Roger Trinquier

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Roger Trinquier (born March 20, 1908 in La Baume , † January 11, 1986 in Vence ) was a French officer who commanded a guerrilla force in the Indochina War in northern Laos . Later he was assigned to the paratrooper units ("Paras") during the Algerian war , which under his leadership were responsible for the mass torture and killing of arrested, alleged members of the underground movement FLN . His controversial concepts of “modern warfare” - also known as the French doctrine - still serve in some cases as a teaching example for the fight against insurgents and terrorists by the military and secret services .

Life

The son of a mountain farmer attended the village school in his home country until he was thirteen. He then attended the école normal in Aix-en-Provence until he graduated at the age of 20 . He wanted to be a teacher.

Military career

When he was called up for two years of military service, he was to be trained as a reserve officer. However, he applied for admission to the officers' school of Saint-Maixent-l'École , which he - specially trained for overseas deployment - graduated in 1931 as a lieutenant in the marine infantry (1870-1961 called Colonials ).

His first post was Chi-Ma, a remote mountain town in Tongking near the Chinese border. To combat Chinese drug smugglers, he was forced to seek help from local residents. In doing so he learned the dialects of several hill tribes .

After returning to France in 1937, he was soon assigned to the troops in the French concession in Shanghai . Shortly afterwards he took over command of one of the two companies guarding the French embassy in Beijing . At this time he was learning Chinese and befriended his American colleague Colonel Marstone.

Immediately after the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, Trinquier, again in Shanghai , became deputy battalion commander. The French troops were not disarmed by the Japanese occupiers as they were nominally allies as troops of the Vichy regime . However, when the Japanese lost confidence in the attitude of the French, the Shanghai troops were arrested on March 10, 1945 , a day later than their counterparts in Indochina . Trinquier, who was promoted to captain in 1942 , remained an opponent of de Gaulle's life , but he had never spoken out clearly in favor of the Vichy government.

Indochina War

Roger Trinquier

He volunteered for a post in Indochina. On January 3, 1946, he arrived in Saigon , where he was assigned as platoon leader of the Commando Ponchardier intervention force - a unit in which Peter Scholl-Latour also served from 1946. Like all Vichy officers, he should be dismissed. Through the intercession of a high-ranking officer known to him from his time in Chi-Ma - the later putschist General Raoul Salan - he was allowed to remain on duty.

On February 1, 1947, he was seconded to the parachute school in Tarbes . On November 14, 1947, Trinquier landed again in Indochina. This time as deputy commander of the 1st Colonial Paratrooper Battalion (RCP), whose command he took over in September 1948 when his predecessor had fallen. This went hand in hand with the promotion to major. Next he was ordered back to France, where he became the commandant of a paratrooper training center in Fréjus and then went to the colonial parachute school.

From December 1951 he headed the activities of the newly created GCMA in Laos and northern Tongking. He organized a force whose job it was to organize the hill tribes and other groups as guerrilla fighters in support of the fight against the Viet Minh , and which by mid-1953 comprised around 20,000 mercenaries - arguably the largest military unit ever under the command of one Majors stood. In the same year, he took over the management of the unit, which was financed by drug trafficking ( Operation X ) with the express approval of General Salan . For this he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. The "unfortunate incident" of Dien Bien Phu brought his activities to an end and forced him to hand over 40,000 mercenaries to the mercy of the Viet Minh belonged to the hill tribes who were no longer allowed to be cared for. The sum was (allegedly) stolen by the general to whom it was given.

Algerian war

Shortly after the Suez Crisis , Lieutenant Colonel Trinquier was assigned to General Jacques Massu's 10th Paratrooper Division , which had the task of freeing Algiers from "terrorists". Trinquier was able to bring his ideas of “modern warfare” to full use here; they became known and notorious as the French Doctrine . Massu, Trinquier, and the 10th Division paratroopers set about their task with fierce determination to stamp out the FLN. Trinquier also laid the philosophical basis for the use of fear and horror generation. For a revolutionary, torture is a curse, just as flak is for a fighter pilot or machine gun fire for an infantryman . His methods were successful in Algiers, but in the eyes of much of the fourth republic's public , this " dirty war " was intolerable. The numerous, systematic violations of human rights within the framework of the doctrine, which is actually successful in military terms, led in the long term to a clear domestic and foreign policy weakening of France with regard to the Algerian question.

The government, whose interior minister François Mitterrand also initially ordered forced relocations, was forced, after global protests, to end this type of struggle at least externally. Trinquier was briefly removed from the public eye by being assigned to the paratrooper school in Pau . However, his sponsor Salan soon called him back.

