The Traitor Who Saved France - June 18, 1940

On June 18, 1940, General Charles de Gaulle stepped in front of a BBC microphone in London and committed treason. The French government sentenced him to death for it. And the broadcast that supposedly launched the French Resistance was barely heard and was never recorded.In this episode of The Daily History Chronicle, we go inside one of World War II’s most mythologized moments and find a story far more complicated than the legend. De Gaulle was legally a traitor. Marshal Pétain was trying to save French lives. The famous ‘June 18 recording’ was made four days later. And the myth that emerged may have mattered more than the act itself.What do you do when the institutions meant to protect your nation have surrendered? Who gets to claim legitimacy when the legal government has collapsed? And how do nations survive their darkest hours through the act, or through the story they build around it?