On 29 May 1968, de Gaulle postponed the meeting of the Council of Ministers scheduled for the day, and secretly removed his personal papers from Élysée Palace.
He told his son-in-law Alain de Boissieu “I do not want to give them a chance to attack the Elysée. It would be regrettable if blood were shed in my personal defense. I have decided to leave: nobody attacks an empty palace.”
De Gaulle refused Pompidou’s request that he dissolve the National Assembly as he believed that their party, the Gaullists, would lose the resulting election, telling Pompidou “I am the past; you are the future; I embrace you”.
De Gaulle then mysteriously disappeared, telling no one in the government where he was going. The canceling of the ministerial meeting, and the president’s disappearance, stunned the country.
Pompidou unsuccessfully requested that military radar be used to follow de Gaulle’s two helicopters, but soon learned that he had fled to the headquarters of the French military in Germany, in Baden-Baden, to meet General Jacques Massu.
Massu persuaded the discouraged de Gaulle to return to France; now knowing that he had the military’s support, de Gaulle rescheduled the meeting of the Council of Ministers for the next day.
His wife Yvonne gave the family jewels to their son and daughter-in-law—who stayed in Baden for a few more days—for safekeeping, however, indicating that the de Gaulles still considered Germany a possible refuge.
Massu kept as a state secret de Gaulle’s loss of confidence until others disclosed it in 1982; until then most observers believed that his disappearance was intended to remind the French people of what they might lose.
Although the disappearance was real and not intended as motivation, it indeed had such an effect on France.