General de Gaulle goes to England
On June 3, 1944 , General de Gaulle accepted Winston Churchill's invitation to travel to Great Britain , while in Algiers, the French Committee of National Liberation declared itself the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). He left Algiers by plane that evening for England via Morocco. Arriving in Northolt at 6:00 a.m. on June 4, de Gaulle went to Churchill's invitation to lunch at 13:30 p.m. in his armored train near Portsmouth. It was at this time that he was briefed on the outline of Operation Overlord . In the afternoon, Churchill and de Gaulle visited General Eisenhower at his headquarters in Southwick House.
He was also invited by his hosts to record a statement for the BBC, the text of which had been prepared and written by Eisenhower himself. This proposal, in which French authority was not even mentioned, provoked de Gaulle's anger and a severe altercation with Churchill. Consequently, de Gaulle refused to deliver the speech, took his leave of his interlocutors, left SHAEF headquarters, and returned to London. On the evening of June 6, he obtained permission to deliver his own now-famous speech on the BBC:
“The supreme battle is engaged…”