FAMOUS STORIES

Charles de Gaulle and the French Resistance

The French Resistance movement (Maquis) fought to free France from German occupation. It started as isolated and disorganised groups of passionate renegades who were against both Nazi occupiers as well as French collaborators. Spearheading this movement and, ultimately, uniting them into an armed, well-trained military outfit that posed a real threat to the Germans and their sympathisers was Charles de Gaulle.

When World War II broke out, Charles de Gaulle already had a long and prestigious military career behind him. He’d fought in the First World War, survived German prisoner of war camps, received military awards and accolades and published books on military strategies.

In 1940, the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, knowing and agreeing with Charles de Gaulle’s opposition to the German occupation, appointed de Gaulle as France’s Minister of War. Only eleven days later, however, de Gaulle returned from a short visit to London to discover that Henri-Philippe Pétain had ousted Reynaud and was forming a government that would seek an armistice with Germany. In danger of being arrested by this new French government, de Gaulle escaped to England. The following day, from the studios of the BBC, he made his first and most famous radio broadcast calling for French people to continue fighting against the Germans.

‘France has lost a battle, not the war,’ Charles de Gaulle urged.

De Gaulle recruited Jean Moulin as operational leader within France. Together with him and other Resistance fighters, de Gaulle united eight of the major resistance groups under his leadership.

General de Gaulle then organised military support form the French colonies of Equatorial Africa. In June 1943, based in Algiers, he became the President of the  French Committee of National Liberation and fought Hitler’s forces in Africa.

When Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944, de Gaulle led the march by the liberators through cheering crowds of Free French from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Élysée and on to the Notre Dame. This march rests in the French heart as a symbol of France’s resistance and spirit.