Episode 33: Charles De Gaulle and the birth of the 5th Republic

In 1940, Charles de Gaulle saved France. He called for resistance to the Nazi occupation from London. In 1958, with the French republic crumbling, he stepped forward to save France again.

In English language history, it is de Gaulle’s defiance in WW2 and his role in the rise of the Free French that dominates discussion. In post war study, he is sometimes portrayed as an aloof figure and a man out of time, obsessed with restoring French glory over all else.

This is an unfair portrait. Post war, de Gaulle was both loved and loathed. Churchill planned the route of his own funeral to include Waterloo station, precisely because he knew it would annoy de Gaulle who would be forced to attend.

But during the late 1950s the French fourth Republic teetered on the edge of collapse. With the French military already moving to launch a coup d’etat, de Gaulle’s intervention would prove critical to the restoration of stability, and the birth of the Fifth Republic. He would go on, as president, to oversee many of the pillars of cultural, structural and international relations that still form the basis of France today.

In this episode, we’re going to look at France’s near-coup and collapse, and the role of de Gaulle in its salvation.

Guest

Charles Devellennes is senior lecturer in political and social thought at the university of Kent.

He’s a historian of political thought, having written his thesis on atheism in the radical enlightenment, as well as a political theorist and scholar of French politics.

He has written three books, including ´The Macron regime’ in 2022, and is currently finishing his fourth book which deals with the institutional decline of the Fifth Republic: ‘The 18 Brumaire of Emmanuel Macron’.

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