The family also decided to donate “nearly 1,300 handwritten or typed documents of General de Gaulle”.
The de Gaulle family will give the state the manuscript of the call on June 18, where Charles de Gaulle urged in 1940 to resist Nazi Germany, the Artcurial auction house said on Friday. A ceremony is scheduled for June 12 with this auction house which, in December, took care of the sale of the succession of the eldest son, Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, died at 102, in March 2024. The family also decided to donate “Nearly 1,300 manuscript or typed documents of General de Gaulle”said Artcurial.
The appeal manuscript launched since London on June 18, 1940, on the BBC, had been exposed for the first time before this auction. He was not for sale. The two retrato-verso leaves, with many erasures, were first preserved by Yvonne de Gaulle, and then went through bank chests.
Charles de Gaulle, promoted to general during the fighting against the German invasion launched in May 1940, left France by plane for England on June 17, being hostile to the choice of Philippe Pétain as head of government and the idea of an armistice. On 18, at 6.30 p.m., to all the other French who made this same choice, he appeals to join him and he says: “Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance should not go out and will not go out”.