80 years ago today

"Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen" (distraxi) 06/18/2020 at 20:25 • Filed to: WWII

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A dude with a big nose and a penchant for silly hats, who Winston Churchill had just plucked out of obscurity over the head of his boss, suggested to the assembled masses of France that they might like to consider not taking their government’s surrender to Germany too seriously.

The assembled masses weren’t listening, since he was just some junior brigadier-general nobody had ever heard of and he was broadcasting unannounced on the BBC. Amusingly, there is no audio record of the speech, as BBC sound engineers didn’t regard it as important enough to bother: the “De Gaulle’s speech to the Free Frenc h” one hears today is a different one he gave 4 days later. But nonetheless this speech is widely regarded as one of the most important in French history : the initial rallying cry of the French Resistance, and the speech that kickstarted De Gaulle’s dominant place in the next 3 0 years of French history.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 06/18/2020 at 20:45

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What a fascinating but of history I never knew about. Thank you!

jminer > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 06/18/2020 at 20:55

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De Gaulle is one of my favorite post war leaders.

I especially love his action of keeping the UK out of the EU as he didn't trust them. They were only admitted after he died, I'd say he was on the right side of history there.

E90M3 > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 06/18/2020 at 20:57

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Neat. Here’s a picture of me standing on the Magi not Line.

Svend > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 06/18/2020 at 20:59

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The BBC in turn was held in very high regard with the resistance and those wanting a free France.

The BBC would broadcast codes in there transmissions to tell the resistance where and when will be bombed next, if German supplies were coming through France for the resistance to blow up or generally attack.

Even the French populace would send letters addressed merely to the BBC saying where they worked and lived and that they’d heard a certain person was coming to the factory or something was being built at the factory and to notify the RAF and Churchill to bomb the factory at a certain time, even though they themselves would be there.

jminer > E90M3 06/18/2020 at 21:02

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That had to be a sweet trip!

I had a coworker go to France for a week last year and I was disappointed  they were going for a wine tour and not the history.  They did take in a lot of good food as he’s a former chef.

Jb boin > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 06/18/2020 at 21:05

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Today over Paris, the Red Arrows and the Patrouille de France :

Translation from Wikipedia :

The leaders who, for many years, have been at the head of the French armies have formed a government. This government, alleging the defeat of our armies, has made contact with the enemy in order to stop the fighting. It is true, we were, we are, overwhelmed by the mechanical, ground and air forces of the enemy. Infinitely more than their number, it is the tanks, the aeroplanes, the tactics of the Germans which are causing us to retreat. It was the tanks, the aeroplanes, the tactics of the Germans that surprised our leaders to the point of bringing them to where they are today.

But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!

Believe me, I who am speaking to you with full knowledge of the facts, and who tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that overcame us can bring us victory one day. For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone! She has a vast Empire behind her. She can align with the British Empire that holds the sea and continues the fight. She can, like England, use without limit the immense industry of the United States.

This war is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country. This war is not over as a result of the Battle of France . This war is a world war. All the mistakes, all the delays, all the suffering, do not alter the fact that there are, in the world, all the means necessary to crush our enemies one day. Vanquished today by mechanical force, in the future we will be able to overcome by a superior mechanical force. The fate of the world depends on it.

I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who might end up here, with their weapons or without their weapons, I invite the engineers and the specialised workers of the armament industries who are located in British territory or who might end up here, to put themselves in contact with me.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on the radio from London.

ranwhenparked > jminer 06/18/2020 at 21:06

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Supposedly, he was the last   monarchist president of France as well, or at least he did put out some quiet feelers to the Count of Paris to that regard.

jminer > ranwhenparked 06/18/2020 at 21:13

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Didn’t know that - and seemed strange as recent as he was around. The Monarchy in France had been pretty historically reviled by the populace for a long time by then.

E90M3 > jminer 06/18/2020 at 21:15

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Oh, it was amazing. I went with a high school friend/ fellow oppo and we did a bunch of car things, including the ring. I’m a history buff and he’s not, but, for some asinine reason, we had planned to go to the Porsche museum on a Monday. Since we were in Stuttgart and needed to do something, we took a day trip to a part of the Maginot Line . I had a great time and would 100% recommend. 

jminer > E90M3 06/18/2020 at 21:20

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That sounds like it!  It’s been on my bucket list for a long time, just haven’t made it happen yet.

ranwhenparked > jminer 06/18/2020 at 21:41

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Yep, his whole family was, he reached out to Prince Henri to inquire as to his willingness to take the throne postwar in a constitutional monarchy, but, as per usual, the Bourbons were not interested unless it was on their terms. Later, he sent a congratulatory letter to the younger Henri on his wedding in 1957, in which he said that the new couple’s future and the Bourbon dynasty were bound together with the hopes of France. He was also known to have once said that “the republic is not the regime that France needs”

Supposedly, the strong presidency of the 5th republic is an outgrowth of his monarchism, if he couldn’t have a king, he’d at least make a more king-like president. De Gaulle said he wanted the president to embody “the spirit of the nation”, which is a bit more than most people expect out of a politician.

