Charles de Gaulle
1890-1970
Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and shall not die.
Charles de Gaulle was a French brigadier general. When Marshal Pétain asked for an armistice with Germany in June 1940, de Gaulle was in London. On 18 June he spoke on the BBC and urged the French to continue the fight. The Vichy regime ordered him home and first sentenced him to four years in prison. On 2 August 1940 a court martial in Clermont-Ferrand condemned him to death in his absence for desertion, and ordered his property confiscated.
He never served the sentence. Britain had recognised him as leader of the Free French on 28 June 1940, and his movement eventually helped regain France's place among the victors. He returned to Paris in 1944 and led the provisional government, then was President of France from 1959 to 1969. The man a French court had sentenced to death for deserting became the symbol of the nation's honour.