French Third Republic during the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its opposition to the "imperialist war" against Germany in 1939–40). From a different perspective, Gaullists called the Third Republic a "weak" regime and argued that if France had a regime headed by a strong-man president like Charles de Gaulle before 1940, the defeat could have been avoided. In power, they did exactly that and started the Fifth Republic. Then was a group of French historians, centered around Pierre Renouvin and his "protégés" Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Maurice Baumont, that started a new type of international history to take into what Renouvin called (profound forces) such as
French presidential elections under the Fifth Republic was reduced to five years. Currently, the President of the French Republic is elected to a five-year term in a two-round election under Article 7 of the Constitution: if no candidate secures an absolute majority (including blank and void ballots) of votes in the first round, a second round is held two weeks later between the two candidates who received the most votes. Since 1965, when the current (direct) election system was introduced, every election has gone to a second round. The latest election was in 2017. The first round was held on 23 April 2017, the second on 7