ABSTRACT
The gaullists were much more numerous when the Rassemblement du peuple franfais was officially created by General de Gaulle in Strasbourg on April 7, 1947. Great courage was needed to become a gaullist in 1940, a certain amount of merit to become, and to remain one during the Fourth Republic; after 1958, one might find personal advantage in becoming a gaullist. Gaullism is therefore first a story – the story of thirty years of history; ‘a film in episodes’ Georges Pompidou said one day, from the heroic gaullism of 1940 to the activist gaullism of 1947, to gaullism in power in 1958. The gaullists of the first generation, the ‘historic gaullists’ as they are sometimes called within the movement, have in common the shame of May 1940, the pride in August 1944, in Paris liberated. New blood, however, has been brought into gaullism in increasing quantities during the last few years.
