Why did General de Gaulle opposed Marshal Pétain's government? What were the consequences of this opposition?

Answer 1

On 6 June 1940, Paul Reynaud appointed him undersecretary of state for national defense and war and put him in charge of coordination with the United Kingdom. As a junior member of the French government, he unsuccessfully opposed surrendering. He served as a liaison with the British government, and, with Churchill, proposed a political union between France and the United Kingdom on the morning of 16 June in London. The project would have in effect merged France and the United Kingdom into a single country, with a single government and a single army, for the duration of the war. This was a desperate last minute effort to strengthen the resolve of those members of the French government who were in favor of fighting on.

He took the plane back to Bordeaux (provisional seat of the French government) that same afternoon, but when he arrived in the evening, he learned that Pétain had become premier with the intention of seeking an armistice with Germany.

That day, he made the most important decision in his life and in the modern history of France: he refused to accept French surrender and instead rebelled against the legal (but illegitimate in his eyes) government of Pétain, calling for the continuation of the war. On the morning of 17 June, with 100,000 gold francs in secret funds given to him the previous night by Paul Reynaud, he fled Bordeaux by plane, narrowly escaping German aircraft, and landed in London that afternoon. De Gaulle rejected French capitulation and set about building a movement which would appeal to overseas French, opponents of a separate arrangement with Germany.