Oh man, my time has come. My degree is finally coming in handy.

Charles De Gaulle had a really special place within the allied powers, no doubt. Most of the allies didn't see Vichy France under Philippe Petain as neutral because of how willing they were to allow Paris to be occupied, along with how cooperative Petain's government was with Nazi Germany's demands. De Gaulle absolutely hated the Vichy government and openly spoke out against it, so naturally the allies were gonna like De Gaulle more than Petain from the onset.

De Gaulle declared himself the leader of Free France, which was the anti-Petain pseudo French government and after some help from the legendary Jean Moulin, De Gaulle became a uniting force for the French Resistance despite being in London. The resistance played a major role is creating set backs for Nazi advancement toward more of western Europe and the like. De Gaulle got the money to help them from working with the allied forces who weren't a fan of his personality, especially Roosevelt, but liked the idea of France being ruled by someone they could trust more than Petain after the war. And let me tell you, De Gaulle swore up and down that he was going to be the leader of France after the war.

De Gaulle put himself on the map with some help from Paul Reynaud, who was the Prime Minister directly before Petain. He wanted nothing to do with Petain's plans of collaboration and set De Gaulle off to London to work as an opposition to Vichy. When Vichy collapsed in 1943 and entire country of France was under Nazi occupation, De Gaulle saw a moment to sneak in and shoot his shot, and that solidified his position with the allies and victors. Even though the country of France was essentially lost, one French colony wasn't, so De Gaulle migrated/set up the entire French government in Algiers, Algeria which was still considered French soil. He took the broken bits of government that France had left and put them back together while being forced to operate the entire thing on a completely different continent. This move earned him massive amounts of respect from allied forces, so much so that General Dwight Eisenhower personally went to Algiers and promised De Gaulle that Paris would be liberated.

Once De Gaulle had a hold of the government he put every effort and resource into helping ensure an allied victory. And although they didn't have much due to a totally occupation, they still tried. It was a complete 180 from Vichy's government which had since collapsed. When German occupation was forced out and De Gaulle arrived in Paris, there was no question of his leadership from foreign or domestic powers. He did what a lot of people had thought was going to be impossible and sustained France as a power despite all the odds stacked against him and garnered a ton of respect because of it. This was also one of the reasons that the allies were willing to help France so much after the war. If Petain was still in charge after the war, I highly doubt that the allies would have been so kind.

If any of this was unclear or you have more questions feel free to ask! My specialty is in French history from 1789 to 1946 and I love talking about it.

There are a number of factors. France was a world power at the start of the war, fielding an army of 2 million men which eventually became POWs[1] and they had an incredibly powerful navy. This doesnt include the number of soldiers who were fighting under the Vichy leadership in the colonies, especially north africa, and the free french soldiers who had escaped the Battle of France. While the most common image of the African theater of war was Rommel and the tubruki rats, one of the major military operations was a triple pronged attack against Morocco, Mers el Kerib, and Algiers which were held by the Vichy french and the attack was being framed as the Free French coming to liberate them. Each prong faced differing resistance, but the short version is that western north africa came under allied control and the Free France Army and Army of Africa (a french colonial army which eventually merged with the FFA) grew in strength. After the liberation of France, the POWs rejoined the allied forces and the French Forces of the Interior (the main non-communist resistance group) were integrated as well. So by the treaty of Paris, when the victors were solidified, France had one of the largest armies in europe and was overseeing the occupation of southwest germany. So its far from accurate to say the allies were generous, the french were a powerful nation and became one again towards the end of the war and

There were other factors, such as the fact that France and the UK had gone into the war as very strong allies and the scars of the first world war, and that France, as a democratic nation, would be able to help counter the Soviets which had already became a clear opponent.

[1] Raffael Scheck, "The Prisoner of War Question and the Beginnings of Collaboration: The Franco-German Agreement of 16 November 1940."Journal of Contemporary History 45#2 (2010): 364-388

Related question, why weren’t other allies (such as the Dutch or Canada) treated similarly to France?

Great read thank you!