Appeal from London De Gaulle landed at
Heston Airport soon after 12:30 on 17 June 1940. He saw Churchill at around 15:00 and Churchill offered him broadcast time on BBC. They both knew about Pétain's broadcast earlier that day that stated that "the fighting must end" and that he had approached the Germans for terms. That evening de Gaulle dined with Jean Monnet and denounced Pétain's "treason". The next day the British Cabinet (Churchill was not present, as it was the day of his
"Finest Hour" speech) were reluctant to agree to de Gaulle giving a radio address, as Britain was still in communication with the Pétain government about the fate of the French fleet.
Duff Cooper (Minister of Information) had an advance copy of the text of the address, to which there were no objections. The cabinet eventually agreed after individual lobbying, as indicated by a handwritten amendment to the cabinet minutes. After the armistice was signed on 21 June 1940, de Gaulle spoke at 20:00 on 22 June to denounce it. The Bordeaux government reacted immediately, annulling his temporary promotion to brigadier-general with effect from the same day, and forcibly retiring him from the French Army (with the rank of colonel) on 23 June "as a disciplinary measure" (
par mesure de discipline). On 23 June the British Government denounced the armistice as a breach of the Anglo-French treaty signed in March, and stated that they no longer regarded the Bordeaux Government as a fully independent state. They also "took note" of the plan to establish a French National Committee
(FNC) in exile, but did not mention de Gaulle by name. Jean Monnet, Chairman of the
Anglo-French Coordinating Committee, believed de Gaulle could not yet claim that he alone represented fighting France, and that French opinion would not rally to a man operating from British soil. He said this in a letter to de Gaulle on 23 June, and noted he had made his concerns known to British Foreign Office officials Cadogan and
Robert Vansittart, as well as Edward Spears. Monnet soon resigned as Chairman of the
Anglo-French Coordinating Committee, and departed for the US to continue his work securing supplies from North America (now with the
British Purchasing Commission.)
Leader of the Free French The armistice took effect from 00:35 on 25 June. Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office sent
Gladwyn Jebb, then a fairly junior official, to ask de Gaulle to tone down his next broadcast on 26 June; de Gaulle backed down under protest when Jebb told him that he would otherwise be banned from broadcasting. He claimed erroneously that the French fleet was to be handed over to the Germans. On 26 June de Gaulle wrote to Churchill demanding recognition of his French Committee. On 28 June, after Churchill's envoys had failed to establish contact with the French leaders in North Africa, the British Government recognised de Gaulle as leader of the Free French, despite the reservations of Halifax and Cadogan at the Foreign Office. Cadogan later wrote that de Gaulle was "that c*** of a fellow", but other Foreign Office figures
Robert Vansittart and
Oliver Harvey were quite sympathetic, as was
The Times which gave de Gaulle plenty of coverage. De Gaulle had little success in attracting the support of major figures. Ambassador
Charles Corbin, who had strongly supported the mooted Anglo-French Union on 16 June, resigned from the French Foreign Office but retired to South America.
Alexis Leger, Secretary-General at the
Quai d'Orsay (who hated Reynaud for sacking him) came to London but went on to the US. Roland de Margerie stayed in France despite his opposition to the armistice. De Gaulle received support from Captain Tissier and
André Dewavrin (both of whom had been fighting in Norway prior to joining the Free French),
Gaston Palewski,
Maurice Schumann, and the jurist
René Cassin. Pétain's government was recognised by the US, the USSR, and the Papacy, and controlled the French fleet and the forces in almost all her colonies. At this time de Gaulle's followers consisted of a secretary of limited competence, three colonels, a dozen captains, a famous law professor (Cassin), and three battalions of
legionnaires who had agreed to stay in Britain and fight for him. For a time the
New Hebrides were the only French colony to back de Gaulle. On 30 June 1940
Admiral Muselier joined the Free French. De Gaulle initially reacted angrily to news of the Royal Navy's
attack on the French fleet (3 July); Pétain and others wrongly blamed him for provoking it by his 26 June speech (in fact it had been planned at least as early as 16 June). He considered withdrawing to Canada to live as a private citizen and waited five days before broadcasting. Spears called on de Gaulle on 5 July and found him "astonishingly objective" and acknowledging that it was the right thing from the British point of view. Spears reported to Churchill that de Gaulle had shown "a splendid dignity". In his broadcast of 8 July he spoke of the "pain and anger" caused by the attack and that it was a "hateful tragedy not a glorious battle", but that one day the enemy would have used the ships against England or the French Empire, and that the defeat of England would mean "bondage forever" for France. "Our two ancient nations...remain bound to one another. They will either go down both together or both together they will win". On
Bastille Day (14 July) 1940 de Gaulle led a group of between 200 and 300 sailors to lay a wreath at the statue of
Ferdinand Foch at Grosvenor Gardens. A mass of anonymous flowers were left on his mother's grave on 16 July 1940, suggesting he was not without admirers in France. From 22 July 1940 de Gaulle used
4 Carlton Gardens in
central London as his London headquarters. His family had left Brittany (the other ship which left at the same time was sunk) and lived for a time at
Petts Wood. As his daughter Anne was terrified by the
Blitz they moved to
Ellesmere in Shropshire, a four-hour journey from London and where de Gaulle was only able to visit them once a month. His wife and daughter also lived for a time in the country at Rodinghead House,
Little Gaddesden, in Hertfordshire, 45 kilometres (28 miles) from central London. De Gaulle lived at the
Connaught Hotel in London, then from 1942 to 1944 he lived in
Hampstead, North London. The small audience of the 18 June appeal grew for later speeches, and the press by early August described Free French military as fighting under de Gaulle's command, although few in France knew anything about him. (When he returned to France after liberation, people sometimes greeted another, more senior officer with him as de Gaulle, believing that he must be a
five-star general.) Many thought that "Degaule", "Dugaul", or "
Gaul" was a
nom de guerre, disbelieving that the mysterious general describing himself as the nation's liberator was called the ancient
name of France.
