Corps expéditionnaire français en Extrême-Orient
The Corps Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient ( German- French expeditionary corps in the Far East , abbreviated CEFEO ) was a major military organization in France. The expeditionary force was set up at the end of World War II with the aim of regaining control over French Indochina . The expeditionary force fought against the Viet Minh in the Indochina War and was disbanded after the French defeat in 1956.
history
In 1943, the Free French government in exile created the expeditionary force with the aim of liberating French Indochina from the Vichy troops and, if necessary, taking part in the Pacific War against Japan . As commander called Charles de Gaulle General Roger Blaizot .
It was only after the liberation of France in 1944 that the establishment of the expeditionary corps could usefully begin . At the beginning of 1945 the corps was formed from the 2nd Armored Division and the 3rd and 9th Colonial Infantry Divisions under the new commander Jacques-Philippe Leclerc, and in 1945 began the journey to Saigon . The expeditionary force formed the French military presence in the colony during the Indochina War. In contrast to the Algerian War, the soldiers of the expeditionary corps in the Far East consisted of volunteers and professional soldiers ; Conscripts were not called in. After France's defeat in the Indochina War, the CEFEO troops were withdrawn to what would later become South Vietnam in accordance with the agreements of the Indochina Conference . The last units of the expeditionary force were withdrawn from Vietnam in April 1956.
During its existence from 1945 to 1956, around 1.6 million people including locally recruited auxiliaries served as soldiers in the expeditionary corps. In January 1946 the expeditionary force comprised around 53,000 soldiers. In the course of the war the strength of the corps rose to 110,245 in March 1948 and 204,000 in January 1954. A total of 489,560 soldiers were sent to Indochina between September 1945 and July 1954 . Of these, 233,467 were regular French volunteers, 72,833 were legionaries , 122,920 were colonial troops from North Africa and 60,340 colonial troops from sub-Saharan Africa .
The armament of the expeditionary force was often outdated and inhomogeneous at the beginning. A certain degree of standardization was achieved through US military aid by 1953.
Commander
- Jacques-Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (1945–46)
- Jean-Étienne Valluy (1946-48)
- Roger Blaizot (1948-49)
- Marcel Carpentier (1949-50)
- Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (1950–51)
- Raoul Salan (1952-53)
- Henri Navarre (1953-54)
- Paul Ély (1954-55)
- Pierre Jacquot (1955-56)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Christopher E. Goscha : Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954) , Copenhagen 2011, p. 165
- ↑ Fredrik Logevall: Embers of War - The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam , New York 2013, p. 607
- ^ Martin Windrow : The Last Valley - Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam , Cambridge 2004, p. 188