Charles De Gaulle

Leader of the one and only successful French counter-attack against the Germans before the Liberation, who escaped to London and issued the clarion call, "France has lost a battle, she has not lost the war," Charles de Gaulle badgered and bullied his way through the war years, demanding a larger role for France than Churchill and Roosevelt were willing to give a country that had barely lifted a finger against Hitler. From the time he landed on the Normandy beaches in June of 1944, he was in and out of power in France: heading the triumphant entry of Allied troops into Paris, heading the provisional French government, retiring from political life and then, because of the problems in Algeria, returning as President of the Fifth Republic. As President, he pursued a policy infuriating to the U.S. among other former allies: testing a French atomic bomb, keeping Britain out of the European Common Market, and encouraging Quebec's separatist movement. This program follows these events through the Sorbonne siege of 1968, which effectively proved that de Gaulle was out of date, to his resignation, and his death.