The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle

“De Gaulle wrote his memoirs in the 1950s when he was out of power. He’s writing them for a very explicit purpose, which is the creation of his own legend. It was a piece of very self-conscious mythmaking. It was making him into the central figure of what happened in France between 1940 and 1944. For example, he rather underplays the role of the internal resistance, and many resistors much resented the fact that de Gaulle didn’t give them enough space. But the story he wanted to tell was really about the military resurrection of France.” Read more...

The best books on Charles de Gaulle

Julian Jackson, Historian

“There are three volumes, and they’re very readable. There are portraits in there of all the great characters de Gaulle encountered – Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt……..In the Memoirs de Gaulle has a sentence: ‘Faced with the political disaster, I had to become France.’ He sort of carries the country on his shoulder – and that’s what Churchill saw. Although de Gaulle was actually a little delusional – perhaps you have to be in such situations – he was driven by this greater sense that only a free sovereign France could restore the nation’s pride and sense of purpose … and that he was the man to do it. At the same time there was also a kind of modesty about him, humility even, and that comes out very clearly when you look at the way the French commemorate the Resistance after 1945.” Read more...

The best books on Charles de Gaulle’s Place in French Culture

Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Scientist