r his detachment from the RPF, de Gaulle lived in relative, peace and quietness. In October 1954, de Gaulle released his first volume of his War Memoirs entitled LAppel. It met with great success. On June 30 1955, de Gaulle had a press conference to formally announce, his retirement. The second volume of his memoirs, LUnite was released in 1956 and met with the same, success as his first volume.In 1958, France stood on the verge of civil war over what to do with the independence of Algeria. French officers took control over the Algerian government and demanded that de Gaulle head a new government. With the permission of the Assembly, de Gaulle drew up a new constitution giving much more power to the executive branch. It also made a president to be elected every seven years by an Electoral College of 80,000 public figures. 79 percent of the French electorate voted in favor of the new system. In December of 1958, de Gaulle was elected the first president of the new government. In March 1962, France signed a cease-fire with Algeria ending over seven years of war. On July 3 France recognized the independence of Algeria. De Gaulle finally solved the problem that called him back to active politics.In April de Gaulle banned all American nuclear weapons from France (Ledwidge 272). De Gaulles reasoning for this was to protect France from a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union in order to take out American weapons in France. De Gaulle also played a part in the Cuban Missile Crisis. In August French Intelligence passed information to the U.S. about the arrival of nuclear weapons in Cuba and de Gaulle proclaimed that France would back America if a war broke out.In 1963, de Gaulle blocked Great Britains entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). His reasoning was that Britain was ahead of France in nuclear weaponry, and if France had let Britain in the EEC, then France would be behind Britain economically and militaristically. Also in 1963,de...
