Hans Imfeld

Hans Imfeld (born June 21, 1902 in Sarnen , † July 3, 1947 in Saigon ) was a French colonial officer of Swiss origin, most recently with the rank of Colonel . Towards the end of the Second World War he led guerrilla operations in French Indochina against the Japanese occupation forces and at the end of August 1945 was appointed the highest representative of France in Laos . During the Indochina War he was assassinated by the Việt Minh victim.

Life

Hans Imfeld was the oldest of three brothers from Sarnen in the canton of Obwalden . After taking his commercial school- leaving certificate, he emigrated to France in 1922, with the aim of starting a military career with the colonial troops of the French army and obtaining French citizenship, which he succeeded in 1925. After attending the artillery officers' school ( École de l'artillerie ) in Poitiers and Fontainebleau , he was initially deployed in French North Africa .

In 1932 Imfeld was transferred to French Indochina . Here he spent most of the following decade on various posts in the military geographic service and in the artillery force, only in 1937 he was on a topographic mission in Lebanon . The experience he gained during these years made him an expert in the Southeast Asian region.

During the Second World War, after the defeat of the mother country, French Indochina was occupied by the Japanese army , which, however, left the Vichy-loyal colonial administration under Governor General Jean Decoux in office. Hans Imfeld initially remained in the colonial service under Decoux, but eventually crossed the border to China in early October 1943, where he defected to the Free French forces in Kunming . In his absence he was then sentenced to death by a military tribunal in Hanoi .

On February 26, 1945 he parachuted over Tonkin (North Vietnam) with the aim of organizing resistance against the Japanese as an underground agent. A few days later, however, on March 9th, the Japanese military overthrew the French administration. Imfeld, who was in Hanoi at the time, was able to escape the Japanese attack and reached northern Laos in the spring . He now took over command of the remaining pro-French guerrilla groups in the north-west of the country. Japanese rule in Indochina collapsed at the end of August, and French-Lao troops entered Luang Prabang without a fight . King Sisavang Vong , who resided there, was extremely Francophile and had only declared independence under Japanese pressure, received Imfeld with all honors and assured his loyalty to France. Meanwhile, in order to strengthen his position, Imfeld was appointed Commissaire de la République by President Charles de Gaulle and thus the highest representative of France in Laos.

The Laotian government in Vientiane under Prince Phetsarath , however, continued to strive for independence and thus opposed the king. Meanwhile, the first national Chinese troops arrived in Luang Prabang at the end of September , as northern Indochina had been declared a Chinese zone of occupation at the Potsdam Conference . The Chinese soldiers disarmed Imfeld and his men and placed them under house arrest. Apart from that, they limited themselves to securing the opium harvest and thus stayed out of further political developments. The troops of the Lao Issara independence movement then entered Luang Prabang in November. The conditions for Imfeld and his men were now getting worse. When they were finally no longer provided with food, they were forced to ask their Chinese guards to evacuate them to Thailand via the Mekong , which took place on January 4, 1946.

French troops coming from the south defeated the Laotian independence fighters in March 1946 and restored French rule by May. King Sisavang Vong was rewarded for his loyalty to France and was confirmed as King of all Laos .

Hans Imfeld had already been replaced by Jean de Raymond as Commissaire for Laos in April . He returned to Saigon via Thailand. He has now been appointed military commander of the Pays Thaïs in northwestern Vietnam; in October 1946 he reached Điện Biên Phủ by parachute . While Imfeld tried to bring the Montagnards to the side of France, the conflict with the Vietnamese independence movement escalated in the lowlands at the end of 1946 and the Indochina War broke out. A little later, Imfeld returned to Saigon and prepared his return to Europe. However, he was stabbed to death by a Việt Minh assassin in his home on July 3 . In 1949 his remains were transferred to Switzerland and buried in his home town of Sarnen.

Honors and reception

For his achievements in Laos, Hans Imfeld was honored as a Knight of the Legion of Honor and Grand Officer of the Royal Order of Laos . The city of Limoges , where he had temporarily lived, named a street after him, Rue du Colonel Imfeld .

During the years 1945/46 Imfeld wrote four diaries with a total of around 800 pages, combining phonetic French with a German shorthand system. These documents were later handed over to the Obwalden State Archives by his family. The Swiss author Carlo von Ah , who knew the Imfeld family and witnessed the funeral procession as a child, deciphered the difficult-to-read diaries and based on them wrote the work “Durch Dschungel und Intrigen”, published in 2013, a biography of Hans Imfeld in the form of a historical novel .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Karl W. Imfeld: Hans Imfeld. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . June 22, 2011 .
2. ↑ Gilbert Bodinier (Ed.): La Guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954. Vol. 1: Le retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946 , Service historique de l'Armée de terre, Vincennes 1987, p. 121
3. ^ Arthur J. Dommen : The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam , Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2001, pp. 131, 139-144
4. ↑ Jacques Dalloz: Dictionnaire de la Guerre d'Indochine: 1945-1954 , Armand Colin, Paris 2006, entry "Imfeld, Hans"
5. ↑ Query - Online archive catalog of the Obwalden State Archives: P.0109: 03 Four diaries by Hans Imfeld, 1945.03.09-1946.02.06 (Dossier)
6. ↑ Zuger Zeitung / IG Kultur Zug, January 4, 2014: “I don't care about commercial success” . Interview with Carlo von Ah about his work “Through the jungle and intrigues - A central Swiss in Indochina's war confusion”.
7. ^ SRF , September 18, 2013: The extraordinary life of Obwaldner Hans Imfeld - author Carlo von Ah in conversation with editor Karin Portmann