Charles de Gaulle

Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany and Vichy France in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France. Following the 1958 Algiers putsch, he came out of retirement at the request of President Rene Coty, who appointed him Prime Minister; he commissioned a new constitution, approved by voters in a referendum, establishing the Fifth Republic, and was subsequently elected President of France, a position he held until his resignation in 1969. Born in Lille, he was a decorated officer of World War I, wounded several times and taken prisoner of war by Germany. During the interwar period he advocated mobile armoured divisions, and during the German invasion of May 1940 he led an armoured division that counterattacked the invaders before being appointed Undersecretary for War; refusing to accept his government's armistice with Germany, de Gaulle fled to England and exhorted the French to continue the fight in his Appeal of 18 June.