Charles De Gaulle

I read Audible version which is a digitized antique of such poor sound quality that it is barely listenable.

Through that, an excellent narrative of de Gaulle's life emerges. Fervently nationalist he rallies colonial troops and resources as the core of a Free French fighting force after the fall of France in WW II. Brashly and boldly (even curtly) demanding a seat at the table and equality among the democratic leaders, he emerges as the president of a freed France post-war. Interesting to me, at this time significant Communist political power in the country gave him significant headwinds. After a brief retirement and memoir writing, he returns to clash with Ike to JFK, etc. over nuclear and NATO goals. The Multilateral Force (MLF) was a show more proposal by the United States in the 1960s to create a NATO nuclear fleet to defend Western Europe from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The MLF was intended to give European NATO members a greater role in nuclear defense and to address the nuclear dilemma that strategists believed would arise after the Eisenhower Administration. De Gaulle's resistance to French forces of any kind under any foreign direction seems to have led to nuclear proliferation (France and the UK became independent nuclear powers) and dashed the idea of a unified European or NATO army. show less

Biography of the French leader. Workmanlike and useful, but not particularly exciting. A good place to begin research on De Gaulle.