Charles De Gaulle
Created | Updated Jan 25, 2004
Charles De Gaulle was born in Lille on the 22nd November 1890.
When he was 44 years old Charles published Towards an Army of the Future in 1934. This was to be his first brush with the media world. The second came in the year 1940 when he broadcast on the BBC. That year was quite an eventful one for Charles for he brought communists into government as an imperialist and also became Under-Secretary of State for War and watched the Dakar operation failed.
Charles De Gaulle decided to leave London for Algiers in June 1943 and in the year that was to follow he restored democracy as a conservative and in August of that year entered liberated Paris and headed a procession down the Champs Elysees. It was two years later that Charles De Gaulle resigned power and in the year that followed he founded the RPF in April.
Charles De Gaulle was saviour of France’s honour in 1949 and in the year 1958 when Charles was 68 years old he was to have another brush with the media, due to the fact that he finished writing his literary work ‘War Memoirs’ after retiring from politics around 1953-8. Around that time he also founded the fifth republic and returned to power.
Charles worked upon decolonising France and by the 1960's it was completed. That same year saw in ‘barricades week’ in Algiers and in the year that followed there was the Generals Putsch there too. The year 1962 contained Evian Accord ending the Algerian war and referendum instituting presedential elections by universal suffrage is approved and Jan 1963 opened with vetoes British entry to EEC. Charles was re- elected President on second ballot in Dec 1965 and France withdrew in NATO in march 1966. By 1968 many students had grown to dislike Gaulle and so put on strikes and demonstrations and there was a Gaullist landslide at parliamentary elections that June, leading him to resign in April 1969.
De Gaulle’s life came to an end on the 9th of November 1970
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