In 1970, a special funeral was held in France. The deceased's tombstone only says the date of birth and death of the deceased, and the coffin was purchased for $63. The funeral was held in a small local church, attended only by some of the deceased's relatives and friends, and there were only a dozen people in total.
The funeral seemed very ordinary, but the person lying in the coffin was not ordinary at all, and the deceased had a resounding name, a name that was well known in many parts of the world, and his name was Charles André Joseph Mari De Gaulle. His greatest achievement was to save France twice, but he was also abandoned twice by the French people.
Today we talk about the last hero of the French: de Gaulle!
A generation in the midst of war
On June 17, 1940, the French airport in Meliqueia was in a panic, and everyone present heard the news of the fall of Paris, and the government of Pétain, which advocated surrender, had just come to power.
The people here look more desperate than the French who got up in Paris, because their purpose here is to send away their allies, the British.
As Britain's General Spears stepped onto the plane, the plane's propellers began to turn. The leading French officer held out his hand to say goodbye to the general one last time. But to everyone's surprise, the French officer jumped on the plane with the strength of his arm.
The French at the airport were stunned and could only watch the plane disappear into the sky. The Germans didn't care too much about this, what could a little brigadier general named De Gaulle do?
De gaulle
De Gaulle was born in 1890 in Lille, France. His father was a senior secondary school teacher who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, while his mother was born into a wealthy bourgeois family.
De Gaulle's parents were staunch patriots, often talking about current politics and news. Under the guidance of his parents, de Gaulle also developed a strong interest in this and began to care about the fate and prospects of the country.
Later, when de Gaulle recalled his experience studying in France, he said: "Nothing moved me more than our glorious sign. The enchanting night view of Notre Dame, the magnificent dusk of versailles, the sunlit Arc de Triomphe, and the enemy flag captured in the Invalides. ”
French Invalides
De Gaulle experienced an era of intense change, witnessing a visit to Tsarist Russia after the establishment of the Franco-Russian alliance, seeing the take-off of the first French aircraft, and personally witnessing the great military parade at the racecourse.
Newspapers are filled with exchanges and collisions between politicians of different genres every day. De Gaulle slowly absorbed the ideas in it, forming an absorbent nourishment for his later "gaulle doctrine".
De Gaulle was keenly aware of the impending war, but he was not only not afraid, but also looked forward to making a great achievement. With a heroic dream, the 19-year-old de Gaulle was admitted to the Saint-Cyr Military Academy.
De Gaulle belonged to the kind of soldiers who resembled Confucian generals in ancient times, and in the case of a full score of 20 points, his maps, fortifications, geography, and history were close to full marks, but fencing, equestrianism and other martial arts subjects were only ten points.
After graduation, de Gaulle did not choose the more elegant and safe cavalry like other well-off students, but chose to be an infantryman, ready to face and win the war between Germany and France.
The commander of the French Thirty-third Infantry Regiment, who first served, was named Pétain.
Pétain
After the outbreak of war, de Gaulle was wounded twice, in August 1914 and March 1915, but he soon returned to the battlefield after recovering from his wounds. In the Battle of Verdun in 1916, de Gaulle was wounded for the third time, mistaken by his comrades for martyrdom, and eventually captured by the Germans.
De Gaulle's generation is known as the generation of war, and after this unprecedented war, some historical celebrities began to emerge.
Hitler was just an Austrian soldier on a bicycle, Churchill was just a different British battalion commander, Mussolini was looking for his target in the scope, and in the sky above his head, Green was flying a fighter plane to engage the enemy.
De Gaulle was no more than a prisoner in a German prisoner-of-war camp, but on the battlefield he recognized a Russian officer from Smolensk, Tukhachevsky.
Tukhachevsky
De Gaulle escaped from prison several times in the concentration camp, all of which ended in failure. De Gaulle had to learn German in prison and eventually became proficient in the language.
In his spare time in prison, de Gaulle reflected on the gains and losses of World War I, talked to Tukhachevsky about the role of tanks in the war, and finally perfected his combat concept.
At the end of 1918, after the end of World War I, de Gaulle was finally released.
After the war, de Gaulle did not choose to celebrate victory, realizing that the armistice "was nothing more than an exhausting peace." This peace is a fig leaf against unsatisfied ambitions, hatred that is stronger than ever and national anger that has not been extinguished. ”
Second, the savior of France
De Gaulle anticipated the coming of the next war, and he knew that the Germans would once again come with rage and bring the flames to France again.
