Background
He was born on Feb. 2, 1889, in Mouilleron-en-Pareds in Vendee, where his father was mayor.
He was born on Feb. 2, 1889, in Mouilleron-en-Pareds in Vendee, where his father was mayor.
He had completed the staff and advanced staff courses of the Ecole Superieure de Guerre and the Centre des Hautes Etudes Militaires in Paris.
He served in World War I, which commenced a year after his graduation from the military academy at St. Cyr, and advanced from the rank of second lieutenant to that of captain. When in 1939 De Lattre became the youngest brigadier general in the French army, he had fought under Lyautey in Morocco, had commanded an infantry regiment, and in addition had served as General Weygand's chief of staff.
In World War II, De Lattre blocked the German offensive in Alsace until the Petain armistice. Condemned to ten years in prison in November 1942 for his resistance to the Nazis, he escaped in September 1943. In December De Lattre joined General Charles de Gaulle in Algiers and was made a full general and commander in chief of all French forces in North Africa. He headed the newly organized French First Army and the 36th American Division from October 1944 until May 9, 1945, the day he signed for France the documents of German surrender.
In July 1945, after heading the French army of occupation and representing France on the Inter-Allied Control Commission at Berlin, he was appointed inspector general of French ground forces and in May 1948, inspector general of all French forces. In December 1950 General De Lattre was made high commissioner and commander of French forces in Indochina, and under his leadership the Vietnamese nationalist forces led by Vo Nguyen Giap were temporarily halted.
He successfully participated in World War I, World War II and the First Indochina War. ean de Lattre de Tassigny was posthumously promoted to Marshal of France. Numerous monument memorials have been erected to the memory of Jean de Lattre, including a stele erected in the countryside near Manziat, l'Aigle. The 1951-1953 promotion of de l'École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan bears his name.
