General Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) was one of the leaders of French resistance to Hitler in the Second World War, and President of the Fifth Republic (1959–69). He gave his name not only to a French political party but also to a whole tradition in post-war French politics that still exercises a very important influence. As a colonel in the French army during the 1930s, de Gaulle was a somewhat unpopular figure who advocated modern doctrines of armoured warfare that were largely ignored. He was the senior French soldier to oppose the Vichy regime after the fall of France in 1940, and for much of the war headed a French government-in-exile in London. When the Allies liberated France in 1944, de Gaulle became for a while the head of the French government, but his ideas for a strong presidential government were rejected by both politicians and the public, and he retired from political life. In 1958 the crises in the Fourth Republic, especially those connected with the Algerian war, led to a widespread demand for him to take power. He accepted, becoming the last prime minister of the Fourth Republic and then the first president of the Fifth Republic.
Brought to power in 1958 as a man acceptable to the army, and to be trusted to maintain the status quo because of his vision of French glory, he solved the Algerian crisis only by what was seen as a worse betrayal even than Dien Bien Phu, the defeat in 1954 that ended French involvement in Indo-China. He simply accepted all the Algerian nationalists’ demands, and gave them independence within four years of taking office. He led the party (see Gaullism) that had fought for his ideas during the 1950s (under a variety of names), and was a highly autocratic ruler of France until he resigned after a referendum defeat in 1969. However, his political position had by then been crystallized into a political ideology supported by his party, and one of his ex-prime ministers, Georges Pompidou, won the resulting presidential election. In modern French politics for much of the time since 1945 there has been a clear ideological position usually identified as Gaullism, which to a large extent represents a development of ‘the General’s’ views; although Gaullist politicians still exist, their views now resembles other brands of modern European conservatism, though with more emphasis on national independence. Initially unpopular with the French ‘political classes’ because of his autocratic manner, his reputation is being reassessed because of the way his successors, especially Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and François Mitterrand, have actually extended the presidential domain to the extent of being described as ‘royalist’ in their style. De Gaulle’s main substantive achievements were the recreation of French independence in foreign and military affairs, and an initial interpretation of the constitution of the Fifth Republic which massively reduced the power of parliament in favour of the executive. Although his party remains enormously influential, the drift of the French centre-right away from pure Gaullism has continued under the incumbent president Jacques Chirac.
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