April 28.
De Gaulle retired to his home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises to write his final set of memoirs. He died there on November 9, 1970. His concepts, vision, and charisma endured and still influence French politics to his day. Perhaps his greatest legacy to France was the constitutional structure of the Fifth Republic.
Thomas J. Weiler
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