GENERAL DELESTRAINT - The Resistance: from the Secret Army to Dachau

In the exclusive service of France — until death.

Born in 1879, died in deportation in 1945, Charles Delestraint is an unjustly obscure figure in French military history. Yet throughout his life, his successive commitments — up to the ultimate sacrifice in the Resistance — earned him a place in the Panthéon in 1989.

A graduate of Saint-Cyr, he served as an infantry officer during the First World War, then attended the Centre d'études des chars de combat after the conflict and developed a passion for this new arm.

Battalion commander in Germany, regimental commander in Vannes, then general in Metz, he was led, through his various postings, to propose, support and experiment with an ambitious use of armoured forces still in their infancy. For two years in Lorraine, he had Colonel de Gaulle under his command, with whom he shared a common vision of the challenges of the interwar period. When he found himself at the head of an armoured group in June 1940, his talents as an organiser and his fierce energy commanded the respect of all those around him.

Even as France lay defeated, his final order of the day defiantly proclaimed: " Confidence, confidence still, confidence always. " In August 1942, with the agreement of General de Gaulle and the support of Jean Moulin, the delegate of Free France, he became the first commander of the Secret Army, with the aim of uniting the paramilitary groups of the Resistance across the entire territory. Under the alias " Vidal ", he then embarked, at over sixty years of age, on a high-risk mission, this time operating clandestinely.

Arrested by the Gestapo in Paris in June 1943, he was deported to the Struthof concentration camp, then to Dachau, where he was executed a few days before the Liberation. To the very end, his strength of character and his enthusiasm were an invaluable source of support for his fellow prisoners. This exemplary biography offers the reader, through painstaking archival research and fresh sources, an exceptional personality whose outstanding qualities are rooted in a sense of duty, patriotism, self-abnegation and faith — nourishing a " will to act " in all circumstances.