Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu
Georges Louis Marie Thierry d'Argenlieu OCD , religious name Louis de la Trinité (born August 7, 1889 in Brest , † September 7, 1964 ibid), was a French religious priest ; Provincial of the Discalced Carmelites in France; Admiral of Free France in World War II ; 1942–1943 Minister without portfolio and from 1945 to 1947 Governor General and High Commissioner in Indochina .
Life
Origin and family
Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu was born on August 7, 1889 as the son of the General Controller of the Navy Olivier Thierry d'Argenlieu in Brest, Brittany . The family originally came from the town of Argenlieu near Avrechy , Département Oise in Picardy , and had a strong religious and military tradition. Georges was the third of six children. The eldest brother, René, also became a naval officer, the second oldest, Olivier, became an army officer; he died as a general in May 1940. The third brother, Jean, and the youngest child in the family, François, became Dominicans . The two sisters, Marguerite and Cécile, entered the Notre-Dame-de-Sion Institute. Georges first attended the Collège Stanislas in Paris and the Lycée Saint-Charles of the Marianists in Saint-Brieuc and was admitted to the École navale in Lanvéoc in October 1906 .
First years in the Navy and First World War
After graduating from the Naval Academy, he became Enseigne de vaisseau de deuxième classe in 1909 , Enseigne de vaisseau de première classe in 1911 on the liner Bouvet and took part in the expedition to Morocco on the cruiser Du Chayla in 1912/13 . As a 24-year-old he received the Legion of Honor Cross .
In the Great War from 1914 to 1918 he initially patrolled various torpedo boats in the Mediterranean , became Lieutenant de Vaisseau in July 1917 , officer in the staff of the Naval Prefect of Toulon , Admiral Lacaze , and in 1918 commander of the patrol boat La Tourterelle . He excelled especially in rescuing a troop transport.
Religious vocation and entry into the Carmel
As early as 1915, while on vacation, Thierry d'Argenlieu had made the acquaintance of the Prioress of the Carmel de Vienne in the Dauphiné and the Carmel's confessor, Father Crozier. He had made a pilgrimage to Paray-le-Monial , studied the writings of St. Teresa of Ávila , St. John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux and entered the Third Order during a stopover in Malta .
In 1919 he had evacuated the Carmelites of Mount Carmel from Haifa to Carpentras, who had been driven out by the Turks, with his torpedo boat . As his vocation to religious life grew stronger, he submitted his farewell in 1919 and prepared for entry into the order of the Discalced Carmelites. Together with Jacques Froissart (later Père Bruno de Jésus-Marie ) and Jean Vauvilliers, he studied philosophy at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas , the Dominican college in Rome, and on his return joined the Carmel as brother Louis de la Trinité Avon (Seine-et-Marne) near Fontainebleau . After novitiate he put on 15. September 1921 his first vows, then studied four years theology in Lille , where he was in 1925 for priests ordained. Subprior of the convention in Lille since 1927, he was elected Provincial of the newly re-established Carmelite Province of Paris in 1932 and confirmed in this office in 1935 and 1938.
World War II and Free France
As part of the French mobilization , the reserve officer, Father Louis de la Trinité OCD, was drafted in August 1939 and reactivated as a naval officer. He was assigned to the Cherbourg Defense District staff and promoted to Capitaine de corvette on February 10, 1940 . After his brother, General Olivier Thierry d'Argenlieu, fell in battle against the Germans on May 19, 1940, Thierry d'Argenlieu was captured by the Germans on June 19 while defending the Naval Arsenal in Cherbourg . He was supposed to be brought to Germany by train, but escaped on June 22nd and made his way across the canal in a fishing boat to Jersey and from there to England .
When he arrived in London, Thierry d'Argenlieu made contact with the Carmelites there and made himself available to the head of the newly founded Free French Armed Forces FFL and the National Defense Committee , Général de brigade Charles de Gaulle . On July 1, 1940 , he proposed to de Gaulle the use of the Lorraine cross as a symbol of the French troops in exile. On July 23, 1940 he was promoted to Capitaine de frégate , appointed acting Admiral Chief of Staff and chaplain of the Free French Naval Forces ( Forces navales françaises libres , FNFL) under Admiral Muselier .
At the end of August he went with General de Gaulle on board the Dutch parcel ship Westernland on the failed mission to Dakar in French West Africa . When Thierry d'Argenlieu tried on September 23 (according to other information on September 25) to go ashore with a negotiating delegation consisting of five officers in order to persuade the French Governor General Boisson , who was loyal to Vichy, to join Free France machine guns shot at the boat and Thierry d'Argenlieu seriously wounded. After his recovery, in November he led the naval operations in Gabon , Port-Gentil and Libreville , in conjunction with Colonel Leclerc's operations on land , as Commander of the FNFL in French Equatorial Africa aboard the Savorgnan de Brazza , using walking aids .
Promoted to Capitaine de Vaisseau and appointed a member of the Imperial Council, Thierry d'Argenlieu was appointed by a decree of January 29, 1941 as Compagnon and Chancellor of the Order of Liberation founded by de Gaulle shortly before . From March 7 to May 11, at the instigation of de Gaulle's colleague Élisabeth de Miribel , he traveled to Canada on a diplomatic mission to promote the de Gaulle cause among the predominantly Catholic French Canadians in Québec and Montreal , a task he did as a prominent representative of Free France and as a provincial superior of his order was predestined. Although he succeeded in gaining the respect of the people, he could do little against the resistance of the French Canadians to the introduction of general conscription. It was not introduced until 1942 with the votes of the English-speaking part of the population. Returning to London, he was appointed High Commissioner for the Pacific in Nouméa , with military and political force, in July and promoted to Contre-amiral in December . His task was to organize the defense of the Free French territories in the Pacific and to prepare them for war with Japan . In military terms, he had two ships, the light cruiser Triomphant and the Aviso Chevreuil .
After the Allied victory, d'Argenlieu was appointed High Commissioner for Indochina by de Gaulle . Together with the current General de Division Leclerc, he was responsible for restoring French sovereignty over the colony. Large parts of the country were violently occupied against the retreating Viet Minh . d'Argenlieu earned the reputation of a hardliner on the Indochina question through his uncompromising stand against the Vietnamese nationalists. He was replaced by Emile Boullaert in 1947 .
Works
- La Croix de la Liberation. - Paris: Imprimérie Chassaing, 1951
- Souvenirs de guerre, June 1940 – January 1941. - Paris: Plon, 1973
- Chronique d'Indochine 1945–1947. - Paris, Albin Michel, 1985
literature
- Elisée de la Nativité (Alford): Le Père Louis de la Trinité, amiral Thierry d'Argenlieu. - Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1969
- Marie-Françoise Limon: Papiers Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu, Inventaire - Paris: Center historique des Archives nationales, 2001, 86 pp. - ISBN 2-86000-282-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frederick Logevall: Embers of War - The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam , New York, 2013, pp. 120–24, p. 139, p. 189
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thierry d'Argenlieu, Georges |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Thierry d'Argenlieu, Georges Louis Marie OCD; Trinité, Louis de la |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French religious priest and admiral |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 7, 1889 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brest |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 7, 1964 |
| Place of death | Brest |