70th Anniversary of the Appeal of 18 June

General de Gaulle in uniform, bare-headed, before a period microphone as he delivers his appeal. The engraver has cleverly incorporated the abbreviation "RF" for "République française" into the manuscript. In the upper inner field: the year "2010" with "70 ANS" (70 Years) and "APPEL 18 JUIN" (Appeal of 18 June) below it.

The Appeal of 18 June 1940 is regarded as one of the most consequential moments in European wartime history. As news of France's armistice with Germany was still echoing across Europe, General Charles de Gaulle addressed his fellow countrymen from London via the BBC and called on them to keep fighting. The speech broke with the surrender policy of the Vichy regime and gave rise to the Forces françaises libres, the Free French Forces. De Gaulle's appearance marked the beginning of an organised French resistance that stretched from North Africa to Great Britain and contributed decisively to France emerging as a victorious power at the end of the Second World War. In French memorial culture, 18 June still holds the rank of a founding national moment.

Charles de Gaulle, born in Lille in 1890, matured from a military career in the 1930s into a political thinker; at the time of the Appeal he was an almost unknown brigadier general and deputy defence minister. His call was initially heard by only a few, but in retrospect it gained a symbolic force that shaped his entire later political career - from leading Free France, through the liberation of Paris in 1944, to founding the Fifth Republic in 1958, of which he became the first president. France marks the 70th anniversary of the Appeal in 2010 with this commemorative coin, honouring a moment that has remained effective for the nation's self-image to this day.