“France lost a battle! But France did not lose the war!”It was 62 years ago today that the general Charles De Gaulle initiated the French Resistance with his famous Appeal of June 18th, in 1940.

As the only government minister who refused defeat against Germany, de Gaulle sought refuge in Great Britain, where he made his famous call to resistance on the BBC.

Few people actually heard him that day and there is no recording of it. But he repeated it to a broader audience four days later on the day of the signature of the Franco-German armistice.

It is a particularly moving text. However, it was not in this call to resistance that he uttered the famous line, “France lost a battle! But France did not lose the war!”  That quote actually appeared in August of 1940 on propaganda posters smuggled into France.