France · 70 years of de Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June

In the spring of 1940, the Wehrmacht defeated the French and British troops in France within a few weeks. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, Marshal Philippe Pétain took over the government and announced that he would seek an armistice. This led to the German occupation of large parts of France; in the unoccupied south, the authoritarian Vichy regime was established, which collaborated with the German Reich.

Charles de Gaulle was a career officer and had advocated before the war for the increased use of mobile armoured units. During the campaign, he was promoted to brigadier general and briefly served as Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence. As he rejected the armistice, he went to Great Britain. In his radio address, he argued that the defeat of the French armies did not yet decide the war. France could rely on its colonial empire, the British alliance and the economic resources of other allies. He called on soldiers, skilled workers and armaments experts to join him.

The immediate reach of the address was limited. No audio recording of the broadcast has survived, and relatively few people are likely to have heard it directly. Only in retrospect did it become a symbol of the continuation of the struggle. The resistance in fact emerged from different groups in occupied and unoccupied France, as well as from the forces of Free France (Freies Frankreich) led by de Gaulle. These currents were only gradually brought together politically and militarily.

De Gaulle developed into the political representative of fighting France and stood at the head of the provisional government after the liberation. Later, as the first president of the Fifth Republic (Fünfte Republik), he shaped its institutions and foreign policy.

The anniversary was suitable for a state commemorative coin because, in French commemorative culture, the address is regarded as the antithesis of capitulation and collaboration. Since 2006, 18 June has also been a national day of remembrance in France, commemorating the historic appeal and the refusal to accept defeat as final.