Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque

"Philippe Leclerc" redirects here. For the French footballer, see Philippe Leclerc (footballer).

Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque
Born	(1902-11-22)22 November 1902 Belloy-Saint-Léonard, France
Died	28 November 1947(1947-11-28) (aged 45) Colomb-Béchar, French Algeria
Allegiance	France
Service / branch	French Army
Years of service	1924-1947
Rank	Général d'Armée
Commands	Colonne Leclerc L force 2nd Armoured Division French Far East Expeditionary Corps
Battles / wars	Occupation of the Ruhr French conquest of Morocco World War II: War in Vietnam (1945–1946)
Awards	Marshal of France (posthumous) Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur Ordre de la Libération Médaille militaire Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 Croix de Guerre des TOE Companion of the Order of the Bath (UK) Distinguished Service Order (UK) Silver Star (USA) Commander of the Legion of Merit (USA) (more, see below)

Philippe François Marie Leclerc de Hauteclocque, by a 1945 decree that incorporated his French Resistance nom de guerre Jacques-Philippe Leclerc to his name, (French pronunciation: [filip ləklɛʁ də otklɔk]; 22 November 1902 – 28 November 1947), was a French general during World War II. He became Marshal of France posthumously in 1952, and is known in France simply as le maréchal Leclerc or just Leclerc.

Ancestry and family

Main article: House of Hauteclocque

Philippe François Marie de Hauteclocque was born on 22 November 1902 at Belloy-Saint-Léonard in the department of Somme. He was the fifth of six children of Adrien de Hauteclocque, comte de Hauteclocque (1864–1945) and Marie-Thérèse van der Cruisse de Waziers (1870–1956). Philippe was named in honour of an ancestor killed by Croats in 1635.

Coat of arms of the counts of Hauteclocque

De Hauteclocque came from an old line of country nobility. His direct ancestors had served in the Fifth Crusade against Egypt, and again in the Eighth Crusade of Saint Louis against Tunisia in 1270. They had also fought at the Battle of Saint-Omer in 1340 and the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The family managed to survive the French Revolution. Three members of the family served in Napoleon's Grande Armée and a fourth, who suffered from weak health, in the supply train. The third son, Constantin, who had served in Napoleon's Russian Campaign, was created a chevalier by King Louis XVIII, and a Papal count by Pope Pius IX in 1857. Constantin had two sons. The older, Alfred Francois Marie (1822–1902), died childless. The younger, Gustave Francois Marie Joseph (1829–1914) became a noted egyptologist.

Gustave, in turn, had three sons. The first, Henry (1862–1914), and third, Wallerand (1866–1914) became officers in the French Army, serving during the colonial campaigns, including fighting Samory in the Sudan. Both were killed in the early fighting in World War I. The second son was Adrien, who also served in World War I, enlisting in August 1914 as a trooper in the fr, the regiment in which he son Guy was a cornet. He was commissioned, and twice awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry. He survived the war, and inherited the family title and estate in Belloy-Saint-Léonard.

Biography

Early life

Philippe de Hauteclocque was home schooled until he was 13, when he as sent to L'école de la Providence, a Jesuit scool in Amiens. In 1920, at the age of 17, he went to Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève, known as Ginette, a preparatory school in Versailles. He then entered the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. He graduated on 1 October 1924, and was commissioned as a sous lieutenant in the French Army. Having chosen the cavalry branch, he then had to attend the Cavalry School in Saumur, He graduated first in his class on 8 August 1925.

De Hauteclocque's older brother Guy had married Madeleine de Gargan, the daughter of the Baron de Gargan. De Hauteclocque became a frequent visitor to the Gargan household, and became enchanted by Madeleine's youngest sister Thérèse. The two courted while he was at Saint-Cyr. In the tradition of old families, Count Adrien asked Baron de Gargan for permission for Philippe to marry Thérèse. The wedding ceremony took place in the Church of St Joan of Arc in Rouen on 10 August 1925. For a wedding present, Adrien gave then a chateau in Tailly. They had six children: Henri (1926-1952), who was later killed in the war in the war in Vietnam; Hubert (1927-), who served as mayor of Tailly from 2001 to 2008; Charles (1929-); Jeanne (1931-); Michel (1933-2014); and Bénédicte (1936-). Philippe and Thérèse hired an Austrian governess, and spoke German in front of the children to improve their children's command of the language.

Having graduated from Saumur, de Hauteclocque joined his regiment, the fr, which was then on occupation duty in Trier as part of the French Occupation of the Ruhr. Garrison duty was not to his liking, so he volunteered for service with the fr, based at Taza in Morocco. He was promoted to Lieutenant in October 1926. In 1927, he was posted to the fr at Meknes, Morocco's answer to Saint-Cyr, as an instructor. Here, he met fr, a World War I veteran eight years his senior, who would later volunteer to serve under his command.In 1929, he was attached to the 38e goum mixte marocains, a Moroccan Goumier unit at M'Zizel in the Atlas Mountains. He saw action in the fighting against Ait Hammou guerrillas. In one action, two horses were shot under him. Afterwards, he was posted to the fr the senior cavalry regiment of the Armée d'Afrique, based at Rabat.