This strong premonition drove de Gaulle to the battlefield again, helping Poland fight the Red Army, and his opponent was his fellow prisoner Tukhachevsky. Although it did not play much of a role in the war, the whole war allowed de Gaulle to perfect his military theory.
In his military report of 1921, he wrote: "Tanks should be used centrally, not decentralizedly. "A word broke the sky.
French B1 tank
After returning to China, de Gaulle was again admitted to the Higher Military Academy, and with the support of Pétain, he published several articles and held several lectures at the Military Academy.
De Gaulle saw the need for military reform and pondered the relationship between the military and politics. In his first book, Tilting within the Enemy, published in 1924, he emphasized that politics should take precedence over the military.
In 1937, de Gaulle was promoted to colonel and served as commander of the 507th Tank Regiment in Metz. On September 3, 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, France urgently formed five armored divisions, with de Gaulle as the commander of the fifth tank division.
In January 1940, de Gaulle sent a memorandum based on his experience in Poland, "The Birth of the Mechanical Force," to more than eighty people, including Renault (the one named after the French tanks) and Camerin (the one who was defeated by Germany in the Netherlands), emphasizing the importance of tanks and aircraft fighting together.
French Renault FT-17 tank
On May 10, 1940, the German army used a two-pronged approach of aircraft and armored vehicles to break through the French line and test de Gaulle's theory.
De Gaulle was then ordered to command the 4th Panzer Division, which won a major victory at Moncorne and Laon, and blocked the German offensive at Abbeville from 27 to 30 May 1940. He was rewarded by the army for his bravery and decisiveness as an "outstanding commander with courage and decisiveness".
On 1 June 1940, de Gaulle was promoted to temporary brigadier general and transferred back to Paris. By this time, France's defeat was looming. De Gaulle and the then commander-in-chief Wei Gang talked about future wars, and Wei Gang said that when the Marne Defense Line was breached, it meant that everything was over.
Maxim Weigang
De Gaulle couldn't believe what he had heard, how could it mean the end? Isn't his country going to rebel? These people have completely given up fighting, just trying to find a way back for themselves.
As for the reasons for the surrender of the French, which we mentioned in the previous issue, we will not repeat them here.
Seeing that the entire upper echelons had given up resistance, de Gaulle ordered a determination to find a new way out. Even if he was the only one left, he had to insist on fighting, so the scene at the beginning of the first paragraph of the article occurred, and de Gaulle took the opportunity to flee to France.
Upon learning of de Gaulle's escape, the French government announced de Gaulle's demotion and suspension and sentenced him to death in his absence.
Churchill
In Britain, de Gaulle, with churchill's help, sat in the radio room and announced to the world the formation of a "free French" government, issuing a call of resistance to the colonies, the "Letter to the French People".
"I am General de Gaulle, I am now in London, and I ask the French officers and men, engineers, and workers who are now in England or are coming to England to come to me for a round. Whatever happens, the flames of the French resistance should not be extinguished, and never will be extinguished. ”
Third, betrayal
Churchill's government subsequently announced its recognition of de Gaulle as leader of the Free France. In just one month, the Free French drew up an army of seven thousand men and, together with the British government, formed an ally to prepare against the Germans.
At that time, only Chad in all of Africa responded to the call of the Free French, and de Gaulle had to postpone the counterattack on Europe and began the struggle for French colonies in North Africa.
In 1940, the entire equatorial Africa was left with only Dakar still rebelling. Churchill suggested that the Royal Fleet be sent to deter Dakar by force and force it to surrender. But de Gaulle never imagined that his enemy was not the Germans, but the French who were obstructing him.
Vichy France sent three destroyers and three cruisers to support, and the Royal Navy, supported by land artillery, was defeated. De Gaulle knew that there was no chance of victory in this battle and ordered a halt to the operation.
Dakar
Fortunately, two months later, the Battle of Gabon was won, and the Lorraine Cross was raised throughout equatorial Africa.
Subsequently, the Allies began to fight in an all-out war in the North African theater, and even once played a one-to-ten battle loss ratio. Hitler praised France for having the best soldiers besides Germany and had to send his beloved general Rommel to North Africa.
Later, the United States also joined the Allies, but they did not recognize de Gaulle as the only legitimate representative of France, and instead supported the rebellious Vichy French naval commander Dallang.
