Background

Ethnicity: Georges Catroux was born to a French father and an Italian mother.

Georges Albert Julien Catroux was born on January 29, 1879, in Limoges, Limousin, France to the family of a career officer who had risen through the ranks René-Michel Catroux and his wife Félicité Solari. He had three brothers.

Education

Georges Catroux first studied at the Prytanée National Militaire. He then joined the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1896 graduating in 1898.

Career

In 1898 Georges Catroux entered the ranks of foot rangers. In 1900, he was appointed lieutenant in the Foreign Legion and participated in the pacification of the Sahara. In Algeria, he met Charles de Foucauld.

From 1903 to 1906, Catroux was in Indochina, serving under the Governor-General Paul Beau. In 1906, he was again in Algeria, and met General Lyautey. Until 1911, he participated in all operations, which preceded the occupation of Morocco, according to the method that Lyautey called "oil stain spreading." In 1911, he was called to Algiers to Governor-General Lutaud.

Assigned a battalion chief of the 2nd Algerian Tirailleurs Regiment in 1914, Catroux was wounded in the leg, in Arras, on October 5, 1915, after having stopped for almost 20 hours the progress of an enemy division with his only battalion.

Captured by the Germans, Catroux made three escape attempts, which lead him to be sent to reprisal camps in Wülzburg and at Fort IX in Ingolstadt, where he met Captain de Gaulle. Georges Catroux was released after the end of the hostilities.

In 1919-1920, Catroux was part of the French military mission in Arabia. On several occasions, he collided with the famous Colonel Lawrence. After the conference in San Remo in April 1920, he was appointed governor of the State of Damascus (part of the French mandate in Syria) and took part in forming the administration and the government of Syria.

In 1923-1925 Catroux was a military attache in Istanbul. Claimed by Marshal Lyautey in Morocco, from June to October 1925 he took part in the Reef War in Morocco, while in headquarters positions. In 1926 he was summoned to the Levant under the High Commissioner Henri de Jouvenel, where he spoke out in support of the granting of independence to Syria and Lebanon. In 1927-1930 he was a commander of the 6th Algerian Tirailleurs Regiment in the rank of colonel. In 1930-1931 Catroux served as the commander of the troops in Ain Sefra, Algeria, from May 27, 1931, he became the commander of the troops in Marrakesh. He was made a General in 1931. From December 1, 1935, he served as the head of the 14th Infantry Division in Mulhouse and from September 16, 1936, as the commander of the 19th Army Corps in Algiers. On January 29, 1939, he left the military service.

In July 1939, Georges Catroux was appointed Governor-General of Indochina. Before his departure, he was instructed to come to the aid of China to keep the Tonkino-Chinese border open, because the coasts of China were then blocked by Japan. But, in June 1940, the Japanese asked Catroux to close its border with China and to send a control commission there. In France, the government which "wandered" between Bordeaux and Vichy ordered to refuse any foreign presence on French territory, and at the same time to advise the Japanese to go and exercise their right of control on the Chinese side, where they could only reach crossing Indochina. Catroux, exasperated by such a misunderstanding of the situation, was relieved of his duties and replaced by Admiral Decoux in July 1940.

In August 1940, Catroux, who heard the call of June 18, rallied to General de Gaulle. On September 17, 1940, he landed in London and met Winston Churchill, de Gaulle then being near Dakar, who offered to take him in the direction of free France. Catroux declines the offer accepting orders only from General de Gaulle. He was welcomed in Chad, at Fort-Lamy, by him and Governor Félix Eboué, on October 17, 1940.

Appointed a member of the Defense Council of the Empire and commander-in-chief and general delegate of Free France in the Middle East in June 1941, Georges Catroux proclaimed the independence of Syria and Lebanon on behalf of General de Gaulle. After the Syria campaign, he was appointed a High Commissioner of Free France in the Levant.

After December 1942, Catroux was the intermediary between General Giraud in Algiers and General de Gaulle in London. Until 1943, he liaised between the two men, while supervising the situation in Lebanon. From March to June 1943, he was responsible for the consolidation of the overseas territories, and he served as Governor-General of Algeria.

General Catroux was appointed a member of the French Committee for National Liberation (CFLN) when it was created on June 3, 1943, and was its State Commissioner. He became a State Commissioner for Muslim Affairs in November 1943. In September 1944, General de Gaulle appointed him Minister of State for North Africa of the Provisional Government of the French Republic. In January 1945, he was appointed an ambassador to the Soviet Union, the position he held until 1948. Upon his return to France, he served as a diplomatic advisor to the French government.

In 1954, he became the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor. The following year, when unrest in Morocco occurred, he was appointed by the government to negotiate a return of Sultan Mohammed V to Rabat. As Resident Minister in Algeria for the government of Guy Mollet in 1956, he was unable to take up his post because of demonstrations in Algiers by French residents on 6 February.

Catroux presided over a board of inquiry, the Catroux Commission, that investigated the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. He was also the judge in the military tribunal which tried the generals involved in the Algiers putsch of 1961.

In February 1969, General Catroux was replaced by Admiral Cabanier, who was appointed Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor.

Achievements

• Georges Catroux is remembered as an important military and political figure of Franse in the period between World War I and World War II, and after. His successful service was marked by numerous French and foreign awards. He was honored by the appointment as the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor from 1954 to 1969. A square in the 17th arrondissement of Paris was named in his honor.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Dans la bataille Méditerranée 1949
  • J’ai vu tomber le rideau de fer 1951
  • Lyautey le Marocain 1952
  • Deux actes du drame indochinois 1959

Religion

Georges Catroux's funeral and memorial ceremonies were held in the Saint-Louis-des-Invalides Roman Catholic church.

Politics

Georges Catroux was an associate and follower of Charles de Gaulle. He was a member of the Free France government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle during the Second World War.

Views

Georges Catroux's announcement that he supported the idea that some French colonies should be granted independence caused tremendous controversy and after four days in office was forced to resign.

Interests

• Politicians

  Charles de Gaulle

Connections

Georges Catroux was married three times. The October 27, 1902, he married Marie Pérez, an Oranaise, daughter of a former mayor of Mascara, who gave him two sons, André and René. He also had two daughters from his other marriages. Opposed to this marriage, his father did not attend the wedding. After her death, Catroux remarried on May 11, 1932 to Marguerite Jacob, daughter of a trustee of stockbrokers. Divorced from Hippolyte de Peyronnet then from General Gaston d'Humières, she is related to Jean Cocteau. On August 31, 1963, he married an American woman of letters Frances Dellschaft, (known inder the name Francès de Dalmatie), daughter of Frederick Dellschaft, petroleum industrialist, and Marthe Chaumont, married in first marriage in 1947 with Jean-de-Dieu Reille-Soult, marquis of Dalmatia, whom she divorced in 1962.

Father:

René-Michel Catroux

Mother:

Félicité Solari

late wife:

Marie Pérez

Son:

André Catroux

Son:

René Catroux

late wife:

Marguerite Jacob

Wife:

Frances Dellschaft

Acquaintance:

Charles De Gaulle

Acquaintance:

Thomas Lawrence

Acquaintance:

Winston Churchill

References

• Catroux
  2016
• Les grands maîtres et les grands chanceliers de la Légion d'honneur: De Napoléon Ier à François Mitterrand
  1983