Charles de Gaulle

In order to bring back democracy in France, Charles de Gaulle, a French army officer and statesman, led Free France against Nazi Germany during World War II and presided over the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946. When President René Coty appointed him Prime Minister and President of the Council of Ministers in 1958, he was forced out of retirement. The Fifth Republic was established by him after the French Constitution was revised and approved by referendum. Later same year, he was elected president of France. He was re-elected in 1965 and served in that capacity until his resignation in 1969.

He was born in Lille and received his education at Saint-Cyr. He was a distinguished officer in the First World War who was wounded numerous times before being captured at Verdun. He was an advocate for mobile armored divisions in the interwar period. He oversaw an armored division that launched a counterattack against the German invaders in May 1940, leading to his appointment as Undersecretary for War. De Gaulle escaped to England after rejecting his government's armistice with Germany and urged the French in his Appeal of June 18 to continue the battle and resist occupation. In opposition to the Axis, he oversaw the Free French Forces and eventually the French National Liberation Committee. He gained Winston Churchill's support despite having tense relations with the United States and became the undeniable head of Free France. In June 1944, after France had been liberated, he was appointed head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.

The Trente Glorieuses, a period of exceptional growth that began in 1944 as part of de Gaulle's dirigiste economic program, contained significant state-directed supervision over a capitalist sector. He resigned in early 1946 out of frustration with the resurgence of petty partisanship in the Fourth Republic, but remained politically active as the founder of the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF; "Rally of the French People"). His War Memoirs, which swiftly became a mainstay of contemporary French writing, were written when he retired in the early 1950s.

Birth - Death: 1890 - 1970