Author: Julian Jackson Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674988728 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 928
Book Description
"The finest one-volume life of de Gaulle in English." —Richard Norton Smith, Wall Street Journal In a definitive biography of the mythic general who refused to accept Nazi domination of France, Julian Jackson captures this titanic figure as never before. Drawing on unpublished letters, memoirs, and resources of the recently opened de Gaulle archive, he shows how this volatile visionary put a broken France back at the center of world affairs.
Author: Julian Jackson Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 1846143527 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 866
Book Description
A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, FINANCIAL TIMES, TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Masterly ... awesome reading ... an outstanding biography' Max Hastings, Sunday Times The definitive biography of the greatest French statesman of modern times In six weeks in the early summer of 1940, France was over-run by German troops and quickly surrendered. The French government of Marshal Pétain sued for peace and signed an armistice. One little-known junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England. On 18 June he spoke to his compatriots over the BBC, urging them to rally to him in London. 'Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.' At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered into history. For the rest of the war, de Gaulle frequently bit the hand that fed him. He insisted on being treated as the true embodiment of France, and quarrelled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. He was prickly, stubborn, aloof and self-contained. But through sheer force of personality and bloody-mindedness he managed to have France recognised as one of the victorious Allies, occupying its own zone in defeated Germany. For ten years after 1958 he was President of France's Fifth Republic, which he created and which endures to this day. His pursuit of 'a certain idea of France' challenged American hegemony, took France out of NATO and twice vetoed British entry into the European Community. His controversial decolonization of Algeria brought France to the brink of civil war and provoked several assassination attempts. Julian Jackson's magnificent biography reveals this the life of this titanic figure as never before. It draws on a vast range of published and unpublished memoirs and documents - including the recently opened de Gaulle archives - to show how de Gaulle achieved so much during the War when his resources were so astonishingly few, and how, as President, he put a medium-rank power at the centre of world affairs. No previous biography has depicted his paradoxes so vividly. Much of French politics since his death has been about his legacy, and he remains by far the greatest French leader since Napoleon.
Author: Jonathan Fenby Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc. ISBN: 1620878054 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 721
Book Description
No leader of modern times was more uniquely patriotic than Charles de Gaulle. In his twenties, he fought for France in the trenches and at the epic battle of Verdun. In the 1930s, he waged a lonely battle to enable France to better resist Hitler Germany. Thereafter, he twice rescued the nation from defeat and decline by extraordinary displays of leadership, political acumen, daring, and bluff, heading off civil war and leaving a heritage adopted by his successors of right and left. Le General, as he became known from 1940 on, appeared as if he was carved from a single monumental block, but was in fact extremely complex, a man with deep personal feelings and recurrent mood swings, devoted to his family and often seeking reassurance from those around him. This is a magisterial, sweeping biography of one of the great leaders of the twentieth century and of the country with which he so identified himself. Written with terrific verve, narrative skill, and rigorous detail, the first major work on de Gaulle in fifteen years brings alive as never before the private man as well as the public leader. -- Publisher description.
Author: Charles De Gaulle Publisher: Franklin Classics ISBN: 9780342651931 Category : Languages : en Pages : 106
Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Author: Don Cook Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504083652 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 461
Book Description
From one of America’s longest-serving foreign correspondents, a biography of France’s controversial politician and statesman. The first major biography of Charles de Gaulle written from an American perspective, this book offers a compelling assessment of the French army officer, politician, and statesman. Author Don Cook, former bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, delineates de Gaulle’s obsession with power and how the military man rose to leadership in the years following the fall of France during the Second World War. Recounting de Gaulle’s triumphant quest to find dignity and independence for France, Cook masterfully brings to life one of Europe’s most influential leaders of the twentieth century.
