On June 16, 1940, France announced its surrender to Germany. The next day, at the Airport of Bordeaux in France, de Gaulle suddenly ran like crazy to a plane that was starting, and the British general Spears reached out of the cabin and pulled Charles de Gaulle onto the plane. De Gaulle was then French Minister of Defence and Under-Secretary of War, and his mission at the airport was to return to London with a British general on a french visit. But at the moment when the plane was about to rise, he boarded a plane to England, leaving a spark for the French resistance.
The night before, France's war-oriented Prime Minister Renault had resigned, and Marshal Pétain authorized the reorganization of the new French government and the beginning of cooperation with fascist Germany. De Gaulle no longer had any illusions about the government, but he still hoped that the call for active resistance to aggression within the government would overwhelm the call for surrender to the enemy, and thus allow Renault to overwhelm the capitulationists. De Gaulle understood that this was just a fantasy, and he resolutely sent a telegram ordering the French freighter "Based" to change its original plan to Go to Bordeaux and instead sail to a British port. The freighter was loaded with 1,000 75 mm cannons, thousands of machine guns and a large amount of ammunition from the United States.
If the shipment went to Bordeaux as planned, it would be great news for Germany and bad news for the Allies. It was de Gaulle's decision that brought the supplies back into the hands of the Allies. The equipment was later re-equipped with the British Expeditionary Force, which had withdrawn from Dunkirk.
De Gaulle went to visit Prime Minister Renault, who had resigned. When Renault learned of de Gaulle's decision to go to England, he did the spirited general one last favor: he paid 100,000 francs from a secret payment to de Gaulle, who was now penniless but always patriotic.
By this time, de Gaulle was already in a state of hostility with Pétain, who was the supreme leader of France at the time. De Gaulle's attitude toward Germany was resolutely defiant, while Pétain considered the heavy damage to France in World War I, so he did not want the tragedy to repeat itself, and advocated submission to the German army. Thus, after Pétain came to power in France, de Gaulle faced arrest and even execution. De Gaulle was well prepared for the situation and had already made plans with the British government.
On June 16, 1940, de Gaulle came late at night to the Monterrey Hotel where the British ambassador to France Campbell was staying, and he told the British that he wanted to actively resist the enemy and fight to the end, and the British general Spears who was present praised. He called to inform British Prime Minister Winston Churchill of de Gaulle's intentions and determination. Churchill gladly allowed Spears to take De Gaulle away.
At 7:30 a.m. the next morning, Charles de Gaulle and Spears met at the hotel, and the two sides drew up plans for their escape. The general content is: De Gaulle pretended to send off Spiel, and at the last moment when the plane began to slide, Spiels pulled De Gaulle onto the plane. This made Spears feel bad, looking at the tall de Gaulle in front of him, he was not as good as his shoulders. Spears took a cool breath and whispered, "It looks like another troublesome thing." ”
The luggage was bundled up and loaded into the plane, and the propeller began to turn. Spears boarded the plane, which began to slide, and at the last moment he held out his hands as if to shake hands with de Gaulle to say goodbye. De Gaulle, on the other hand, saw these hands as the life-saving straw of his own life and the life of France as a whole, and grasped the hook-like hands of the British.
De Gaulle's escape plan was successful, leaving only the stunned car driver and the airport police. The plane flew slowly over France and toward Britain. This seems to be saying that France has not been completely defeated, and that the only hope left is that the leader in England reorganizes the fight against the enemy!