In February 1931, de Hauteclocque returned to Saint-Cyr as an instructor, but missed active service. During the summer break in 1933, he flew down to Africa, where he reported to Général de Brigade Henri Giraud on 11 July. Giraud sent him into the field as a liaison officer with a goum. He was awarded the croix de guerre des théâtres d'opérations extérieures for leading goumiers in an attack on caves and ravines on Bou Amdoun on 11 August. The Commander in Chief in Morocco, Général de Division Antoine Huré felt that de Hauteclocque should not have been there, and held the award up for three years. Others felt differently, and de Hauteclocque was given early admission to the course for promotion to capitaine. He was placed fourth in the class, and promoted on 25 December 1934. Promotion was slow in the inter-war French Army, especially in the cavalry, and he was only the second in his Saint-Cyr class to reach the rank. Most had to wait until 1936. He was also made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Although they were devout Catholics, de Hauteclocque and Thérèse subscribed to Action Française despite a papal interdict, and continued to do so even after Thérèse was refused absolution. However, his cousin Template:Il was an award-winning journalist who covered the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. He visited the concentration camp at Dachau, and wrote about the Night of Long Knives. Xavier died in April 1935, convinced that he had been poisoned by the Nazis. De Hauteclocque broken his leg in two places in a fall from his horse in 1936. He told his company that it was his own fault for riding on the shoulder of the road.Thereafter he frequently walked with a cane. Following another mishap involving losing his way during an exercise and getting stuck in a field cordoned off with barbed wire, he told them that when you have done something really stupid, it is best to admit it.

De Hauteclocque entered the École supérieure de guerre, the French Army's staff college, in November 1938 as part of its 60th class. On graduating in July 1939, he was ordered to report the fr (4e DI) as its chief of staff.

Fall of France

Main article: Fall of France

On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The 4e DI was ordered to hold the Sambre. De Hauteclocque was placed in charged of three infantry battalions. To his dismay, orders came to pull back to the Canal de l'Escaut. From there the 4e DI retreated northward, becoming encircled in the Lille pocket on 28 May. De Hauteclocque received permission to escape through German lines. He attempted to make his way back to the French lines by pretending to be a civilian refugee, but was appended by a German patrol and taken prisoner. He was taken back to a German command post, where he convinced a German colonel that that he had been wounded in Morocco, which was true, and suffered from malaria, which was also true, and was no longer fit for military service. The Germans let him go. He then made his way to the Crozat Canal, swam across, and encountered a French patrol.

De Hauteclocque reported to the headquarters of Général d'armée fr, the commander of the Seventh Army, who gave him permission to visit Tailly, which was still behind French lines. When he got there, however, he found that Thérèse had fled to Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in the south west of France, where she had relatives. On returning, he was ordered to join the 2eme groupement cuirassée a scratch force of armoured and mechanised units that included Brigadier General Stanisław Maczek's Polish 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade. The groupement launched a series of counter-attacks. Lacking a radio, de Hauteclocque gave directions to the Char B1 tanks with his cane. On 15 June he was wounded in the head in a German air attack, and was taken to a hospital in a convent in Avallon. There he was again taken prisoner when the area was overrun by the Germans.

This time de Hauteclocque escaped by jumping out a window. After the armistice was signed on 22 June French soldiers were simply allowed to go home, and the Germans were friendly, especially when they discovered that de Hauteclocque spoke fluent German. He made his way to rejoin his family by car and bicycle. So that he could cross from the zone occupée into the zone libre where Thérèse and the chioldren were, his sister Yvonne obtained a identity card for him in the name of "Leclerc". It was his first use of this name. He also told Yvonne that he intended to join Général de Brigade Charles de Gaulle in Britain. He was reunited with his family in Saint-Germain-les-Vergnes on 30 June, but stayed with them for only four days before setting out for Spain. He managed to obtain a visa on the second attempt, being refused the first time for carrying too much money with him. Once in Spain his took a train to Madrid, and then to Lisbon, where he went to the British embassy, which arranged his passage to Britain on a merchant ship, the SS Hillary.

