Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French army officer and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France. In 1958, amid the Algerian War, he came out of retirement when appointed Prime Minister by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position he held until his resignation in 1969.
Wartime portrait, 1942
De Gaulle's parents: Jeanne Maillot and Henri de Gaulle
De Gaulle's birth house in Lille, now a national museum
De Gaulle in 1897, aged 7
Free France was a political entity claiming to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third Republic during World War II. Led by General Charles de Gaulle, Free France was established as a government-in-exile in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France to Nazi Germany. It joined the Allied nations in fighting Axis forces with the Free French Forces, supported the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, and gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa.
Commemorative medal for voluntary service in Free France
Charles de Gaulle was an armoured division commander and a minister in the Reynaud government during the Battle of France.
In Occupied France during the war, reproductions of the 18 June appeal were distributed through underground means as pamphlets and plastered on walls as posters by supporters of the Résistance. This could be a dangerous activity.
4 Carlton gardens, London. During WWII the building served as provisional headquarters of the Free French Resistance movement
