de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle, savior of France's honor in 1940 and founder of the Fifth Republic, was a man and leader of deep contradictions. A conservative and a Catholic from a monarchist family, he restored democracy on his return to France in 1944, bringing the Communists into his government. An imperialist, he oversaw the final stages of France's withdrawal from its last colonies in the 1960s. As a soldier, he spent much of his career in opposition to France's military establishment. Yet, as Julian Jackson shows in De Gaulle, it was precisely because of these contradictions that he was able to reconcile so many of the conflicting strands in French politics. In 1958, in response to a coup by the French military in Algeria, De Gaulle introduced a new political system, the Fifth Republic, ushering in a period of stability that has been held to the present day.