Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French army officer and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France. In 1958, amid the Algerian War, he came out of retirement when appointed Prime Minister by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position he held until his resignation in 1969.
Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain, commonly known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French general who commanded the French Army in World War I and became the head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II.
Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich,, known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician and diplomat who was also a military and political historian.
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and author. The prize was first awarded in 1956 to Alan Moorehead for his Gallipoli. At present, the winner receives a first edition copy of Duff Cooper's autobiography Old Men Forget and a cheque for £5,000.
Paul Reynaud was a French politician and lawyer prominent in the interwar period, noted for his stances on economic liberalism and militant opposition to Nazi Germany.
Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Wolfson History Prize in 1979 and the Balzan Prize in 2006. Between 1996 and 2008 he was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. He is the Emeritus Professor of the Humanities and Co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London.
The history of France from 1914 to the present includes:
Georges Mandel was a French Jewish journalist, and politician.
The French Social Party was a French nationalist political party founded in 1936 by François de La Rocque, following the dissolution of his Croix-de-Feu league by the Popular Front government. France's first right-wing mass party, prefiguring the rise of Gaullism after the Second World War, it experienced considerable initial success but disappeared in the wake of the fall of France in 1940 and was not refounded after the war.
The Provisional Government of the French Republic was the provisional government of Free France between 3 June 1944 and 27 October 1946, following the liberation of continental France after Operations Overlord and Dragoon, and lasting until the establishment of the French Fourth Republic. Its establishment marked the official restoration and re-establishment of a provisional French Republic, assuring continuity with the defunct French Third Republic.
Mark Mazower is a British historian. His areas of expertise are Greece, the Balkans and, more generally, 20th-century Europe. He is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University in New York City.
Jacques Goddet was a French sports journalist and director of the Tour de France road cycling race from 1936 to 1986.
Gaston Monnerville was a French Radical politician and lawyer who served as the first President of the Senate under the Fifth Republic from 1958 to 1968. He previously served as President of the Council of the Republic from 1947 to 1958. A member of the French Resistance in World War II, he is the first black person to preside over a national parliamentary body in French history.
The Battle of Gabon, also called the Gabon Campaign, occurred in November 1940 during World War II. The battle resulted in forces under the orders of General de Gaulle taking the colony of Gabon and its capital, Libreville, from Vichy France, and the rallying of French Equatorial Africa to Free France.
The French State, popularly known as Vichy France, as led by Marshal Philippe Pétain after the Fall of France in 1940 before Nazi Germany, was quickly recognized by the Allies, as well as by the Soviet Union, until 30 June 1941 and Operation Barbarossa. However, France broke with the United Kingdom after the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Canada maintained diplomatic relations until the occupation of Southern France by Germany and Italy in November 1942.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.
Pierre Firmin Pucheu was a French industrialist, fascist and member of the Vichy government. He became after his marriage the son-in-law of the Belgian architect Paul Saintenoy.
Henry Lémery was a politician from Martinique who served in the French National Assembly from 1914–1919 and the French Senate from 1920–1941. Lémery was briefly Minister of Justice in 1934. During World War II (1939–45) he was Colonial Secretary in the Vichy government for three months in 1940 before being dismissed.
Henri Calloc'h de Kérillis was a French aviator, reporter, writer and politician. A hero of World War I, he traveled widely in the 1920s, and wrote several books about his adventures. He became a journalist, then entered politics as an independent Republican. He was right-wing, conservative and profoundly nationalist. He was hostile to the parties that favored appeasement of Germany in the lead-up to World War II, and went into exile rather than be arrested after the armistice of July 1940. At first a strong supporter of Charles de Gaulle and his Free French, he later fell out with de Gaulle too. He spent the last years of his life in voluntary exile in the United States.
The liberation of France in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French Resistance.
