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Henri Honoré Giraud (French: [ɑ̃ʁi ɔnɔʁe ʒiʁo]; 18 January 1879 – 11 March 1949) was a French military officer who was a leader of the Free French Forces during the Second World War until he was forced to retire in 1944. [1] Born to an Alsatian family in Paris, Giraud graduated from the Saint-Cyr military academy and served in French ...
April 17, 1942 – French General Henri Giraud, reprising his World War I escape, got out of the high-security Königstein Castle by climbing down a 150-foot (46 m) homemade rope. This escape took two years of preparation (versus two months for his World War I escape).
Among the escapees was Henri Giraud, a French General who had commanded a division in 1940, who escaped from Königstein prison and, despite his pro-Vichy sympathies, joined the Free French in 1943. [53] Jean-Paul Sartre also managed to escape by forging papers demonstrating that he had a disability, leading to his repatriation. [54]
The French Committee of National Liberation (French: Comité français de Libération nationale [kɔmite fʁɑ̃sɛ d(ə) libeʁɑsjɔ̃ nɑsjɔnal]) was a provisional government of Free France formed by the French generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle to provide united leadership, organize and coordinate the campaign to liberate France from Nazi Germany during World War II.
At the outset of World War II, Henri Giraud was a member of the French Superior War Council, and disagreed with Charles de Gaulle about the tactics of using armored troops. Giraud became commander of the 7th Army when it was sent to the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, and was captured by the Germans.
a From August 26 to November 9, 1942, 15 convoys from France and a few from Belgium underwent a selection for a work detail at Kosel before arrival at Auschwitz; about 3,000 healthy men were taken, of whom about 2,000 were still alive on April 1, 1944, the day they were registered at Auschwitz.
General Giraud with General Dwight D. Eisenhower at Allied headquarters in Algiers, 1943. The French Civil and Military High Command [45] [46] was the governmental body in Algiers headed by Henri Giraud following the liberation of a portion of French North Africa following the Allied Operation Torch landings on 7 and 8 November 1942.
The designation ceased to exist in 1943 when the Free French Forces merged with General Giraud's forces. The name was still in common use however, until the liberation of France in 1944, when they became the French Air Army. Martial Henri Valin commanded them from 1941 to 1944, then stayed on to command the Air Army.