Agnès Humbert, who had heard the 18 June speech, wrote in her diary of distributing pamphlets supporting de Gaulle's cause, despite his being The Vichy regime had already sentenced de Gaulle to four years' imprisonment; on 2 August 1940 he was condemned to death by court martial
in absentia, although Pétain commented that he would ensure that the sentence was never carried out. De Gaulle said of the sentence, "I consider the act of the Vichy men as void; I shall have an explanation with them after the victory". He and Churchill reached agreement on 7 August 1940, that Britain would fund the Free French, with the bill to be settled after the war (the financial agreement was finalised in March 1941). A separate letter guaranteed the territorial integrity of the French Empire. ,
French Equatorial Africa, 1944 General
Georges Catroux, Governor of
French Indo-China (which was increasingly coming under Japan's thumb), disapproved of the armistice and congratulated de Gaulle, whom he had known for many years. He was sacked by Vichy and arrived in London on 31 August; de Gaulle had gone to Dakar, but they met in
Chad four weeks later. He was the most senior military figure to defect to the Free French. De Gaulle's support grew out of a base in the colonial
French Equatorial Africa. In the fall of 1940, the colonial empire largely supported the Vichy regime.
Félix Éboué, governor of Chad, switched his support to General de Gaulle in September. Encouraged, de Gaulle traveled to
Brazzaville in October, where he announced the formation of an
Empire Defense Council in his "Brazzaville Manifesto", and invited all colonies still supporting Vichy to join him and the Free French forces in the fight against Germany, which most of them did by 1943. In October 1940, after talks between the Foreign Office and
Louis Rougier, de Gaulle was asked to tone down his attacks on Pétain. On average he spoke on BBC radio three times a month. De Gaulle established the
Order of Liberation in Brazzaville in November 1940.
De Gaulle and Pétain: rival visions of France Prime Minister Pétain moved the government to Vichy (2 July) and had the National Assembly (10 July) vote to dissolve itself and give him dictatorial powers, making the beginning of his
Révolution nationale (National Revolution) intended to "reorient" French society. This was the dawn of the
Vichy regime. De Gaulle's subsequent speeches reached many parts of the territories under the Vichy regime, helping to rally the French resistance movement and earning him much popularity amongst the French people and soldiers. The British historian Christopher Flood noted that there were major differences between the speeches of de Gaulle and Pétain, which reflected their views on themselves and of France. Pétain always used the personal pronoun
je, portrayed himself as both a Christ-like figure sacrificing himself for France while also assuming a God-like tone of a semi-omniscient narrator who knew truths about the world that the rest of the French did not. De Gaulle began by making frequent use of "I" and "me" in his war-time speeches, but over time, their use declined. Unlike Pétain, de Gaulle never invoked quasi-religious imagery to enhance his prestige. In 1942, de Gaulle created the
Normandie-Niemen squadron, a
Free French Air Force regiment, in order to fight on the
Eastern Front. It is the only Western allied formation to have fought until the end of the war in the East.
