This was what made de Gaulle so glorious: He made no promises—only demands. It was your duty to resist, he said. We are being called by a higher power, to a higher cause. We must free ourselves. In the end, some four hundred thousand French men and women joined this resistance, blowing up bridges, gathering intelligence, sabotaging their occupiers, saving people from the camps, picking off the enemy one by one, weakening them in advance of the Allied invasion.
