Political and military leader of Free French forces and government during World War II who was determined to restore French colonial sovereignty over Indochina by force if need be. De Gaulle served as president of the Provisional Government of the French Republic between 1944 and 20 January 1946. To de Gaulle, the maintenance of the French colonial empire was vital to restoring national prestige and ensuring France’s place in the postwar international system. Without the colonies, de Gaulle declared, France was but a second-tier country. Following the Japanese overthrow of French Indochina, on 24 March 1945 de Gaulle issued the Declaration on Indochina. While this document promised liberal reforms and greater collaboration with the colonized, it was not a plan for decolonization. Following the Japanese capitulation in August 1945, General de Gaulle issued instructions to Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, his new high commissioner for Indochina, to recover and restore French colonial sovereignty to Indochina in accordance with the March Declaration and the government’s federal model of empire. As Frédéric Turpin has shown, even though de Gaulle left the political scene in January 1946 and retired to his residence in Colombey Les Deux Églises, he remained in close touch with Thierry d’Argenlieu and General Philippe Leclerc, and supported the admiral’s aggressive line towards the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. De Gaulle remained a firm believer in the need to restore French colonial rule to Indochina and France’s prestige in the world and his views weighed heavily in Gaullist circles during the Indochina War, making it harder for those seeking to adopt a more conciliatory attitude towards decolonization. When the war in Algeria entered a critical phase, de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, but he increasingly adopted a more realistic attitude towards decolonization and its importance for France’s position and prestige in an increasingly postcolonial international system. This was in marked contrast to his position on Indochina in 1945. See also ALGERIAN WAR; UNITED NATIONS.