From 1919, French foreign policy aimed at keeping Germany weak through a system of alliances, but it failed to check the rise of Hitler and the Nazi war machine. On May 10, 1940, Nazi troops attacked Paris, and Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain had to sign an armistice on June 22, 1940, which led to partition of France into an occupied north and an unoccupied south. France remained under German occupation during 1940-44, and was liberated by Allied forces only in August 1944.
On 13th November 1945, the first Constituent Assembly unanimously elected de Gaulle as head of the French government but he had to resign on 20th January 1946. He returned to politics in 1958 when he was elected president during the Algerian crisis. He granted independence to all 13 French African colonies but the Algerian War continued until 1962. In 1966 de Gaulle withdrew France from the integrated military command of NATO and expelled all foreign-controlled troops from the country. De Gaulle's government was weakened by massive protests in May 1968 when student rallies became violent and millions of factory workers engaged in wildcat strikes across France. He resigned from office in April 1969 and Georges Pompidou emerged as his successor. The conservative, pro-business climate led to the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as president of France in 1974.
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