Appeal of 18 June as the beginning of the Resistance and Free French, historians have shown that the appeal was heard only by a minority of French people. De Gaulle's 22 June 1940 speech on the BBC was more widely heard. General de Gaulle became the "de facto" leader of the Free French Forces that had escaped to London in June 1940. Marshal Philippe Pétain, a hero of World War I, pledged to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany, and led the collaborating Vichy government while the Germans occupied the country's northern portion and several leading politicians, including Georges Mandel, Leon Blum, Pierre Mendès
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong (Sourcebooks, 2003) is the first book from the writer-journalist team Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau. The idea for the book came from the couple’s two-year stay in Paris from 1999 to 2001. In 1999, Jean-Benoît Nadeau received a grant from the Institute of Current World Affairs to study the French. The topic of study was: Why the French resist globalization. Two weeks after arriving in France the authors realized that the French were not resisting globalization at all. Jean-Benoît Nadeau wrote long reports to the foundation of his