Gaston Palewski
| Gaston Palewski | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| President of the Constitutional Council of France | |
|
In office 1965–1974 |
|
| President |
Charles de Gaulle Georges Pompidou |
| Preceded by | Léon Noël |
| Succeeded by | Roger Frey |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
20 March 1901 Paris, France |
| Died | 3 September 1984 (aged 83) Le Val-Saint-Germain, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Alma mater |
University of Paris University of Oxford |
Gaston Palewski (20 March 1901 – 3 September 1984), French politician, was a close associate of Charles de Gaulle during and after World War II. He is also remembered as the lover of the English novelist Nancy Mitford, and appears in a fictionalised form in two of her novels.
Palewski was born in Paris, the son of an industrialist. His family was of Polish origin and had lived in France since the 19th century. He was educated at the Sorbonne, at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques and at Oxford University—he spoke excellent English and was a convinced Anglophile. Using family connections, he obtained a post with Marshal Hubert Lyautey, the French Resident-General in Morocco. In 1928 he became principal private secretary to Paul Reynaud, a leading politician who was then Minister for Finances and who became Prime Minister of France in March 1940. Through Reynaud, in 1934, he first met Charles de Gaulle, and became a supporter of his political and military views.
On the outbreak of war in 1939 Palewski was commissioned as a lieutenant in the French Air Force, and saw action following the German invasion of France in May 1940. He was in French North Africa at the time of the armistice of June 1940. Refusing to accept France's defeat, he reached London at the end of August and joined de Gaulle's Free French Forces. De Gaulle appointed him Director of Political Affairs of the Free French movement, and he played a leading role in negotiations between de Gaulle and the British government, which at first regarded de Gaulle with scepticism. In March 1941 he was given the rank of lieutenant-colonel and command of the Free French Army in East Africa, leading it against the Italian forces during the recapture of French Somaliland (now Djibouti). In September 1942, he was recalled to London to become de Gaulle's Directeur du Cabinet, a post in which he followed de Gaulle from London to Algiers in 1943 and then in August 1944 to liberated Paris. He became known as de Gaulle's homme de confiance (right-hand man), and his diplomatic skills and knowledge of the British made him invaluable to de Gaulle, who neither understood the British nor trusted them.
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