Author: Ray Argyle Publisher: Dundurn ISBN: 1459722884 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 578
Book Description
At a crucial moment in the Second World War, an obscure French general reaches a fateful personal decision: to fight on alone after his government’s flight from Paris and its capitulation to Nazi Germany. Amid the ravages of a world war, three men — a general, a president, and a prime minister — are locked in a rivalry that threatens their partnership and puts the world’s most celebrated city at risk of destruction before it can be liberated. This is the setting of The Paris Game, a dramatic recounting of how an obscure French general under sentence of death by his government launches on the most enormous gamble of his life: to fight on alone after his country’s capitulation to Nazi Germany. In a game of intrigue and double-dealing, Charles de Gaulle must struggle to retain the loyalty of Winston Churchill against the unforgiving opposition of Franklin Roosevelt and the traitorous manoeuvring of a collaborationist Vichy France. How he succeeds in restoring the honour of France and securing its place as a world power is the stuff of raw history, both stirring and engrossing.
Author: William R. Keylor Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1442236760 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 377
Book Description
In this definitive history, William R. Keylor traces the tumultuous relationship between Charles de Gaulle and a host of other key twentieth-century figures: his former mentor Marshal Philippe Pétain, who headed the collaborationist government in the southern French city of Vichy as the German army occupied the northern two-thirds of the country; Sir Winston Churchill, the British prime minister whose government supported and financed de Gaulle and the Free French, but who clashed with the French leader on a number of hot-button issues; and, most critically, the six American presidents from FDR to Nixon. Keylor uses the metaphor “thorn in the side” to emphasize the fact that challenges from the intrepid French leader were often an annoyance to the Americans, who all had many more important issues to deal with—World War II for Roosevelt and Truman, the Cold War for Eisenhower, and the Vietnam War for Kennedy and Johnson. Richard Nixon alone had an excellent relationship, but the two men overlapped for only four months before de Gaulle’s retirement. Thoroughly researched and deeply knowledgeable, this gripping book will appeal to all readers interested in contemporary French and US history.
Author: Daniel Mahoney Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351523538 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
This analysis of the thought and action of Charles de Gaulle explores the intellectual foundations of Gaullist statecraft. Mahoney's careful exegesis of de Gaulle's major writings and speeches, reveals a penetrating political thinker as well as a major political actor. He explains de Gaulle to an American public that too often sees him as a posturing figure suffering from an exaggerated and misplaced sense of personal and national grandeur. Mahoney shows that de Gaulle's defense of the "grandeur" of France is tied to a fundamentally classical view of human nature and politics. In elucidating de Gaulle's political self-understanding, Mahoney highlights the foundation of his noble but elusive moderation. Mahoney shows how de Gaulle repeatedly and explicitly rejected the cult of the Nietzschean superman, the Bonapartist separation of grandeur from moderation, and all temptations of personal and ideological despotism. He explicates de Gaulle's self-understanding as a statesman or "man of character" who comes to the service of a democratic political order in a time of crisis. He articulates de Gaulle's relationship to classical and Christian thought, his place in the French tradition, his profound debts to the Catholic poet-philosopher Charles Peguy, as well as his important affinities with Alexis de Tocqueville on the need to remain faithful to the dual imperatives of democracy and grandeur. In addition, the book discusses the principal moments of de Gaulle's statecraft from his "appeal" to resistance in June, 1940, and his founding of a new French Republic in 1958, to his articulation of a "Europe of Nations" in the 1960's. In doing so, Mahoney thoughtfully clarifies the Gaullist understanding of the "problem" of democracy: The democratic statesman must correct the corrosive acids of modern individualism, while accepting that democratic individualism sets the inescapable contours of political action in our time. Written in clear and non-technical language for both a scholarly and general audience. De Gaulle will be of interest to students of modern European political history, contemporary political theory, and those concerned with statecraft or statesmanship.
Author: Julian Jackson
Author: Julian Jackson
Author: Jonathan Fenby
Author: Charles De Gaulle
Author: Don Cook
Author: Ray Argyle
Author: Julian Jackson
Author: William R. Keylor
Author: Daniel Mahoney
Author: David Schoenbrun