Charles de Gaulle
French wartime resistance leader and President of the Fifth Republic
Also known as: De Gaulle, Général de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) led the Free French in the Second World War and founded the Fifth Republic, serving as its first president from 1958 to 1969. Quigley uses him as the figure through whom France attempted to recover national autonomy from the dominant Anglo-American order — both in 1940–1945 wartime politics and in the 1958–1969 challenge to the Atlantic system.
Pre-war strategist and wartime exile
Quigley repeatedly notes that de Gaulle's pre-war advocacy of an armored striking force was politically and militarily marginal. "In spite of the agitations of Charles de Gaulle (then a colonel) and his parliamentary spokesman, Paul Reynaud, to build up an armored striking force as an offensive weapon, France built a great, and purely defensive, fortified barrier from Montmedy to the Swiss frontier" (T&H 598). The doctrine was "generally rejected by his superior officers, so that De Gaulle was still a colonel in 1940. This theory was, however, accepted in the German Army, notably by Heinz Guderian in 1934, and was used very effectively against the Poles in 1939 and against the Western Front" in 1940 (T&H 676). Quigley's wartime narrative records de Gaulle's "uncooperative personality and arrogant pride" as a constant friction in inter-Allied politics, but acknowledges that he "continued to enjoy a certain measure of British support" (T&H 706).
Fifth Republic and the European order
After 1958 de Gaulle organized French foreign policy around independence from the Anglo-American system. He made "the director of the Rothschild bank, Georges Pompidou, prime minister" (T&H 541) and integrated France into the European Common Market while keeping Britain out: in 1962 Britain's bid for admission "was rebuffed by De Gaulle, who required as a price that Britain renounce its efforts, going back over decades, to establish a special relationship with the United States" (T&H 542). The veto sealed de Gaulle's image as the figure who, of all post-war Western leaders, most consistently treated the Anglo-American order as a structure to be balanced rather than joined.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 541 Quigley
De Gaulle made the director of the Rothschild bank, Georges Pompidou, prime minister.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 542 Quigley
Was rebuffed by De Gaulle, who required as a price that Britain renounce its efforts, going back over decades, to establish a special relationship with the United States.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 598 Quigley
In spite of the agitations of Charles de Gaulle (then a colonel) and his parliamentary spokesman, Paul Reynaud, to build up an armored striking force as an offensive weapon, France built a great, and purely defensive, fortified barrier.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 676 Quigley
Armored warfare was advocated most vigorously by Colonel Charles de Gaulle. It was generally rejected by his superior officers, so that De Gaulle was still a colonel in 1940.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 706 Quigley
Into a diluted French government-in-exile, although De Gaulle's uncooperative personality and arrogant pride made this a difficult and unpalatable task.