Katanga

He was finally recalled from Algeria to organize the white-commanded mercenary troops of President Moise Tschombé in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo . He arrived in Elisabethville on January 25, 1961 , but was expelled on March 9, under pressure from the UN and Belgian diplomats. In 1963, Jean Lartéguy used Trinquier as a model for his character Colonel La Roncière in his novel The Cruel Dreams , the action of which is set in Katanga.

Political end of the military career

On April 21, 1961 , members of the secret organization Organization de l'armée secrète (OAS) launched a coup against French President Charles de Gaulle because of the French withdrawal from Algeria . Although Trinquier was not involved in the coup (he was in Athens), his military career was effectively ended due to his proximity to the leading coupist General Raoul Salan . His request to retire as a reserve officer was granted.

Military advisor in Laos

Trinquier by no means found himself unemployed, but became a military advisor . The CIA invited the terrorist specialist in northern Laos, as the successor to the Baptist missionary and CIA agent William Young , to further develop the L'Armée Clandestine des Vang Pao , which had been built up in 1958 - in which members of the KMT in Burma also served. After a few months, the CIA man Anthony Posephny (aka Tony Poe ) replaced Trinquier.

"Modern Warfare"

Since its operation in Laos Trinquier was in contact with US specialists to counterinsurgency (English: counter-insurgency ) stood and his methods of "modern warfare" (total and brutal and particularly against the civilian population) and their covert funding mediated by drug trafficking, . American personnel have been instructed, occasionally from 1954, and systematically since around 1961, in their terror and torture methods, which in a modified form form the basis of such counterinsurgency measures to this day.

The basis is his book La guerre moderne , the English translation of which was part of the US training canon. However, the consultants saw itself McGeorge Bundy , Michael Forrestal "forced to judge Trinquier - - itself not necessarily a linker I should point out thatthis fellow is a bit of a fascist and ran one of the less attractive 'Paras' operations in Algiers [...] (German: "I have to emphasize that this man is a bit fascist and led one of the more unsightly paratrooper operations in Algiers") ”.

Trinquier considered it appropriate to carry out mass resettlements and to brutally torture “terrorists” (or such suspects) in order to obtain information as quickly as possible. This, too, was intended to intimidate the civilian population. In contrast to his American students, however, he insisted on limiting himself to "questioning" on what was relevant for the fight. He recognized “terrorists” as warring soldiers.

Works

  • Le Temps perdu . Paris 1978, ISBN 2-226-00620-6
  • La guerre modern . Paris [c1961], 196S (English ex .: Modern warfare. A French view of counter-insurgency . ( Memento of August 20, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) London 1964)
  • Le coup d'état du 13 May . Paris [1962], 271 pp
  • Guerre, subversion, révolution . Paris 1968, 285 pp
  • Notre guerre au Katanga (with Jacques Duchemin, Jacques Le Bailly). Paris 1963
  • Le premier bataillon de bérets rouges: Indochine 1947-1949 . Paris 1984, ISBN 2-259-01193-4
  • Les maquis d'Indochine, 1952-1954; Paris [1976]
  • La Bataille pour l'élection du président de la République . Montargis [1965]

literature

  • Alfred McCoy: The Politics of Heroin . rev. ed. New York 1991, ISBN 1-55652-126-X , pp. 131-145 (first edition: 1972).
  • Bernard Fall: Portrait of the Centurion . In: Roger Trinquier (Ed.): Modern Warfare . New York 1964, Introduction ( www-cgsc.army.mil ( August 20, 2003 memento in the Internet Archive )).
  • Frédéric JLA Vandewalle: Une ténébreuse affaire, ou, Roger Trinquier au Katanga . Ed. de Tam Tam Ommegang, Brussels 1979.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ McCoy (1991), p. 134.
  2. ^ Roger Trinquier: Le coup d'état du 13 mat . Editions l'Esprit Nouveau, Paris 1963.
  3. ↑ Trinquier's letter of November 24, 1972, printed: McCoy (1991), p. 520ff; and S 144
  4. ↑ Ansperger, Franz; Dissolution of the colonial empires; Munich 4 1981, ISBN 3-423-04013-0 , p. 235.
  5. ↑ Cockburn, Alexander; St. Clair, Jeffery; Whiteout; London, New York 1998, ISBN 1-85984-897-4 , pp. 241-4.
  6. ↑ Michael Forrestal; Memorandum for John McNaughton , Subject: Vietnam; May, 1st 1964; Secret - declassified November 30, 1976, 4 pp.
  7. ↑ practiced in Algeria since November 21, 1954 - 1.625 million people affected in 2000 villages by 1961; Ansperger (1981), pp 235,239
  8. ^ Henri Alleg: La Question . German as: The Torture , 1958
  9. ↑ cf. to "Methods:" La guerre moderne , part 2
personal data
SURNAME Trinquier, Roger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer who worked as a torturer in theory and practice in the wars in Indochina and Algeria
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH La Baume (France)
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1986
Place of death Vence (France)