Commentary on Binion

Binion’s paper compares the similarities (and the differences) in the accession to power of Pétain in 1940 and the return of de Gaulle in 1958. The end of both the Third and the Fourth Republics came in the aftermath of defeat—by the German armies in 1940; in Indo-China and North Africa, as well as after Suez, but also, in 1958, to avert a military coup by the army leaders fearful of a sellout in Algeria to those struggling against French control. De Gaulle orchestrated surrender in Algeria quite contrary, presumably, to the expectations of those whose possible revolt had precipitated the political crisis in France, but like Pètain he then proceeded to implement a change in regime that put much greater power in his hands as the executive leader of the state.