The closest France ever came to actually doing it, though, was back in 1871, when the National Assembly actually did vote to offer the crown to the Count of Chambord, who refused to accept it due to a disagreement over the design of the national flag, which seems like an insane hill to die on, given the prize, but that’s what he went with. After that, it was resolved to become a “temporary” republic until he died, in the expectation that the next in line would be more agreeable, but he lived longer than expected and the enthusiasm died out. Adolphe Theirs is the one who concluded that, ultimately, the republic was the form of government that divided France the least.

Svend > jminer 06/18/2020 at 21:57

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Even during the war the British and Americans didn’t t rust him and would try and keep him distracted or out of meetings because he had all these ideas of how to take back France while the British knew it just wasn’t possible.

The French themselves weren’t truly enamoured with him.

So much is written of him. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-charles-de-gaulle-rescued-france

Charles de Gaulle, Julian Jackson insists in the preface of his new biography, “ De Gaulle ” (Harvard), is “everywhere” in modern France , its undisputed hero. This claim, like some other confident statements in the book, may strike a reader as both narrowly true and what a French thinker might call metaphysically false. His name is certainly everywhere—on the great airport outside Paris; on the Place Charles de Gaulle, once called the Étoile, where traffic streams perpetually around the Arc de Triomphe—but his example seems remote. He is more a ceremonial than a controversial figure, his work now done. In forty years of passing in and out of France, I have almost never heard him pointed to as an exemplar useful in any way for today’s crises. His name having been placed on l’Étoile is apt: the traffic goes around all day but never stops for long.

If he lives anywhere, it is in the endless flow of books about the Second World War written by Americans and Brits, in which he emerges as the biggest pain in the ass in the history of the liberal order. By alphabetical accident, the heading “De Gaulle: Personal Characteristics” in Jackson’s index gives us, in sequence: arrogance, austerity, authoritarianism, cigarette smoking, coldness, contempt for human nature. It’s quite a list. Yet, as this classically composed and authoritative (if culturally somewhat shallow) book makes clear, he remains an amazing figure.

De Gaulle had three rendezvous with history, in the old-fashioned sense he loved: in 1940, in 1958, and in 1968. On all three occasions, he saved the French state by sheer theatricality and élan. First, by embodying the French republic in retreat from the Germans; then by seizing power, in a republican mode, to end the Algerian crisis; and, finally, when he ended the potential chaos of the May revolt by massing almost a million people on the Champs-Élysées in a counter-demonstration.

It was not all theatrical élan. As Jackson, a British history professor, shows, it also involved political savvy and the quiet weighing of odds among competing factions. But he depended more on theatrical élan than did pretty much any other public man of his century. Churchill in 1940 was far from powerless. He had radar and Ultra, an intact R.A.F. and a large empire. De Gaulle had nothing except his uniform and his voice. No one has ever played a weaker hand more compellingly. His life was one long brilliant bluff, and the things that make him exasperating—his vanity and closed-mindedness; his unearned sense of superiority and egocentric blindness—were also why the bluffs worked. He convinced others, sitting at the card table with all the aces in their hands, that he might have somehow manufactured an extra ace by pure force of will.

jminer > ranwhenparked 06/18/2020 at 22:03

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Thanks for the education! I love learning these sort of things.

jminer > Svend 06/18/2020 at 22:07

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I like that synopsis. You of course can't blame him for wanting to free France, but early on it definitely was not feasible. If a few things had gone the other direction the Normandy invasions would have failed leaving France in German hands a few more years.

ranwhenparked > jminer 06/18/2020 at 22:27

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The two of us were of similar minds on certain ... things. 

Svend > jminer 06/18/2020 at 22:42

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Ye’, looking back thro ugh history always paints a different view of those held or believed to of been held at the time.

At the time there was so many nations at war, each wanting what they wanted for the best of their country or just themselves.

Looking back at things like the Battle of Castle Itter, German’s and Americans defending a VIP prisoner of war camp fought against the SS.

Short version

Longer version

Nauraushaun > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 06/19/2020 at 03:58

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I know little of De Gaulle, us Aussies are an isolated bunch. But I know he’s the namesake of the airport, cool to read about him.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Nauraushaun 06/19/2020 at 04:50

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He’s well  worth reading up on. Fascinating character - he basically leveraged modern France (with all its pluses and minuses) into existence using nothing but chutzpah and willpower.

Svend > Jb boin 06/19/2020 at 05:55

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It’s cool that they flew over Paris first in the morning, then landed at RAF Brize Norton before taking off again at around 4:30pm, for a flypast over Buckingham Palace at 5pm.