The Fall of France

By 1939, Lieutenant Colonel de Gaulle commanded a tank regiment in Metz, finally able to put some of his theories into practice. When war came in September, he was ready with detailed plans for armored strikes into Germany. But the "Phony War" that followed frustrated all his instincts. While Germany crushed Poland using the very tactics de Gaulle had advocated, France sat behind its fortifications, waiting.

De Gaulle bombarded his superiors with memoranda advocating offensive action. Use the time to train armored divisions, he urged. Strike while Germany is occupied in the east. His proposals were ignored or dismissed. The French high command remained wedded to defensive doctrine, confident that any German attack would break itself against French fortifications.

When the German offensive finally came in May 1940, it validated de Gaulle's prophecies in the worst possible way. German armored divisions, supported by dive bombers, punched through the supposedly impassable Ardennes, bypassing the Maginot Line entirely. The French army, trained for static defense, could not adapt to the speed of German operations.

Command in Battle

On May 11, 1940, de Gaulle received command of the hastily formed 4th Armored Division—France's belated attempt to match German armored forces. With incomplete equipment and partially trained crews, he was ordered to delay the German advance. What followed were some of the few bright spots in the catastrophe of 1940.

At Montcornet on May 17, de Gaulle launched one of the few successful French counterattacks of the campaign, temporarily disrupting German supply lines. At Abbeville on May 28-31, his division again attacked, achieving local success against superior German forces. These actions, while tactically limited, demonstrated what might have been possible had France embraced armored warfare earlier.

But individual successes could not stem the tide. The French army was disintegrating, the government was in chaos, and defeatism was spreading. On June 5, Premier Paul Reynaud, remembering de Gaulle's prescient writings, appointed him Under-Secretary of State for National Defense and War—the youngest general in the French army suddenly found himself in government.

The Final Days

De Gaulle's two weeks as a government minister were a whirlwind of desperate activity. He flew to London to coordinate with Churchill, whom he impressed with his resolution and clarity. He argued forcefully against armistice, proposing instead that the government retreat to North Africa and continue the fight from the empire.

But defeatism had infected the highest levels of government. Marshal Pétain, de Gaulle's former mentor, now advocated armistice. The military situation was hopeless, Pétain argued; France must save what it could through negotiation. De Gaulle watched in horror as the man who had embodied French resistance at Verdun now embodied French capitulation.

On June 16, Reynaud resigned, replaced by Pétain. De Gaulle knew what would follow—armistice, collaboration, the death of French honor. That evening, he made the most momentous decision of his life. With 100,000 francs from secret funds and a handful of supporters, he flew to London on a British plane. Behind him, he left his mother (his father had died in 1932), his wife and children, his career, everything except his sense of what France meant and must mean.

Crossing the Rubicon

The decision to leave for London was not made lightly. De Gaulle knew he was technically deserting, that Pétain's government would brand him a traitor. He knew he was leaving his family in danger, his property subject to confiscation. He knew he had no legal authority, no significant following, no resources except his own will.

But he also knew that someone had to speak for France—not the France that was surrendering, but the eternal France he carried within him. As his plane lifted off from Bordeaux on June 17, 1940, Charles de Gaulle the soldier died and Charles de Gaulle the symbol was born. The years of preparation—the wounds of the Great War, the theoretical writings, the warnings ignored—had led to this moment.

The man who landed in London on that June morning was fifty years old, unknown outside military circles, with no political experience beyond two weeks as a junior minister. He faced a task that seemed impossible: convincing the world that he, not the legally constituted government in Vichy, represented the true France. The formation was complete; now would come the test of everything he had learned and everything he believed.

In London, Churchill waited, skeptical but willing to listen. The British needed any French support they could get, even from an unknown brigadier general. De Gaulle would have one chance to make his case, one opportunity to begin the resurrection of France. Everything—his past, his theories, his unshakeable belief in France's destiny—had prepared him for the speech he would make the next day.

The boy from Lille who had refused to play the enemy even in childhood games, the young officer who had bled for France in the Great War, the military theorist who had seen the future and been ignored—all these de Gaulles merged into the man who would, on June 18, 1940, speak six minutes of defiance that would echo through history. The formation was complete; the resistance was about to begin.# Part 2: Resistance Leader (1940-1944)