Henri Frenay

Henri Frenay

Henri Frenay (born November 19, 1905 in Lyon , Rhône , † August 6, 1988 in Porto-Vecchio , Département Corse-du-Sud ) was a French politician and a leading member of the Resistance .

As the son of a professional officer, Frenay studied German in Strasbourg before joining the French army and attending the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1924 . During the Second World War he reached the rank of Capitaine and was captured by the Wehrmacht in the Vosges during the German offensive to the west.

On June 27, 1940, he fled German captivity to Marseille and initially supported Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain as chief of the defense. Disaffected by Pétain and his Vichy regime , he joined the Resistance in February 1941, whose Combat group he founded in November 1941. At the same time he participated in the publication of underground newspapers such as Les Petites Ailes ("The Little Wings") and Vérités ("Truths"). In the Resistance he used the battle names Nef , Charvet , Henri Mollin , Lefebvre , Jeannin .

In February 1942 he took part in talks with Jean Moulin about the unity of all Resistance groups in France and was appointed commissioner for military affairs. Moulins saw it as his task to unite the eight most important resistance groups in the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR). That included

• the Combat Frenays
• the Franc-Tireur Jean-Pierre Lévys ,
• the Liberation Sud Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigeries group ,
• the Front National Pierre Villons ,
• the Comité d'action socialiste Pierre Brossolettes and
• the Armée Secrète of Charles Delestraint .

When Jean Moulin and Charles Delestraint were arrested by the Gestapo in June 1943 , Frenay fled to Algiers. In November 1943, General de Gaulle appointed him commissioner for prisoners, deportees and refugees of the Comité français de la Liberation nationale (CFLN) in Algiers.

In 1944 Frenay returned to France with de Gaulle and after the liberation belonged to the provisoire de la République Française (GPRF) until October 21, 1945. Its main task was to bring 1,300,000 prisoners and deportees back to France from May to July 1945 alone.

As President of the Union européenne des fédéralistes (UEF), he rejected de Gaulle's conception of Europe. After the rejection of the European Defense Community EVG in 1954, he resigned the presidency of the UEF. He was a co-founder of the Comité français d'échanges avec l'Allemagne nouvelle and the Union démocratique et socialiste de la Résistance (UDSR). As a candidate for the SFIO , he was unsuccessful in the elections to the National Assembly in 1958. He supported Gaston Defferre's presidential candidacy and called in the 1965 presidential election to vote against de Gaulle.

Professionally, he was the head of a publishing company.

Frenay was the bearer of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor .

He was married to Chilina Ciosi.

Publications

• Combat 1946, Denoël
• La Nuit finira ( Eng . The night will end) 1973, Robert Laffont
• Volontaires de la Nuit (Volunteers of the Night) 1975, Robert Laffont (also in Engl.)
• L'Enigme Jean Moulin (The Riddle of Jean Moulin) 1977, Robert Laffont

Web links

• Literature by and about Henri Frenay in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography
• Biography (french)