On 17 June 1940, when Marshal Pétain surrendered France to the Nazis, 49-year-old Common Charles de Gaulle was in London. The subsequent day he made a broadcast on the BBC: ‘No matter occurs, the flame of French resistance should not and shall not exit’, he declared.
The Vichy authorities ordered him again to France. In London, assist for him was skinny. ‘The London French … fall into two teams’, he mentioned gloomily: ‘those that are in the USA and those that are on the point of go away.’ However de Gaulle was not a simple man to love. ‘His solely rest, I would say his solely pleasure, was hating’, a good friend wrote. ‘And he hated everyone.’ His spouse and daughter left London too – for Shropshire.
‘You might be on their lonesome?’ Churchill requested him on 27 June. ‘Properly, then, I recognise you on their lonesome.’ The subsequent day the British acknowledged him because the chief of the Free French.
On 2 August a court docket martial in Clermont-Ferrand confiscated his property and condemned him to demise in absentia for desertion. When information of the sentence broke in Britain, folks left portions of jewels at his headquarters, and anonymous widows despatched of their wedding ceremony rings for melting down – small golden sacrifices to the liberty of France. Even de Gaulle discovered it onerous to hate that.
