Forty years ago this month, Marshal Philippe Petain told the French people in a radio broadcast that he was asking the Germans for an end to hostilities. The following day, a young man named Charles de Gaulle replied in a broadcast from the BBC in London that 'the flame of French resistance must not and shall not be extinguished'.
Roderick Kedward traces the 'myth' of de Gaulle back to this remarkable broadcast. He describes how small groups of like-minded men and women, who were determined to do something about the Nazi occupation, and the Vichy regime came together and formed resistance groups.
With the help of former resistance members, de Gaulle's wartime personal assistant, and the BBC's own archives, he examines the controversial relationship between de Gaulle and resistance movements inside France.