IV.

Leader of the Free French

On June 18, 1940, around 8 o’clock in the evening, de Gaulle issued his famous appeal calling for the continuation of the war against Germany on the side of Great Britain. While a collaborationist government established itself in Vichy (see Vichy Government), with Pétain at its head, de Gaulle became leader of the Committee of Free France. Although he initially had few followers, de Gaulle won the support of the British prime minister Winston Churchill, who recognized him (on August 7) as the leader of the Free French Forces, an independent national army. Days before, he had been condemned to death in his absence by the Vichy regime. Although he was not regarded with enthusiasm by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who saw him as an adventurer and preferred to establish relations with Vichy, de Gaulle set about rallying the possessions of the French Empire to his cause. Although he failed in his attempt to land at Dakar, in Senegal, at the end of September 1940, he succeeded in bringing Chad, French Equatorial Africa, and Madagascar over to his cause, and in October formed the Council for Defence of the Empire.

Alongside his international activities, de Gaulle maintained contacts with the French resistance, through his intermediary Jean Moulin (see European Resistance Movements of World War II). In 1943, Moulin helped to bring together Resistance movements in the Council of National Resistance (CNR), which acknowledged de Gaulle as French head of state. De Gaulle was nevertheless kept in the dark over the planning of Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, during which British and American forces made contact with Admiral Darlan, a member of the Vichy government, and later with General Giraud, who also had links with Vichy. However, after the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, a meeting between de Gaulle and Giraud resulted in the creation of the French Committee for National Liberation, initially headed by both men, but later by de Gaulle alone. The Committee was recognized by the Allies as the sole representative of France. During this time, de Gaulle formulated his ideas about extending greater autonomy to the colonies, later articulated at the 1944 Brazzaville Conference.