Meet the embattled French WW2 leader who withstood the Nazis – and Winston Churchill
In June 1940, as France collapsed and Britain faced the prospect of resisting the Nazis alone, Winston Churchill searched for a French leader willing to keep fighting
In early June 1940, Europe was in freefall. Germany’s invasion of France and the Low Countries – launched in May 1940 – had overturned the presiding strategic assumptions of the First World War. Instead of the slow stalemate of trench warfare, German ‘Blitzkrieg’ tactics had combined tanks, aircraft and rapid manoeuvre to devastating effect.
German armoured divisions had burst through the Ardennes and driven deep into France, prompting the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk from 26 May, fleeing from the incoming Nazi military storm. Paris would then fall on 14 June. The French government was retreating in stages, and within weeks, the Third Republic – France’s democratic regime since 1870 – had effectively fallen.
For Britain – now led by Winston Churchill, who had taken office only weeks earlier – the stakes seemed existential. Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain in May 1940, inheriting a war effort that was already faltering.
If France were to leave the war, Britain faced the very real prospect of an attempted German invasion. If there was anyone within the French political or military establishment willing to continue the war from overseas (perhaps from North Africa, where France still possessed territory and troops) Britain needed that person to come to the fore.
The individual who would rise to the moment, and come to symbolise Free France was not, at that moment, an obvious candidate.
Churchill and de Gaulle’s first encounters in crisis
Charles de Gaulle first came to London on 9 June, “which is when he first meets Churchill”, historian Richard Vinen explains, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Churchill likes him.”
When de Gaulle fatefully arrived in London, he was far from the towering statesman who would come to define the coming decades of French history. He held the post of Under-Secretary of State for National Defence and War in the French government – a relatively junior position – and was little known outside France.
Churchill, newly installed as prime minister, admired de Gaulle. “He likes someone who displays resolution in the face of impending defeat,” Vinen says.
They met again during the desperate consultations held as the French government retreated south. Churchill would later claim he recognised de Gaulle’s historic importance straight away, recalling that he had immediately referred to de Gaulle as “the Man of Destiny” – something that Vinen says de Gaulle always denied.
However, de Gaulle certainly wasn’t the obvious – or desired – choice of leader for the French resistance.
Not the obvious choice
At this stage, the French cabinet was deeply divided between those who wished to continue the war from the empire and those who favoured seeking terms with Germany.
“We sometimes think de Gaulle comes over to London in June 1940 and then he’s the leader of the Free French and that’s it,” Vinen says. “Actually, the British are always looking around to see if they can find someone more important.”
Georges Mandel, France’s Interior Minister, commanded respect and was known as a determined opponent of Germany. “Mandel… is someone the British place a lot of hope in,” Vinen explains. He appeared to have greater political weight than de Gaulle.
General Weygand was another possibility. Churchill had known him since the First World War. However, despite being regarded as a staunch nationalist and opponent of Germany, Weygand would later align with Marshal Philippe Pétain – the French First World War hero who would head the collaborationist regime based in Vichy.
“Churchill is ruthless as a war leader,” Vinen says. “If he had found someone who suited British interests better, he would have backed that person and abandoned de Gaulle.”
How de Gaulle’s life was shaped by Germany
Why did Churchill stick with de Gaulle? Part of the answer, Vinen says, was his personality.
De Gaulle had grown up in a nationalist Catholic family marked by France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. That war had led to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and left a legacy of resentment and revanchism in French political culture.
De Gaulle fought in the First World War, though was captured at the battle of Verdun in March 1916 and spent the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war in Germany. “His whole life is about Germany,” Vinen says. “He takes it for granted that fighting Germany is something one should do.”
Many French politicians in 1940 were hostile to Germany. The deeper difference that set de Gaulle apart lay in how he understood France itself.
An abstract idea of France
“The reason he wants to go on fighting in 1940 and others don’t is partly that he has a rather abstract view of France,” says Vinen.
De Gaulle’s memoirs open with a famous declaration: “All my life I have had a certain idea of France.” That idea was an almost metaphysical belief of France as a country of distinct status and dignity.
That meant that, in 1940, when many French leaders supported an armistice, de Gaulle was staunch in his will to resist.
“De Gaulle’s idea of France is sometimes separate from the interests of particular French people,” Vinen explains. “It’s that idea of France as something special that he believes he is protecting in 1940, even if that means terrible sacrifices for the French.”
Another of his statements captured this conviction: “France cannot be France without greatness.”
Years later, reflecting on the crisis of 1940, de Gaulle remarked that he had feared France might survive merely as “a nation of cooks and hairdressers”, a country reduced to comfort and domesticity, stripped of military and political stature.
“He wants France to be a nation of soldiers and a nation of greatness,” Vinen says. That belief drove his refusal to accept defeat. On 18 June 1940, broadcasting from London, de Gaulle issued an appeal urging French soldiers, engineers and workers to continue the fight. Though heard by relatively few at the time, his appeal later became the symbolic foundation of the Free French movement.
Churchill admired courage, and in 1940 de Gaulle displayed it unmistakably. Vinen suggests Churchill was “sentimentally attracted to him” for that reason.
But that admiration didn’t prevent conflict between the two leaders.
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“De Gaulle and Churchill’s relationship was sometimes quite stormy,” Vinen says. There were “spectacular arguments” between them. Free French forces depended heavily on British resources and recognition, but de Gaulle resisted any suggestion that he was subordinate to London.
Towards the end of 1942, Churchill again contemplated whether de Gaulle might be replaced by another French general. And in 1944, as preparations for the Normandy landings intensified, tensions resurfaced.
Churchill regarded D-Day as a vast military operation requiring strict unity. But De Gaulle insisted that French authority and national pride be visibly restored on liberated soil.
“They were at cross purposes,” Vinen explains. Those disputes, particularly before D-Day, “haunted their relationship and, in de Gaulle’s view, haunted the relationship between Britain and France for a long time afterwards”.
Why Churchill stuck with de Gaulle
Despite frequent doubts and frustrations, Churchill ultimately supported de Gaulle and retained him as an ally.
Partly this was due to circumstance: alternative French figures either aligned with the Vichy regime or failed to establish credible independence. But it was also because de Gaulle embodied something irreplaceable.
In the summer of 1940, when the French state sought an armistice with Hitler, de Gaulle was a figure who projected an image of unrelenting defiance. With France’s future in the balance, it was de Gaulle’s stubborn idea of France that gave him convincing heft. He withstood both the Nazis, and the doubts of allies who wondered whether someone else might serve them better.
Richard Vinen was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra