49 Fun Facts About Charles De Gaulle

In which French city was Charles de Gaulle born in 1890?

Lille was the home of his mother's well-to-do family of manufacturers, but de Gaulle himself was brought up and educated in Paris.

What did de Gaulle's father, Henri, do for a living?

Schoolteacher: Henri de Gaulle taught at a Jesuit school in Paris and later ran one of his own, and the French history he argued over with his children at home stayed with Charles for life.

De Gaulle is said to have asked how anyone could govern a country with 246 varieties of what?

Cheese: the quip comes from a 1962 book of his sayings, and other tellings give other numbers, yet every one of them undercounts, since France makes over a thousand kinds.

At which French military academy did de Gaulle train as an officer before the First World War?

Saint-Cyr made its cadets serve in the ranks first, so de Gaulle spent a year as an ordinary infantryman before he was allowed to take up his place at the academy.

De Gaulle was first wounded in August 1914 at Dinant, a town in which country?

Belgium: his regiment was rushed over the border to check the invading Germans at Dinant, and Lieutenant de Gaulle was shot in the leg in the very first battle he fought.

At which 1916 battle was Captain de Gaulle wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans?

Verdun: he was captured near Fort Douaumont in March 1916 and spent thirty-two months as a prisoner of war, trying five times to escape.

Which emblem did de Gaulle's Free French adopt as their symbol during the Second World War?

The Cross of Lorraine, with its two bars, was chosen as an answer to the Nazi swastika, and a giant one now stands over the village where de Gaulle is buried.

Which Paris monument stands at the centre of the square renamed Place Charles de Gaulle after his death?

The Arc de Triomphe: the square around it took his name in 1970, yet it is still often called the Étoile, the star, after the twelve avenues that meet there.

Which future Red Army marshal was held with de Gaulle in the prison fortress at Ingolstadt?

Mikhail Tukhachevsky had been sent there, like de Gaulle, for escaping too often; he rose to the top of the Red Army, only for Stalin to have him shot in the purge of 1937.

For which marshal did de Gaulle work as a ghostwriter from 1925?

Philippe Pétain had been de Gaulle's first colonel and his patron, but the two quarrelled over credit for a book, and by 1940 they were leading opposite sides of a defeated France.

De Gaulle's 1934 book on national defence urged France to put its faith in what?

A small mechanised army: Vers l'Armée de Métier called for fast tank divisions of career soldiers in place of the fixed defences of the Maginot Line, a heresy that made him unpopular with his superiors.

Which Frederick Forsyth thriller follows a hired assassin's plot to kill President de Gaulle?

The Day of the Jackal opens with a real event, the 1962 machine-gun ambush of de Gaulle's car, and only then invents the nameless professional hired to finish the job.

De Gaulle fled France in June 1940 after less than two weeks in which government post?

Under-secretary for war: he joined the cabinet in early June 1940, and when a new government sought an armistice days later he left the country rather than accept it.

De Gaulle's 1940 appeal urging the French to fight on reached them over the airwaves of which broadcaster?

The BBC carried the Appeal of 18 June, which few people in France heard and nobody kept a recording of, yet it became the founding moment of the Free French.

What sentence did a Vichy court martial pass on de Gaulle in absentia on 2 August 1940?

Death: the court also stripped him of his rank and confiscated his property, after an earlier Vichy court had given him only four years in prison.

Félix Éboué brought the first African colony over to de Gaulle in 1940 as governor of which territory?

Chad: Éboué, a Black administrator born in French Guiana, broke with Vichy there in 1940, and the rest of French Equatorial Africa soon followed him over to the Free French.

In which Normandy city, the first freed after D-Day, did de Gaulle make his return to French soil in June 1944?

Bayeux had been freed by British troops the day after D-Day; de Gaulle spoke there and, before sailing back that night, left one of his own men in charge of the liberated zone.

Which Allied leader distrusted de Gaulle and for years refused to recognise him as his country's rightful leader?

Franklin D. Roosevelt kept up relations with Vichy and backed a rival general, Henri Giraud, and Washington recognised de Gaulle's government only after Paris had been liberated.

Whose division was allowed to enter Paris first in August 1944, at de Gaulle's insistence?

General Leclerc grew so impatient with the delays that he sent a small column racing ahead into Paris against orders, and the next day took the German commander's surrender.

Why did de Gaulle abruptly resign as head of France's provisional government in January 1946?

Party squabbling: fed up with the parties in his coalition, he walked out expecting the country to call him back on his own terms, and instead waited twelve years.

Which president asked de Gaulle to form a government during the crisis of May 1958?

René Coty called de Gaulle 'the most illustrious of Frenchmen' and threatened to resign the presidency himself unless the National Assembly accepted the general as prime minister.

In 1958 de Gaulle scoffed at the idea that at 67 he would begin a career as what?

A dictator: asked whether he would trample civil liberties, he replied that he was the man who had restored them, and that 67 was no age to start a new career.

Who drafted the text of de Gaulle's 1958 constitution and then served as his first prime minister?

Michel Debré, once a committed defender of French Algeria, turned the general's ideas into a constitution within months, and left office in 1962, days after voters approved the Algerian settlement.

Which was the only French African colony to vote for immediate independence in 1958?

Guinea, urged on by its leader Sékou Touré, voted No by more than 95 per cent, and France answered by cutting off its aid and pulling out almost at once.

Which March 1962 agreements ended the Algerian War?

The Évian Accords, signed at Évian-les-Bains in March 1962, brought a ceasefire after seven years of war, and Algeria was declared independent that July.