De Gaulle's relations with "les Anglo-Saxons" In his dealings with the British and Americans (both referred to as the "Anglo-Saxons", in de Gaulle's parlance), he always insisted on retaining full freedom of action on behalf of France and was constantly on the verge of losing the Allies' support. Some writers have sought to deny that there was deep and mutual antipathy between de Gaulle and British and American political leaders. De Gaulle personally had ambivalent feelings about Britain, possibly in part because of childhood memories of the
Fashoda Incident. As an adult he spoke German much better than he spoke English. He had a multilingual translator and driver,
Olivia Jordan, from 1940 to 1943. He had thought little of the British Army's contribution to the First World War, and even less of that of 1939–40, and in the 1930s he had been a reader of the journal
Action Française which blamed Britain for German foreign policy gains at France's expense. De Gaulle explained his position: In addition, de Gaulle harboured a suspicion of the British in particular, believing that they were seeking to seize France's colonial possessions in the
Levant. Winston Churchill was often frustrated at what he perceived as de Gaulle's patriotic arrogance, but also wrote of his "immense admiration" for him during the early days of his British exile. Although their relationship later became strained, Churchill tried to explain the reasons for de Gaulle's behaviour in the second volume of
his history of World War II: De Gaulle described his adversarial relationship with Churchill in these words: "When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time." On one occasion in 1941 Churchill spoke to him on the telephone. De Gaulle said that the French people thought he was a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, to which Churchill replied that the English had had to burn the last one.
Clementine Churchill, who admired de Gaulle, once cautioned him, "General, you must not hate your friends more than you hate your enemies." De Gaulle himself stated famously, "No Nation has friends, only interests." After his initial support, Churchill, emboldened by American antipathy to the French general, urged his
War Cabinet to remove de Gaulle as leader of the Free France. But the War Cabinet warned Churchill that a precipitate break with de Gaulle would have a disastrous effect on the whole resistance movement. By autumn 1943, Churchill had to acknowledge that de Gaulle had won the struggle for leadership of Free France. , rival French leaders
Henri Giraud (
leftmost) and Charles de Gaulle (
middle right) sit down after shaking hands in the presence of
Franklin D. Roosevelt (
middle left) and
Winston Churchill (
rightmost)a public display of unity, but the handshake was only for show. De Gaulle's relations with Washington were even more strained.
President Roosevelt for a long time refused to recognize de Gaulle as the representative of France, insisting on negotiations with the Vichy government. Roosevelt in particular hoped that it would be possible to wean Pétain away from Germany. Roosevelt maintained recognition of the Vichy regime until late 1942, and saw de Gaulle as an impudent representative of a minority interest. After 1942, Roosevelt championed General
Henri Giraud, more compliant with US interests than de Gaulle, as the leader of the Free France. At the
Casablanca Conference (1943), Roosevelt forced de Gaulle to cooperate with Giraud, but de Gaulle was considered as the undisputed leader of the Resistance by the French people and Giraud was progressively deprived of his political and military roles. The British and Soviet governments urged Roosevelt to recognise
de Gaulle's provisional government, but Roosevelt delayed doing so as long as possible and even recognised the Italian provisional government before the French one. British and Soviet allies were outraged that the US president unilaterally recognised the new government of a former enemy before de Gaulle's one and both recognised the French government in retaliation, forcing Roosevelt to recognise de Gaulle in late 1944, but Roosevelt managed to exclude de Gaulle from the
Yalta Conference. Roosevelt eventually abandoned his plans to
rule France as an occupied territory and to transfer
French Indochina to the United Nations.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon In 1941, de Gaulle sent Admiral
Émile Muselier to investigate the possibility of invading the islands
Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Despite continued objections from the United States, de Gaulle ordered the capture of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. On 23 December 1941, a French flotilla consisting of the submarine and three corvettes, , and , carrying 230 men sailed from Halifax under the pretext of a training mission. Acting against the orders of
Royal Canadian Navy Rear Admiral
Leonard W. Murray, at 3 am on 24 December 1941, the flotilla arrived off the port of
Saint-Pierre and disembarked 230 armed sailors. After meeting no resistance, the
Free French forces captured the islands in only 20 minutes. News of the capture reached the United States with Secretary of State
Cordell Hull calling the capture a violation of prior agreements between the US and Allied powers and of US territorial doctrine, asserting that it was a "provocation to war in American waters between Vichy and de Gaulle," and comparing the Free French takeover to Axis aggression. The US considered dispatching naval forces to remove the Free French forces, but ultimately chose to propose a compromise that would see the islands demilitarized under US, British and Canadian supervision, with Free French ships redeploying to the Atlantic theatre.
