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![[Free France flag]](../images/f/fr_freef.gif)
by Ivan Sache
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Charles André Marie Joseph de Gaulle (1890-1970), born in Lille, was
the third of the five children of Henri and Jeanne de Gaulle. Henri de
Gaulle was a highly educated, Catholic and patriot teacher. He was very
distinguished and refused to join the anti-Dreyfusard party when the
Dreyfus affair divided France into two opposed camps.
Probably advised by his father, Charles de Gaulle decided to join the
army and was graduated from the Military College of Saint-Cyr in 1908.
He was posted to the 33rd Infantry Regiment in Arras, commanded by
Colonel Philippe Pétain. De Gaulle was injured three times during the
First World War: firstly on 15 August 1914 in Dinant (Belgium),
secondly in June 1915 in Champagne, and thirdly near the fort of
Douaumont in Verdun in March 1916. He was then jailed in four different
fortresses in Germany, from which he attempted five times to escape, to
no avail.
After the War, de Gaulle was hired by the Polish government as an
instructor and teacher in the Military College of Rambertow and the
Army Staff in Warsaw. Back to France, he married Yvonne Vendroux in
April 1921 and brilliantly tought history at the Military College of
Saint-Cyr.
De Gaulle studied at the War College (Ecole de Guerre), where his
original views did not please the old-fashioned and conservative
professors. Accordingly, he was given a low rank position in the
French Army Staff in Mainz (Germany). Fortunately, Marshal Pétain had
not forgotten him and appointed him in his staff as Officer Writer in
1925. De Gaulle had to write the history of the French soldiers. In
1927, Pétain ordered the Commander of the War College to invite de
Gaulle for three lectures on war philosophy. The partnership between
Pétain and de Gaulle ended because of a dispute on the authorship of
the history de Gaulle was supposed to write. Pétain offered de Gaulle
the command of the XIXth Battalion of Chasseurs in Trier (Germany), but
de Gaulle could not obtain the chair he had expected at the War
College. He left for Lebanon, where he was from 1929 to 1931 head of
the IInd and IIIrd Departments of the Staff.
Back to France, de Gaulle was posted to the General Secretariat of the
National Defense, where he was involved for the next six years in the
debates on the modernization of the French armed forces. He published
his two most famous books, Le fil de l'épée, after his lectures at
the War College, giving a self-portrait of a commander, and Vers une
armée de métier, a plea for the complete revamping of the armed forces
and the creation of units of moteurs cuirassés (the armour) made
of 100,000 professional soldiers trained to surprise and breakout war.
De Gaulle was supported by the media and some leaders of the
Parliament, for instance Paul Reynaud and Philippe Serre, and was able
to trigger a limited modernization of the armour. However, he was
violently attacked by members of the staff of the three main
Commanders of the armed forces, Weygand, Pétain and Gamelin. He was
nicknamed Colonel Motor and commanded in 1937 the unit of chars
acier (steel tank) of the 507th Regiment based in Metz, upsetting
General Giraud, the Military Governor of Metz, who was absolutely
opposed to the autonomous use of the armour. De Gaulle published his
book La France et son armée, which included several chapters from the
history he should have written for Pétain, thus increasing the dispute
with the Marshal.
Source: Jean Lacouture. Gaulle (Charles de). Encyclopaedia Universalis
Ivan Sache, 9 November 2004
On 3 September 1939, de Gaulle was appointed Commander of the armour
units of the Vth Army in Alsace. In January 1940, he sent to 80 civil
and military leaders a memorandum entitled L'Avènement de la force
mécanique. This was a violent indictment of the clueless strategy
decided by the General Staff and a kind of prefiguration of the 18 June
1940 Appeal. On 10 May 1940, the German breakout to Sedan forced the
Staff to appoint Colonel de Gaulle Commander of the (still not
completely equipped) IVth Armoured Division. From 17 June onwards,
his Division was able to stop for a while Guderian's XIXth Armoured
Corps. On the bridge of Saar and later in Abbeville, de Gaulle proved
that he was not only a war theoretician but also a brilliant field
commander.
On 5 June 1940, de Gaulle, temporary appointed General four days
before, was appointed Vice-Secretary of Defense by President of Council
(Prime Minister) Paul Reynaud. With the Prime Minister and Georges
Mandel, de Gaulle was the only active member of the government and
attempted to save what could still be saved after the debacle of early
June. He traveled twice to London to ask for more British support and
propose the merging of the two colonial British and French Empires.
However, Pierre Laval succeded to Paul Reynaud on 16 June and falsely
claimed that the British government had allowed his allies to ask an
armistice to Germany.
On 17 June 1940, encouraged by Mandel and Reynaud, de Gaulle took Sir
Edward Spears' plane and landed in London. On 18 June around 20:00, he
gave to the BBC his famous Appel du 18 juin, calling for resistance
to the German occupier. For months, de Gaulle remained
Charles-le-Seul (Charles the Lonesome), and more and more officials
rallied Pétain's Etat Français. De Gaulle started the building of France Libre with a bunch of obscure captains and adventurous
journalists. However, Churchill acknowledged him, privately on 28 July
and solemnely on 7 August, as the leader of the free French.
De Gaulle, then also called Charles-sans-Terre (Charles Lackland) needed
some free French territory to back his leadership, and attempted to
land in Dakar (Senegal) with Churchill's help on 23 September. The
Dakar garrison shot on the Franco-British fleet and the landing was
cancelled. However, parts of the French colonial empire (the French
Equatorial Africa, Tahiti, New Caledonia and the French possessions in
India) quickly rallied Free France. De Gaulle set up his
politico-military