When one man asked, ‘Has the last word been said?’

De Gaulle vs. Hitler, 75 years later

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De Gaulle on the air, 1940: No tanks or planes, but courage and eloquence.
De Gaulle on the air, 1940: No tanks or planes, but courage and eloquence.

It was the worst of times. On the morning of May 15, 1940 — five days after the German army invaded France — French Premier Paul Reynaud telephoned the new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, and told him, "We have been defeated. We are beaten. We have lost the battle."

Barely two weeks later, the entire British Expeditionary Force in France was evacuated across the English Channel, leaving the demoralized French forces to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht alone.

Things quickly went downhill from there. On June 14, the German army marched into Paris unopposed while the French government fled to Tours and then to Bordeaux. Two days later, Reynaud resigned as premier, to be succeeded by Marshal Philippe Pétain. A generation earlier, this World War I hero had defiantly declared, “They shall not pass!” during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. (See my previous column here.) But by 1940 Pétain was 83 years old and, like many of his exhausted countrymen, tired of fighting — and in any case Pétain was more concerned about Communists and Socialists than Nazis. Immediately upon taking office, Pétain announced his intention to seek an armistice with Germany. France’s war with Nazi Germany was over, or so most people assumed.

‘Is defeat final?’

But at this low point in French history, something remarkable occurred. A little-known French brigadier general, only recently appointed an undersecretary in France’s department of national defense, took to the airwaves to reject Pétain’s capitulation. Much like Joan of Arc five centuries earlier, Charles de Gaulle decided that he, and not the country’s defeatist leaders, represented the true soul of France.

In an extraordinary speech broadcast from London on June 18, de Gaulle refused to recognize the legitimacy of Pétain’s government. Instead, he appealed to the French people to continue the fight against Hitler. This Appeal of June 18, as it came to be known, was remarkable not only for its courage and its prescience but also for its eloquence. After acknowledging that France had indeed been overwhelmed by Germany’s superior tanks, planes, numbers, and tactics, de Gaulle asked rhetorically, “But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!”

The war, de Gaulle reminded his listeners, “is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country,” but was in fact “a worldwide war.” Although the U.S. would not enter that war for another 18 months, de Gaulle foresaw that ultimately the French Resistance could summon the resources of American industry and British sea power, not to mention France’s own overseas colonies, to reclaim their country.

Annual celebration

“Nothing is lost for France,” de Gaulle insisted. “The same means that overcame us can bring us victory one day. For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone!” Whatever happens, he concluded, “the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished."

That speech is now venerated in France as the birth of the French Resistance to Germany’s occupation. Each year, it is celebrated throughout France as an inspiring reminder of the power of hope and optimism amid the darkest depths of oppression and despair.

Why am I telling you this?

Doctor as mayor

This past June 18, my wife and I were vacationing in Talloires, a picturesque village on Lake Annecy in the French Alps, where I spent three summers as a boy and to which I have returned often in adulthood. Of course I had forgotten the significance of the date — it was my vacation, after all — just as I was clueless about the Parisian taxi driver protest that we inadvertently waded into a week later. (For more about that nightmare, click here.)

I had just taken a swim in our hotel pool and was relaxing at poolside when, around 6 pm, I heard what sounded like a military band. Since I’m a sucker for military music and parades of all sorts, I hiked the block or so into the heart of the village to see what was going on. In a tiny park next to the post office I found perhaps a hundred villagers, most of them older, watching a ceremony involving the aforementioned military band as well as a few local dignitaries. But of course! They were commemorating the 75th anniversary of de Gaulle’s speech.

Wet swimsuit

The master of ceremonies was Jean Favrot, the mayor of Talloires for as long as I can remember, who makes his living as the local physician. In his tiny medical office just a few days before, Dr. Favrot had patched up a growth on my finger and refused to accept payment for his service. Now he was uncharacteristically decked out in a suit and tie, with a ceremonial tricolor sash stretched diagonally across his chest.

Amid these formalities, I felt very much out of place in my T-shirt, wet swimsuit, and flip-flops. But I hung out at the back of the crowd in the hope that no one would notice me.

The ceremony ended with the playing of the “Song of the Partisans,” a Resistance hymn, followed by Dr. Favrot’s closing remarks. The last thing he said, apparently spontaneously, was, “And let’s not forget our debt to the Americans.” At this point he gestured in my direction, and the whole audience turned toward me, leaving me no choice but to wave back sheepishly in my decidedly unheroic attire. When the ceremony ended, Dr. Favrot headed directly toward me and shook my hand.

Andrew Jackson said it

And the morals of this story are:

  • The French appreciate Americans in ways that we Americans fail to appreciate. “If we criticize the States, it’s because we love the States,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman recently told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. “But we love a certain representation of the States. We love Lincoln. We love Kennedy. We love Roosevelt and the New Deal. We love the Founding Fathers. We love the creativity. We don’t like the rifle association.” (Click here.)
  • The democratic impulse is more enduring than we think. Autocracies are more vulnerable than we think.
  • Don’t get too hung up on inappropriate attire. As my former Talloires camp director Charlotte MacJannet put it once when I showed up at a museum reception in shorts and sandals, “The important thing is that you’re interested, and that you’re here.”
  • As for de Gaulle, Andrew Jackson put it best in the 19th century: “One man with courage makes a majority.”

“You’re not going to believe what just happened to me,” I told my wife when I returned to our hotel room after the ceremony. But why not believe? What happened to me was small potatoes next to the collapse and rebirth of France, more than seven decades ago.

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