Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie

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Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie (born January 6, 1900 in Paris , † June 12, 1969 there ) was a French officer and journalist . During World War II he was a leading member of the Resistance .

Life

Emmanuel d'Astier (far right) with the politician André Diethelm on August 29, 1944 at a military parade in Marseille after the Wehrmacht surrendered the day before.

D'Astier attended the Naval Academy, but left the Navy in 1924 .

He became a successful poet and journalist. At times he was involved in the political right with the royalist magazine l'Action Française . But the danger posed by Nazi Germany and the Spanish Civil War brought him to the political left.

When the Second World War broke out , he returned to the Navy as head of the Naval Intelligence Service Service de Renseignement Marine (SR Marine), but was dismissed after the Vichy regime under Henri Philippe Pétain had been established after the defeat of France in the summer of 1940 . Pétain replaced D'Astier by Admiral François Darlan , who renamed the SR Marine in center d'information gouvernemental (CIG), moved its headquarters to Maintenon and made the intelligence service a collaboration agency .

D'Astier joined the small left-wing Resistance group Liberation Sud , which also included Raymond Aubrac and Jean Cavaillès , based in Lyon in the “unoccupied” southern zone. This first important Resistance group began to resist the German occupation in July 1941 with the publication of the underground newspaper Liberation .

In January 1942, d'Astier established a connection to London via Yvon Morandat . In February 1942 he began talks with Jean Moulin about the possible unification of all Resistance groups active in France, initially in the merger

to the Mouvements Unis de Résistance (MUR; "United Movements of the Resistance") flowed.

In May 1942 he met in person with General Charles de Gaulle , the "Symbol", as he later called the general, to whom he traveled by submarine to London. In June 1942, de Gaulle sent Emmanuel d'Astier to Washington , where he was tasked with negotiating recognition with President Roosevelt on behalf of Free France . On board a fishing trawler, he returned to France as a special first class representative ( Chargé de Mission ), which corresponds to the military rank of a lieutenant colonel . In November 1942 he returned from a second trip to London with Henri Frenay. There Emmanuel d'Astier was appointed chairman of the Comité de Coordination des Mouvements de Résistance (German committee for the coordination of the resistance movements). From this committee the directorate of the Mouvements unis de Résistance (MUR) emerged in January 1943 , as its commissioner for political affairs he acted.

After long discussions, Jean Moulin reached that the eight most important Resistance groups, ie

the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), the National Resistance Council, formed. The first joint meeting under Moulins chairmanship took place on May 27, 1943 in Paris.

Emmanuel d'Astier set out for London again in April 1943 and returned to Paris in July 1943 immediately after Jean Moulin's arrest. D'Astier met General Charles de Gaulle in Algiers in October 1943 and agreed to join his government- in- exile as Commissioner for Home Affairs in November 1943. D'Astier was a member of the Comité d'Action en France (COMIDAC; German Action Committee in France), an action committee founded in Algiers in September 1943, which was tasked with defining a strategy and appropriate actions for the Resistance in the capital. In January 1944 he asked Winston Churchill in Marrakech for weapons for the Resistance.

After the liberation of France , de Gaulle appointed Emmanuel d'Astier as interior minister of the provisoire de la République Française . D'Astier also published the daily Liberation and wrote various books based on his wartime experiences. He resigned from his functions in September 1944 after rejecting the proposal to serve as ambassador to Washington.

From 1945 to 1958 he was elected to the National Assembly with communist support in the constituency of the Ille-et-Vilaine département . In 1957 Emmanuel d'Astier was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize. However, his neutralism set him apart from the communists. He was one of the founders of the Stockholm Committee . After the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, he condemned the policies of the Soviet Union and broke off his contact with the communists. On the other hand, he also rejected the British-French-Israeli intervention on the Suez Canal . He opposed the ratification of the European Defense Community EVG and the Treaty of Rome .

In the referendum on June 1, 1958, he rejected de Gaulle's return to day-to-day politics, but gradually approached Gaulleism . He received a quarter-hour TV show every month that made him a star. In it he expressed himself freely, but with respect and consideration for the general.

In 1966 he founded the weekly newspaper L'Évènement . His last political act was an appeal in L'Évènement in the spring of 1969: "I choose Pompidou - the charlatan."

Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie was Compagnon de la Liberation . His brothers François (1886–1956) and Henri (1897–1952) also played a role in the Resistance.

Awards

literature

  • Geoffroy d'Astier de La Vigerie: Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, combattant de la Résistance et de la liberté 1940–1944 . Éditions France-Empire Monde, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-7048-1066-6 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Geoffroy d'Astier de La Vigerie: Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, combattant de la Résistance et de la liberté 1940-1944 . Éditions France-Empire Monde, Paris 2010, pp. 133-136.
  2. ↑ Geoffroy d'Astier de La Vigerie: Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, combattant de la Résistance et de la liberté 1940-1944 . Éditions France-Empire Monde, Paris 2010, p. 137.
  3. ↑ Geoffroy d'Astier de La Vigerie: Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, combattant de la Résistance et de la liberté 1940-1944 . Éditions France-Empire Monde, Paris 2010, p. 230.
  4. ↑ Geoffroy d'Astier de La Vigerie: Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, combattant de la Résistance et de la liberté 1940-1944 . Éditions France-Empire Monde, Paris 2010, pp. 282–284.
personal data
SURNAME Astier de La Vigerie, Emmanuel d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Astier, Emmanuel d '
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician and member of the Resistance, member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1969
Place of death Paris