Britain's MI6 investigated the incident, but no one was ever apprehended. Publicly, blame for the incident was cast on German intelligence; however, behind closed doors de Gaulle blamed the Western Allies, and later told colleagues that he no longer had confidence in them. In Algiers in 1943, Eisenhower gave de Gaulle the assurance in person that a French force would liberate Paris and arranged that the army division of French General
Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque would be transferred from North Africa to the UK to carry out that liberation. De Gaulle refused to share coded information with the British, who were then obliged secretly to break the codes to read French messages. Nevertheless, a few days before D-Day, Churchill, whose relationship with the General had deteriorated since he arrived in Britain, decided he needed to keep him informed of developments, and on 2 June he sent two passenger aircraft and his representative,
Duff Cooper, to Algiers to bring de Gaulle back to Britain. De Gaulle refused because of Roosevelt's intention to install a provisional Allied military government in the former occupied territories pending elections, but he eventually relented and flew to Britain the next day. , January 1944 Upon his arrival at
RAF Northolt on 4 June 1944 he received an official welcome, and a letter reading "My dear general! Welcome to these shores, very great military events are about to take place!" Churchill explained his support for de Gaulle during the darkest hours, calling him "L'homme du destin". In Casablanca in 1943, Churchill supported de Gaulle as the embodiment of a French Army that was otherwise defeated, stating that "De Gaulle is the spirit of that Army. Perhaps the last survivor of a warrior race." and foreshadowed the deep distrust of France for post-war Anglo-American partnerships.
Return to France De Gaulle ignored
les Anglo-Saxons, and proclaimed the authority of
Free France over the metropolitan territory the next day. Under the leadership of
General de Lattre de Tassigny, France fielded an entire army – a joint force of Free French together with French colonial troops from North Africa – on the Western Front. Initially landing as part of
Operation Dragoon, in the south of France, the
French First Army helped to liberate almost one third of the country and participated in the invasion and occupation of Germany. As the invasion slowly progressed and the Germans were pushed back, de Gaulle made preparations to return to France. from the hôtel de ville (town hall) On 14 June 1944, he left Britain for France for what was supposed to be a one-day trip. Despite an agreement that he would take only two staff, he was accompanied by a large entourage with extensive luggage, and although many rural Normans remained mistrustful of him, he was warmly greeted by the inhabitants of the towns he visited, such as the badly damaged
Isigny. Finally he arrived at the city of
Bayeux, which he now proclaimed as the capital of Free France. Appointing his Aide-de-Camp Francois Coulet as head of the civil administration, de Gaulle returned to the UK that same night on a French destroyer, and although the official position of the supreme military command remained unchanged, local Allied officers found it more practical to deal with the fledgling administration in Bayeux in everyday matters. Liberation of the French capital was not high on the Allies' list of priorities as it had comparatively little strategic value, but both de Gaulle and the commander of the French 2nd Armored Division, General
Philippe Leclerc were still extremely concerned about a communist takeover. De Gaulle successfully lobbied for Paris to be made a priority for liberation on humanitarian grounds and obtained from Allied Supreme Commander General
Dwight D. Eisenhower an agreement that French troops would be allowed to enter the capital first. A few days later, General Leclerc's division entered the outskirts of the city, and after
six days of fighting in which the resistance played a major part, the German garrison of 5000 men surrendered on 25 August, although some sporadic outbreaks of fighting continued for several days. General
Dietrich von Choltitz, the commander of the garrison, was instructed by
Adolf Hitler to raze the city to the ground, however, he simply ignored the order and surrendered his forces. following the liberation of Paris in August 1944. passes through the
Arc de Triomphe. Signs read "Long live de Gaulle" and "De Gaulle to power". It was fortunate for de Gaulle that the Germans had forcibly removed members of the Vichy government and taken them to Germany a few days earlier on 20 August; it allowed him to enter Paris as a liberator in the midst of the general euphoria, but there were serious concerns that communist elements of the resistance, which had done so much to clear the way for the military, would try to seize the opportunity to proclaim their own 'Peoples' Government' in the capital. De Gaulle made contact with Leclerc and demanded the presence of the 2nd Armoured Division to accompany him on a massed parade down the
Champs-Élysées, "as much for prestige as for security". A BBC correspondent who was present reported; De Gaulle himself though wrote, "There were no bullets whistling around my ears." (
Aucune balle ne siffle à mes oreilles.) He thought the shots were probably over-excited troops firing at shadows. No culprits, if there were any, were ever identified. Later, in the great hall of the
Hôtel de Ville, de Gaulle was greeted by a jubilant crowd and, proclaiming the continuity of the
Third Republic, delivered a famous proclamation; That evening, the Wehrmacht launched a massive aerial and artillery barrage of Paris in revenge, leaving several thousand dead or injured. The same day, Washington and London agreed to accept the position of the Free French. The following day General Eisenhower gave his de facto blessing with a visit to the General in Paris. == Administration of Free France ==