Then-Vice Admiral Philippe de Gaulle speaks in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on March 5, 1976. (Netherlands National Archives)
Philippe de Gaulle, a longtime French naval commander who carried a family legacy as the eldest child of wartime hero and president Charles de Gaulle, but who described his famous lineage as both an honor and burden, died March 13 in Paris. He was 102.
The death, at a veterans’ hospital, was announced by the French navy and the presidential Élysée Palace. No cause was noted.
For the French public, Adm. de Gaulle represented an evocative connection to his father and the Free French mobilization against Nazi Germany after the fall of Paris in 1940. Adm. de Gaulle bore a close resemblance to his late father, both tall and ramrod straight, and sharing the same aquiline nose and heavy eyelids.
Like his father, Adm. de Gaulle also made his way to England to begin France’s resistance in World War II. He crossed the English Channel in June 1940 - along with his mother and two sisters - just days after German troops entered Paris. Philippe learned from a British newspaper story that his father had just made a radio address on the BBC from London calling on the French military and civilians and colonies to carry on the fight.
“The destiny of the world is here,” said Gen. de Gaulle.
“The flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished,” he said to end the four-minute speech, which is widely regarded as the beginning of France’s battle to reclaim the country.
Before the war, Philippe de Gaulle entered a naval academy. His father wanted him to pursue a diplomatic career instead. “It’s hardly an advantage for one family to have too many soldiers,” Charles de Gaulle was quoted as saying.
As a junior officer, Philippe took part in battles in the Channel and the Atlantic. He later led a platoon of marines on missions in France after D-Day in June 1944.
With Allied forces about to retake Paris that August, his unit reached the center of the city ahead of the triumphant arrival of his father alongside other French military leaders, Gen. Marie-Pierre Koenig and Gen. Jacques-Philippe Leclerc. They walked from the Arc de Triomphe at the Place de l’Étoile (now the Place de Général de Gaulle) down the Champs-Elysées.
Along the way, Gen. de Gaulle greeted his son, who was assembled with his platoon. He was dispatched to take a captured German major to the Palais Bourbon, the meeting place of the National Assembly, to obtain the surrender of German troops remaining in the neoclassical landmark. Philippe de Gaulle negotiated the terms alone and unarmed, he later wrote, seeking to lower tensions.
After the war, he rose through the naval ranks and took part in French battles in Indochina in the 1950s, a prelude to the Vietnam War, and commanded France’s Atlantic fleet in the 1970s. He was promoted to admiral in 1980 and ended his military career two years later as the navy’s inspector general.
When the former president de Gaulle died in 1970, the family gathered in a modest cemetery in Colombey les‐Deux‐Eglises in central France. De Gaulle said he did not want a state funeral. His son Philippe stood with the family by the casket for days as mourners streamed to the village from around the country. “General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow,” said French President Georges Pompidou in his announcement of the death.
This was part of the historical weight Adm. de Gaulle said he felt as a caretaker of the legacy. “From time to time, it has fallen to me to undergo various aggravations,” he told journalist Michel Tauriac.
Adm. de Gaulle sensed an obligation to share stories of his father beyond his roles as military leader and statesman. In a two-volume set, “De Gaulle mon père” (“De Gaulle my father”) in 2003 and 2004, Adm. de Gaulle left critics and readers sifting through a range of emotions. He was protective of his father’s almost-mythological stature. He also brought up some of his own memories.
Adm. de Gaulle described his father as cool and distant - an image at odds with the loving bonds Charles de Gaulle displayed with his youngest daughter, Anne, who had Down syndrome and died in 1948.
“After having hugged me, which he did rarely, he sent me away after 15 minutes,” Adm. de Gaulle recalled. He wrote: “I never saw my father feel like laughing out loud.”
The book became a bestseller, partly because so few details of Gen. de Gaulle’s domestic life were known. Adm. de Gaulle offered up other random details such as how his father loved sauerkraut and that he used silly riddles to amuse his grandchildren.
“I know everything, my boy. Your position has never been easy,” Adm. de Gaulle said his father once told him. “It’s not nothing to be the son of General de Gaulle.”
After the war, Adm. de Gaulle did not receive the resistance’s highest honor, the Compagnon de la Libération, or Companion of the Liberation. He said his father confided: “Everyone knows you were my first ‘compagnon.’”
Many historians took issue with Adm. de Gaulle’s books despite the new family insights. He was criticized for pettiness and apparent misrepresentations in his unflattering comments about some French writers and former political leaders. “The admiral mobilized the general,” wrote French historian Pierre Nora in a review.
In an interview with Le Figaro newspaper to mark his 100th birthday in 2021, Adm. de Gaulle said his father died at 79 with his life’s work unfinished.
“I thought I would be killed at 18, during the war,” he said. “I would have preferred to lend a little of my longevity to my father, so that he could live a few more years. He still had a lot to write.”
Philippe Henri Xavier Antoine de Gaulle was born on Dec. 28, 1921, in Paris. His father at the time was an army captain and veteran of World War I. His mother was part of a family whose holdings had included shipbuilding operations.
After his military career, Adm. de Gaulle went into politics. He was elected to the senate in 1986 and served until 2004. More than 50 relatives of Charles de Gaulle issued a letter in 1999 denouncing Adm. de Gaulle’s son, Charles de Gaulle Jr., for joining the far-right National Front party in a successful bid for a seat in the European Parliament.
“You cannot use [the family name] to defend … the ideas and the men who for more than half a century have been enemies of what General de Gaulle stood for,” the letter said.
Adm. de Gaulle’s other books included “Lettres, notes et carnets” (“Letters, Notes and Notebooks”), a collection of material by his father, which was published in various volumes beginning in 1980; and a two-volume memoir, “Mémoires accessoires” (“Ancillary Memories”) in 1997 and 2000.
Adm. de Gaulle’s wife, the former Henriette de Montalembert, died in 2014. Survivors include four sons. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
In 2005, Charles de Gaulle topped yet another poll asking to pick the greatest French figure in history. Napoleon finished 16th behind names such as scientist Louis Pasteur, singer Edith Piaf and ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau.
“The other finalists are all very famous, very valuable, but each in their own sphere,” Adm. de Gaulle commented after the poll results were released. “My father was more universal.”
