Seventy years ago today, Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, authorized General de Gaulle to use the BBC to appeal to the 'Free French' to rally under his command, to urge the French nation to continue its resistance.After Pétain announced France's capitulation, Churchill hoped that members of the French government would join him in London. Only de Gaulle accepted. Churchill had imagined a French and British union (he called it "Frangland") in order to continue the battle against Germany...
On the 22 June, the Bulldog said to de Gaulle (whose courage he admired): "Vous êtes seul? Eh bien, je vous reconnais tout seul." That is how de Gaulle became the leader of the Free French!
The recording of de Gaulle's famous June 18th broadcast has unfortunately been lost.
On the same day, Churchill also gave a speech on the BBC:
"What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour."
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