For de Gaulle these were years of contemplation and spiritual regeneration, comparable to St John the Baptist in the desert, Lenin in exile, Winston Churchill in the political wilderness of the 1930s, and Konrad Adenauer at the monastery of Maria Laachs as a refugee from Nazism. It was this detachment which was to enable him to time to perfection the moment when, as he phrased it, "I would release the deus ex machina, in other words make my entrance."

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 851