Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle

Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, (1922 - December 26, 1942) was a member of the French resistance who assassinated Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan, the former chief of government of Vichy France and the self-proclaimed high commissioner of French North Africa and West Africa, on December 24, 1942. Bonnier de La Chapelle's speedy trial and execution have fueled numerous conspiracy theories about who may have been behind the assassination.

He was born in Algiers. A student at the Lycée Stanislas in Paris after France's surrender to Nazi Germany on June 22, 1940, Bonnier de La Chapelle participated in an anti-German student demonstration at the Arc de Triomphe on Armistice Day, November 11, 1940. He then secretly crossed the demarcation line between German-occupied France and Vichy France and made his way to Algiers, where his father was a journalist. Having passed his baccalauréat examination in 1942, he was surprised by the Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) on November 8, 1942 and by the participation of many of his friends in the so-called putsch of November 8, in which the resistance seized control of several Vichy government offices and headquarters in Algiers. A monarchist and ardent anti-Vichyiste, he regretted that his friends had not asked him to take part in the putsch.

After Darlan surrendered Algiers to Allied forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who feared armed resistance from Vichy sympathizers among the French, agreed to allow Darlan to govern French North Africa and West Africa under Vichyiste policies, which caused considerable consternation in the French population as well as in Washington and London. Bonnier de La Chapelle and three friends decided to eliminate the Admiral, and Bonnier de La Chapelle drew the short straw. Having obtained a Ruby pistol, on December 24, 1942, he waited in a corridor of the Summer Palace (Palais d’Été), the admiral's headquarters in Algiers, for Darlan to return to his office. He shot Darlan twice, once in the face and once in the chest, and then shot the admiral's aide-de-camp in the thigh. At that point, the occupants of the other offices in the Palais effected his capture.

A military tribunal convened the next day, December 25. Bonnier de La Chapelle declared that he had acted alone, and he was condemned to death. He was executed by firing squad on December 26, 1942. On December 21, 1945, the Court of Appeals in Algiers overturned the conviction, stating that he had acted "in the interest of the liberation of France."

Sources

• Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle - Wikipédia at fr.wikipedia.org
• Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, New York: Henry Holt, 2002.
• Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years: 1940-1944, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Douglas Porch, The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.