Africa

De Hauteclocque arrived in London on 25 July 1940, and met with de Gaulle, who announced that he was promoting him to Chef d'escadrons. He also encountered his cousin Pierre de Hauteclocque, Xavier's brother, who was serving with the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion (French: 13e Demi-Brigade de Légion Étrangère, 13e DBLE). This was the largest unit that had joined the Free French Forces. After participating in the Battles of Narvik, it had found itself in Britain when France surrendered. Formed after the war began, it contained many men who had fought with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, and many refugees from Nazi and Fascist countries. De Hauteclocque then offered his own services to the unit, but its commander, Colonel Raoul Charles Magrin-Vernerey, rejected the offer to join his unit on the grounds that de Hauteclocque was high-born, over-qualified and cavalryman.

Instead, de Gaulle ordered de Hauteclocque to French Equatorial Africa as governor of French Cameroons from August to 12 November 1940. At this time de Hauteclocque adopted Leclerc as his nom de guerre so that Thérèse and the children would not be put at risk if his name appeared in the papers.

In 1940, the leaders of most of French Equatorial Africa and the French Congo had declared themselves for Free France, providing Leclerc with a starting point. Leclerc then captured Gabon (whose local leader backed Vichy France), and then commanded the column which attacked Axis forces from his base at Fort Lamy (now N'Jamena) in Chad, and, having marched his troops across West Africa, distinguished himself in Tunisia. In February 1941, Leclerc invaded Italian-controlled Libya, capturing the Italian fort at the oasis at Kufra for Free France. In 1942, Leclerc's Free French forces and soldiers from the British Long Range Desert Group captured parts of the Libyan province of Fezzan. At the end of 1942, Leclerc moved his forces to join United States and British forces in Tunisia.

Western Europe

General Leclerc talks to his men from the 501° RCC (501st Tank Regiment).

After landing in Normandy on 1 August 1944, his 2nd Armored Division participated in the battle of the Falaise Pocket (12 to 21 August), and went on to liberate Paris. Allied troops were avoiding Paris, moving around it clockwise towards Germany. This was to minimise the danger of the destruction of the historic city if the Germans sought to defend it. Leclerc and de Gaulle had to persuade Eisenhower to send troops help the Parisians, who had risen against the Germans. Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division had been part of Patton's Third Army, and when they entered Paris, many had not been informed of the change of command and told the Parisians that they were part of the Third Army. Historian Jean-Paul Cointet places the uprising and the liberation by Leclerc in the context of the political struggle for leadership in post-liberation France, both being aimed at cementing de Gaulle's claim.

In an incident that took place 8 May 1945, at Bad Reichenhall in Bavaria Leclerc was involved in the capture and execution of French troops fighting with the Waffen-SS. After entering Germany, Leclerc was presented with a defiant group of 11-12 captured SS Charlemagne Division men. The Free French General immediately asked them why they wore a German uniform, to which one of them replied by asking the General why he wore an American one (the Free French wore modified US army uniforms). The group of French Waffen-SS men was later executed without any form of military tribunal procedure. However, it is uncertain who gave the order for their deaths.

South East Asia

Tokyo Bay, Japan. Surrender of Japanese aboard USS Missouri (BB-63). Leclerc representing France signs the instrument of surrender. Other French representatives stand behind him while General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander, stands at the microphone.

At the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945, Leclerc received command of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps (Corps expéditionnaire français en Extrême-Orient, CEFEO). He represented France at the surrender of the Japanese Empire in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. On 28 November 1945, he legally changed his name to Jacques-Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, incorporating his French Resistance pseudonym.

As new CEFEO commander, Leclerc set forth in October 1945 in French Indochina, first breaking a Vietminh blockade around Saigon, then driving through the Mekong delta and up into the highlands. He soon perceived the necessity for a political solution to the conflict, but also heeded the advice he obtained from United States General Douglas MacArthur to bring as many soldiers as possible. The French forces soon found that they, "like the Americans later, could conquer Vietnamese territory but could not hold it". In 1945, Leclerc was able to defeat the Vietminh in southern Vietnam, but he recognized the need for a negotiated settlement.

Jean Sainteny flew to Saigon to consult Leclerc, who was acting as high commissioner in the absence of Admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu. Leclerc approved Sainteny's proposal to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh because he preferred a diplomatic solution to a larger conflict, but he still dispatched a flotilla with shiploads of French soldiers to northern Vietnam ready to attack if the talks failed. At that time, Ho felt that negotiations with the French constituted his best option because the Soviet Union had not yet endorsed the Vietminh or the VNQDD. The French Communist Party choose to support French rule in Vietnam, and Ho feared Chinese domination far more than French colonialism, which he perceived to be in decline.

On 6 March 1946, a tentative agreement was reached at the last minute (with Leclerc's fleet already in the Gulf of Tonkin) between Sainteny and Ho that France would recognise Vietnam as a free state within the French Union, a new name for the French empire broadly similar to the British Commonwealth, and that Ho would allow France to base 25,000 soldiers in Vietnam for 5 years. The Ho-Sainteny agreement was never confirmed because it disappointed people on both sides. Ho's immense prestige largely silenced Vietnamese dissent, but the agreement split the French seriously. French Saigon businessmen, planters, and officials were "indignant at the prospect of losing their colonial privileges."

