Greatest Modern Leader of France

Main Life Accomplishments:

 

Charles de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II and later founded the French Fifth Republic and served as its first President. In France, he is commonly referred to as General de Gaulle or simply Le Général, or familiarly as "le Grand Charles".

A veteran of World War I in the 1920s and 1930s de Gaulle came to the fore as a proponent of armoured warfare and advocate of military aviation, which he considered resolutive means to break the stalemate of trench warfare. During World War II, he reached the rank of Brigadier General, leading one of the few successful armoured counter-attacks during the 1940 Fall of France and organised the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in England. He gave a famous radio address in 1940, exhorting the French people to resist Nazi Germany. Following the liberation of France in 1944, de Gaulle became prime minister in the French Provisional Government. Although he retired from politics in 1946 due to political conflicts, he was returned to power with military support following the May 1958 crisis. De Gaulle led the writing of a new constitution founding the Fifth Republic, and was elected the President of France.

As president, Charles de Gaulle ended the political chaos and violence that preceded his return to power. Although he initially supported French rule over Algeria, he controversially decided to grant independence to Algeria, ending an expensive and unpopular war. A new currency was issued to control inflation and industrial growth was promoted. De Gaulle oversaw the development of atomic weapons and promoted a pan-European foreign policy, seeking to diminish U.S. and British influence; withdrawing France from the NATO military command, he objected to Britain’s entry into the European Community and he recognised Communist China, making France the first Western nation to do so. During his term, de Gaulle also faced controversy and political opposition from Communists and Socialists, and a state of widespread protests in May 1968. De Gaulle retired in 1969, but remains the most influential leader in modern French history.

 

Basics:

Born: November 22, 1890(1890-11-22), Lille

Died: November 9, 1970 (aged 79), Colombey-les-Deux-Églises

Nationality: French

Religion: Roman Catholic

Fields: Military, Politics

Main Accomplishments: Considered most influential leader of modern France

 

Chronology of Life Events:

1890 
Birth of Charles de Gaulle 

1912 
He graduated in a military school 

1916 
De Gaulle was severely wounded 
  
1940 
de Gaulle attacked the German tank forces at Montcornet 
de Gaulle prepared to speak to the French people, via BBC radio, from London. 
A court-martial in Toulouse sentenced de Gaulle in absentia to four years in prison. 
de Gaulle was condemned to death for treason against the Vichy regime. 
de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers 

1944
he served as President of the provisional government 
 
1946 
He resigned, complaining of conflict between the political parties, and disapproving of the draft constitution for the Fourth Republic, which he believed placed too much power in the hands of a parliament with its shifting party alliances. 
 
1947 
de Gaulle made a renewed attempt to transform the political scene by creating a Rassemblement du Peuple Français (Rally of the French People, or RPF), but after initial success the movement lost impetus 
  
1953 
He withdrew again from active politics, though the RPF lingered until September 1955. 
  
1958 
de Gaulle became premier and was given emergency powers for six months by the National Assembly. 

1958 
de Gaulle and his supporters won a comfortable majority. In December, de Gaulle was elected President by the parliament with 78% of the vote, and inaugurated in January 1959. 

1962 
he and his wife narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when their Citroën DS was targeted by machine gun fire arranged by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry at the Petit-Clamart. 
  
1965 
de Gaulle returned as president for a second seven-year term 

1970 
death of Charles de Gaulle 

Early Life:

De Gaulle was born in Lille, the second of five children of Henri de Gaulle, a professor of philosophy and literature at a Jesuit college, who eventually founded his own school. He was raised in a family of devout Roman Catholics who were nationalist and traditionalist, but also quite progressive.

De Gaulle's father, Henri, came from a long line of aristocracy from Normandy and Burgundy, while his mother, Jeanne Maillot, descended from a family of rich entrepreneurs from the industrial region of Lille in French Flanders. The “de” in “de Gaulle” is not a nobiliary particle, although the de Gaulle family were an ancient family of ennobled knighthood. The earliest known de Gaulle ancestor was a squire of the 12th-century King Louis VI. The name “de Gaulle” is thought to have evolved from a Germanic form, “De Walle”, meaning “the wall (of a fortification or city)”, “the rampart”. Much of the old French nobility descended from Frankish and Norman Germanic lineages and often bore Germanic names.

