Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie was born in Paris on January 6, 1900 and after studying at the private high school Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles, he joined École Navale (the French naval academy, in charge of the education of the officers of the French Navy) in 1919. Resigning the navy in 1931, d'Astier began a career in journalism, writing for "Marianne" and "VU". With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he was mobilised to work at centre de renseignements maritimes de Lorient (English: maritime information center of Lorient), north-western France until the Fall of France in 1940. Refusing the armistice with Germany, he co-founded the Resistance movement (English: the Last Column), publishing counter-propaganda against cooperation with Germany, and worked as an editor of the newspaper "La Montagne". After the Last Column was decimated by arrests in 1941, he went into hiding under the pseudonym "Bernard". By 1943, after meetings in London with Charles de Gaulle, and in Washington with the United States' President Roosevelt, to secure the formation and recognition of the Free French Forces, he again visited London as the Commissioner for Political Affairs of le Directoire des Mouvements unis de Résistance (English: the Directory of United Movements of Resistance).