D'Argenlieu bluntly denounced Leclerc. "I am amazed - yes, that is the word, amazed", he said, "that France's fine expeditionary corps in Indochina is commanded by officers who would rather negotiate than fight". D'Argenlieu claimed that a higher level meeting in Paris would be required. He then unilaterally declared a French-owned Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina without asking either Paris or the Vietnamese. In 1946, Leclerc was replaced as commander of the French forces by Jean-Étienne Valluy. When Leclerc returned to Paris from Vietnam, he then warned that "anti-communism will be a useless tool unless the problem of nationalism is resolved."

Leclerc died in 1947 in an airplane accident near Colomb-Béchar, French Algeria, and was awarded the honour of Marshal of France posthumously in 1952.

Posthumous honours

The Leclerc main battle tank built by GIAT Industries (Groupement Industriel des Armements Terrestres) of France is named after him.

There is a monument to Leclerc at coordinates 48.82105°N 2.32494°E / 48.82105; 2.32494, in the Petit-Montrouge quarter of the 14th arrondissement in Paris, between Avenue de la Porte d'Orléans and Rue de la Légion Étrangère. The monument is near the Square du Serment-de-Koufra. The "serment de Koufra" is a pledge that Leclerc made on 2 March 1941, the day after taking the Italian fort at Kufra, Libya: he swore that his weapons would not be laid down until the French flag flew over the cathedral of Strasbourg.

Jurez de ne déposer les armes que lorsque nos couleurs, nos belles couleurs, flotteront sur la cathédrale de Strasbourg.

Two streets in Paris are named for Leclerc: Avenue du Général Leclerc in the 14th arrondissement and Rue du Maréchal Leclerc in the 12th arrondissement, between the Bois de Vincennes and the Marne River.

Promotions

Sous-lieutenant (9 September 1924)

Lieutenant (26 October 1926)

Capitaine (25 December 1934)

Chef d'escadrons (31 July 1940)

File:Lieutenant-Colonel des armes à cheval.png Lieutenant-Colonel (28 August 1940)

Colonel (25 November 1940)

Général de brigade (temporary) (10 August 1941)

Général de brigade (substantive) (14 April 1942)

Général de division (25 May 1943)

Général de corps d'armée (25 May 1945)

Général d'armée (14 July 1946)

Maréchal de France (23 August 1952) (posthumous)

Decorations

Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour

Companion of the Order of Liberation

Médaille Militaire

Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 with eight palms

Croix de guerre des théâtres d'opérations extérieures with two palms

Resistance Medal with rosette

Escapees' Medal

Colonial Medal with bars "Maroc", "Fezzan", "Koufra", "Tripolitaine", "Tunisie", "Extrême-Orient"

Insignia for the Military Wounded

Commemorative medal for voluntary service in Free France

Commemorative war medal 1939–1945

Companion of the Order of the Bath (UK)

Distinguished Service Order (UK)

Silver Star (USA)

Bronze Star Medal (USA)

Commander of the Legion of Merit (USA)

Presidential Unit Citation (USA)

Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown with palm (Belgium)

Croix de guerre (Belgium)

Croix de guerre (Luxembourg)

Grand Cross Order of the Oak Crown (Luxembourg)

Virtuti Militari (Poland)

Czechoslovak War Cross 1939-1945 (Czechoslovakia)

Military Order of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia)

War Cross (1st Class) (Greece)

Grand-officer of the Order of Glory (Tunisia)

Grand Cross of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite (Morocco)

Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Cambodia (Cambodia)

Grand Cross of the Order of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol (Laos)

See also

• 2nd Armored Division
• Battle of Kufra
• Liberation of Paris
• Liberation of Strasbourg
• Mémorial du maréchal Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris

References

• Clayton, Anthony (1992). Three Marshals of France. London: Brassey's. ISBN 0-08-040707-2. OCLC 25026611. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Karnow, Stanley (1983). Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0670746045. OCLC 9646422. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Keegan, John (1982). Six Armies in Normandy: from D-Day to the Liberation of Paris, June 6th-August 25th, 1944. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0670647365. OCLC 8176673. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, William Mortimer (2011). Free France's Lion: The Life of Philippe Leclerc, De Gaulle's Greatest General. Newbury, Nerkshire: Casemate Publishers. ISBN 978-1-61200-068-8. OCLC 721889914. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Template:Fr Mémorial Leclerc - Leclerc Memorial and Museum of the Liberation of Paris
• spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
• Raids in the Fezzan (includes description of Leclerc's expedition)
• Template:Fr Ordre de la Libération