A man of undeviating principle or a modern Machiavelli? De Gaulle has never been short of detractors or supporters. This book traces the career of a man legendary for his abrasiveness, yet able to command the deepest loyalty, whose 30 years of political prominence have left an indelible mark on modern France.

The various stages of his career are examined by leading French and British historians (often making the work of the French historians accessible in English for the first time). The proclamation of a Free France in 1940 is seen as the fundamental legitimizing event of de Gaulle's career, giving him the authority nearly 20 years later to resolve the Algerian crisis.

Between those two events lay the triumph of Liberation, leadership of the postwar provisional government, resignation and the wilderness years of the Fourth Republic. The Algerian crisis was the occasion for de Gaulle's political renaissance and provided an opportunity for this most subtle of tacticians to restructure the political institutions of France and create the fifth Republic.

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De Gaulle's political significance has endured, due in good measure to his reputation as the embodiment of national unity during the war and his political achievements between 1958 and 1969. He has become part of the collective French patrimony - ironically in view of his combative nature - and a figure of consensus around which various political viewpoints can gather to reinforce their own legitimacy.

The contributors to De Gaulle and Twentieth Century France demonstrate how central an appreciation of de Gaulle and his legacy remain to an understanding of modern France.