Historians argue box office enthusiasm shows desire for unifying figure as country faces political division
On 18 June 1940, Charles de Gaulle, then a little-known junior army officer, sat in a BBC studio in London and made his famous rallying call for the French to resist the Nazi occupation and its puppet Vichy government.
In the eyes of the British prime minister Winston Churchill, De Gaulle was an arrogant, stubborn and defiant thorn in his and the allies’ side, but the Frenchman never stopped believing in the greatness of France and the need for resistance.