What name was given to the European settlers who fled Algeria for France in 1962?

Pieds-noirs, literally 'black feet': well over three-quarters of a million of them left as Algeria became independent, many with only what they could carry in a suitcase.

Which group ambushed de Gaulle's Citroën DS with machine guns at Petit-Clamart in August 1962?

The OAS, die-hard opponents of Algerian independence, riddled the car with bullets yet hurt no one in it, and the plot's leader became the last man France executed by firing squad.

After de Gaulle's 1962 referendum, how was the president of France to be chosen?

By direct universal suffrage instead of an electoral college of notables, and the first time the new rule was used, in 1965, de Gaulle himself was forced into a second round.

Where was France's first atomic bomb, Gerboise Bleue, tested under de Gaulle in 1960?

The Sahara: the bomb, named 'blue jerboa' after a desert rodent, was exploded near Reggane in French Algeria and made France the world's fourth nuclear power.

In 1966 de Gaulle took France out of which alliance's military command?

NATO: France stayed in the alliance but took its forces out of the joint command, and the organisation's own headquarters had to pack up and leave French soil.

With which West German chancellor did de Gaulle sign the Élysée Treaty in 1963?

Konrad Adenauer and de Gaulle meant the treaty to bury centuries of enmity, and it led to regular summits, a joint youth office and the twinning of towns and schools across the border.

De Gaulle twice vetoed which country's application to join the European Economic Community?

Britain heard his 'non' in 1963 and again in 1967, and only in 1972, after his death, did French voters approve letting the British in.

In January 1964 de Gaulle broke with Washington's containment policy by recognising which state?

The People's Republic of China: France was among the first big Western powers to open relations with Mao's government, a signal to Washington and Moscow alike that Paris would make its own foreign policy.

From the balcony of which city hall did de Gaulle shout 'Vive le Québec libre!' in July 1967?

Montreal: the cry thrilled Quebec's separatists and enraged Ottawa, where the prime minister retorted that Canadians did not need to be liberated, and de Gaulle went home early.

Where did de Gaulle secretly fly on 29 May 1968 to consult General Massu about army support?

Baden-Baden: for six hours nobody in Paris knew where the president was, and his own prime minister cried 'He has fled the country!', yet he was back next day and won a snap election.

De Gaulle's retort to the rioters of May 1968, 'Reform yes, chienlit no', made famous an old French word for what?

Chaos: 'chienlit', literally 'soils the bed', was an old word for a carnival masker, and the general's outburst put it into the everyday language of French politics.

The failed 1969 referendum that prompted de Gaulle's resignation proposed reform of what?

The Senate and local government: 52 per cent of voters said No to the plan on 27 April 1969, and de Gaulle resigned the presidency at noon the next day and never returned to politics.

Which future president forced de Gaulle into a run-off in the French election of 1965?

François Mitterrand, candidate of the left, profited from the general's confidence: expecting no serious challenger, de Gaulle declared only a month before polling day and barely campaigned.

Announcing de Gaulle's death on television in 1970, President Georges Pompidou said that France was a what?

Widow: 'General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow,' Pompidou told viewers the next day, the general's family having kept the news to themselves overnight.

De Gaulle barred presidents and ministers from his funeral but kept places for which comrades?

The Companions of the Liberation, the order he created for the heroes of Free France, stood with his family and neighbours at the graveside while the world's leaders gathered at Notre-Dame in Paris.

De Gaulle was buried at Colombey beside which member of his family, who had died in 1948?

His daughter Anne, born with Down syndrome, was the child the stern general doted on, and when she died at twenty he is said to have murmured, 'Now she is like the others.'

De Gaulle married Yvonne Vendroux in 1921 in her home town, which Channel port?

Calais was home to the Vendroux family, prosperous local industrialists, who had quietly arranged for Yvonne to meet the tall captain the year before the wedding.

Besides the main Paris airport, what kind of French vessel is named after de Gaulle?

An aircraft carrier: the nuclear-powered ship that entered service in 2001 was ordered as the Richelieu and renamed Charles de Gaulle a year later, before a single plate was laid.

In 1919-21 the young de Gaulle served as an instructor with which country's army in its war against Soviet Russia?

Poland had regained its independence only in 1918, and France sent officers such as Captain de Gaulle, who held the rank of major there, to help train its new army.

Which rank, given to him 'temporarily' in May 1940, did de Gaulle keep for the rest of his life?

Brigadier general: the man all France called 'le Général' never rose above the lowest general's rank, awarded on a temporary basis in the last weeks before France fell.

Which West African port did de Gaulle and the Royal Navy fail to win over from Vichy in September 1940?

Dakar's authorities stayed loyal to Vichy and got the better of the naval duel that followed, a failure that kept the rest of French West Africa in Vichy's camp until late 1942.

From 1927 de Gaulle commanded a battalion at Trier, part of the French army occupying which region of Germany?

The Rhineland: two years with the occupying army there showed him at first hand both the danger of a German revival and how poorly France was prepared to meet it.

The day after Paris was freed in August 1944, de Gaulle led a triumphal walk down which avenue?

The Champs-Élysées: he laid a wreath at the Unknown Soldier's tomb, then walked the length of the avenue through vast crowds, with German holdouts still at large in the city.

De Gaulle's namesake grandson dismayed the family by ending his MEP career in which party?

The National Front was Jean-Marie Le Pen's party and no friend of Gaullism, so when the younger Charles de Gaulle joined it in 1999 his own relatives publicly condemned the move.