Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle was a general who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969.
De Gaulle fought in World War I, then rose through the ranks in the 1920's and 1930's. He was interested in armored warfare and aviation, particularly as a way to break the stalemate of trench warfare.
During World War II, he was the highest-ranking French officer to escape to England during the Fall of France. In a radio address in June 1940, he asked the French people to continue resistance. He organized the Free French, who with the Allies fought their way back into France and then invaded Germany. He was generally disliked by the British and Americans, who viewed him as an arrogant opportunist who placed politics and self-promotion above winning the war.
He led the provisional government following the war, then was out of power from 1946 until 1958, when he helped found the Fifth Republic and became its first president.
As president, he abandoned Algeria, and repeatedly antagonized the United States and Great Britain, whose influence he saw as too strong.