First Bayeux speech

First Speech of Charles de Gaulle

Part of World War II
Monument commemorating General de Gaulle’s visit to Bayeux on June 14, 1944
Date	June 14, 1944
Location	Bayeux, France
Participants	Charles de Gaulle
Outcome	Strengthened the legitimacy of the Provisional Government of the French Republic and countered American plans for French administration

The First Bayeux Speech was a speech delivered by General Charles de Gaulle of France in the context of liberation after the Normandy landings in June 1944.

A few days after the Normandy landings, General Charles de Gaulle sought to symbolically meet the French people in one of the first towns liberated. He also aimed to counter the American intentions to establish their own administration in France in the form of the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT), a branch of which had been specifically prepared to govern France. In this context, the United States military government in France had even begun circulating a currency based on the dollar in the liberated territories of Europe.

Arriving in Bayeux on June 14, 1944, de Gaulle delivered a speech in the town^[1] before traveling to the United States for the first time. His visit included meetings with French scientists working on the Manhattan Project and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The enthusiastic reception from the population confirmed his popularity in France^[2] which discouraged the United States from placing France under their administration. The Provisional Government of the French Republic, officially formed on June 3, 1944, in Algiers, the capital of French Algeria, under de Gaulle’s leadership as the successor to the French Committee of National Liberation, was thus able to establish itself in Paris after the liberation of the capital and assume effective leadership of the country.