Born into a family steeped in French history and Catholic tradition, Charles de Gaulle would go on to lead the Free French forces against Nazi occupation, refusing to accept France's 1940 surrender. He later founded the Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first president, shaping postwar French identity, its independent nuclear deterrent, and its complicated relationship with NATO and the United States.
De Gaulle's father was a philosophy and literature teacher who instilled in him an almost mystical belief in the grandeur of France. As a young officer he was wounded three times and captured at Verdun during the First World War, spending nearly three years as a prisoner attempting five separate escapes.
When France fell to Germany in June 1940, de Gaulle, then a junior general, fled to London and delivered a defiant radio broadcast on June 18th declaring that the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished. Almost nobody in France heard it live, yet it became the founding myth of the Free French movement he built from almost nothing.
His towering height, imperious manner, and unshakeable sense of destiny made him both revered and maddening to allies like Churchill and Roosevelt, who found him insufferably proud even as they depended on him. He would go on to resign and return to power twice, survive assassination attempts, grant Algeria independence against fierce domestic opposition, and famously walk out of a press conference saying 'Non' to Britain's Common Market bid — a one-word answer that defined his style.
Key people: Charles de Gaulle