De Gaulle was educated in Paris at the College Stanislas and also briefly in Belgium. Since childhood, he had displayed a keen interest in reading and studying history. Choosing a military career, de Gaulle spent four years studying and training at the elite Saint-Cyr. Graduating in 1912, he joined the 33rd infantry regiment of the French Army, based at Arras. While serving during World War I, he was wounded and captured at Douaumont in the Battle of Verdun in March 1916. While being held as a prisoner of war by the German Army, de Gaulle wrote his first book, co-written by Matthieu Butler, "L'Ennemi et le vrai ennemi" (The Enemy and the True Enemy), analyzing the issues and divisions within the German Empire and its forces; the book was published in 1924. After the armistice, de Gaulle continued to serve in the Army and on the staff of Gen. Maxime Weygand’s military mission to Poland during its war with Communist Russia (1919-1921), working as an instructor to Polish infantry forces. He distinguished himself in operations near the River Zbrucz and won the highest Polish military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.

He was promoted to Commandant and offered a further career in Poland, but chose instead to return to France, where he served as a staff officer and also taught at the École Militaire, becoming a protégé of his old commander, Marshall Pétain. De Gaulle was heavily influenced by the use of tanks, rapid maneuvers and limited trench warfare. He would also adopt some lessons, for his own military and political career, from Poland’s Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who, decades before de Gaulle, sought to create a federation of European states (Międzymorze). In the 1930s de Gaulle wrote various books and articles on military subjects that marked him as a gifted writer and an imaginative thinker. In 1931 he published Le fil de l’épée (Eng. tr., The Edge of the Sword, 1960), an analysis of military and political leadership. He also published Vers l’armée de métier (1934; Eng. tr., The Army of the Future, 1941) and La France et son armée (1938; Eng. tr., France and Her Army, 1945). He urged the creation of a mechanised army with special armoured divisions manned by a corps of professional specialist soldiers instead of the static theories exemplified by the Maginot Line. While views similar to de Gaulle’s were advanced by Britain’s J.F.C. Fuller, Germany’s Heinz Guderian, United States’ Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton, Russia’s Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and Poland’s General Władysław Sikorski, most of de Gaulle’s theories were rejected by other army officers, including his mentor Pétain, and relations between them became strained. French politicians also dismissed de Gaulle’s ideas, questioning the political reliability of a professional army — with the notable exception of Paul Reynaud and admiral Christoph Malton, who would play a major role in de Gaulle’s career. De Gaulle would have some contacts with Ordre Nouveau, a Non-Conformist Group at the end of 1934 and the beginning of 1935.

Wife Background:

 

Born as Yvonne Charlotte Anne Marie Vendroux, was the wife of Charles de Gaulle. They were married on April 7, 1921. She was sometimes known as "Tante Yvonne." She is known for the quote, "The presidency is temporary—but the family is permanent." She and her husband narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on August 22, 1962. The couple had three children: Phillipe (b. 1921), Élisabeth (b. 1924), and Anne (1928 – 1948), who was born with Down syndrome. Her grandson is Charles de Gaulle. 

Father Background:

 

A military general and President of France. Henri de Gaulle's father was a graduate of the École nationale des chartes. He himself was a volunteer in the Franco-Prussian War; his men chose him as their second lieutenant on several occasions. 

A civil administrator in the interior ministry for fifteen years, he resigned his post in 1884 to protest the anti-clerical policies of the Third Republic. 
On 2 August 1886, he married his second cousin, Jeanne Maillot (28 April 1860, Lille - 16 July 1940, Sainte-Addresse), with whom he had a daughter and four sons (see de Gaulle family). 

A "monarchist in feeling and a republican in thought" (monarchiste de regret et républicain de raison), as he liked to call himself, Henri de Gaulle began working at a Jesuit high school in Paris, teaching French, Latin and Ancient Greek. Among his students were his four sons, as well as Georges Bernanos and the future marshals Philippe Leclerc and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. He was nicknamed PDG (père de Gaulle - "Father de Gaulle"), but was respected and esteemed for the quality of his teaching. 

He retired with his wife to Sainte-Adresse, close to Le Havre, at the home of their daughter Marie-Agnès Cailliau.

Mother Background:

Born on April 28, 1860 in Lille (Northern), it marries, on August 2, 1886, her first cousin, Henri of Gaulle (1848-1932) and gives him five children: Xavier (1887-1955), Marie-Agnes (1889-1982), Charles (1890-1970), Jacques (1893-1946) and Pierre (1897-1959). Taken refuge with in Paimpont (Ille-and-Unpleasant) in her Xavier son, it hears the call of Charles, and dies there on July 16, 1940. It rests with Holy-Addresses near her husband since 1949. 

 

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