Darlan
The reason Roosevelt gave was that de Gaulle came to power on his own and did not go through elections. But in fact, Roosevelt was worried that de Gaulle's autonomy was too strong to be controlled in the future. Roosevelt's ideas also faltered Churchill.
De Gaulle would not tolerate such a thing, and he actively contacted the resistance forces at home and abroad, and soon a voice came out: "Only de Gaulle can lead France to victory." ”
At the same time, de Gaulle threatened Churchill with the Soviet Union, and the biggest resistance in France at that time besides de Gaulle was the partisans led by the French Communist Party. The lesser of two powers, Roosevelt, did not want to see a red France.
On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces landed in Normandy, France, and Europe opened a second battlefield. At this time, Roosevelt gave de Gaulle another stumbling block, and he ordered Eisenhower to postpone the capture of Paris, hoping that Vichy French Prime Minister Lyfar would form a coalition government to welcome the Allies into the city.
Eisenhower
By that time, the coalition government was the legitimate government recognized by the Allies, and the members of the new government restructured after the war were mostly from Vichy France, who would take away de Gaulle's power and squeeze him out of the core of power.
De Gaulle could only support the Allied command and march immediately to France, otherwise he would let his soldiers break away from the Allied command and attack Paris alone.
By that time, the coalition government in Paris, whether it resisted or not, was no longer important. On August 25, 1944, de Gaulle took to the streets amid cheers from the parisian crowd.
After the war, the Constituent Assembly discussed and decided not to restore the Third Republic, which had been destroyed by Germany, and to re-establish a new republic. However, there were some conflicts between de Gaulle and the Constituent Assembly in the formation of the polity, and many of de Gaulle's proposals were not adopted.
On 20 January 1946, de Gaulle resigned from the President of the National Assembly, Felix Ghoan, over military loans. During the Fourth Republic, de Gaulle was always an opposition, propagating his ideas everywhere. For a time, the French government banned de Gaulle from speaking everywhere, a situation that lasted until 1958.
Fourth, once again abandoned
In 1958, the 13-year-old French Fourth Republic experienced a major crisis. At this time, there was the independence of Algeria externally, the internal factions competing for power and profit, and the internal rebellion, and the French Fourth Republic was in jeopardy.
In this case, the French finally remembered that they also had a savior, de Gaulle.
On 1 June, parliament voted 329 out of 553 in favour of authorizing de Gaulle to form a new government. De Gaulle returned to power as the last Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic. The French Parliament granted de Gaulle special rights for a period of six months and allowed him to carry out constitutional reforms. De Gaulle's vision in 1945 was finally realized.
French Parliament
This time, the formation is now the French Fifth Republic. Unlike the previous Fourth Republic, the new constitution limited the powers of parliaments, and if the original parliament did not trust the prime minister, the entire cabinet would fall, which is why few prime ministers in the entire Fourth Republic served more than a year.
But in the Fifth Republic, which de Gaulle formed, the president had very much power to limit parliament. During the Fifth Republic, the president was free to play with essentially no restrictions. Therefore, it is also said that the president of France is the same as the emperor.
In 1968, because the National Assembly did not support its own reforms, de Gaulle dissolved the parliament and later established a new parliament through elections. But the new parliament also failed to pass de Gaulle's reforms.
De Gaulle was once again abandoned, and in this case de Gaulle voluntarily resigned.
However, long before the vote, de Gaulle had told the French people that he would resign if the reform plan did not pass, so his behavior was normal.
De Gaulle funeral
After de Gaulle left his post for the second time, he never asked about political affairs or made any political positions. Not only that, but de Gaulle made a will before his death:
First, after his death, the tombstone only writes the date of birth and death, and he must be buried next to his daughter; second, the funeral is only attended by his family and relatives and friends, and no other politician or group can participate, let alone hold a state funeral; third, he refuses to accept all honors, and does not want to be foreign to his own country.
The French people did abide by de Gaulle's will, and it was in this way that de Gaulle's funeral looked like a normal person.'
Without de Gaulle, France would have been a defeated country in World War II, completely occupied and divided.
Without de Gaulle, France would have fallen apart in the post-World War II wave of reforms.
Without de Gaulle, France would never have possessed nuclear weapons and become one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
But even with De Gaulle, France, which voluntarily abandoned its savior, is nothing more than a clown in the milk law joke.