Jean de Lattre de Tassigny - World War II

World War II

When war was declared in 1939, he commanded the French 14th Infantry Division until the armistice with the Axis troops. He won a minor battle in Rethel where a German officer said that the French resistance was similar to the Battle of Verdun.

He remained on active duty, commanding Vichy French forces in Tunisia in 1941. He took charge of the 16th Division in 1942, but began organizing an anti-German force, which led to his arrest and a 10-year jail sentence. However, de Lattre was able to escape to Algiers. There he took command of the French Army B. French Army B were one of two armies of the Southern Group of Armies, also known as the Sixth United States Army Group. The Sixth Army Group was set up to organize the invasion of Southern France in Operation Dragoon. The other unit comprising the formation was the US Seventh Army, commanded by Alexander M. Patch. Before that, elements of de Lattre's army took Corsica. De Lattre then landed in Provence, southern France on 16 August 1944, and his troops began marching through France liberating the country as they went. On 25 September 1944 French Army B was redesignated French First Army. The army crossed the Vosges after heavy fighting. De Lattre took Belfort but halted the progress of his army. In doing so, he allowed the Germans to form the Colmar Pocket. During December 1944, the attempts to take Colmar were unsuccessful. De Lattre was able to collapse the pocket in January and February 1945 after the successful defence of Strasbourg, which was defended on the north by American troops and the French 3rd DIA and on the south by the French.

Under General de Gaulle's encouragement those French Resistance members who wished to continue fighting were incorporated into the French First Army by General de Lattre. Once France had been liberated, as part of the Alliance, his army crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany. In Germany, his army, now numbering more than 320,000 soldiers took Karlsruhe, Ulm and Stuttgart before crossing the Danube and arriving in Austria. De Lattre represented France at the German unconditional surrender in Berlin on 8 May 1945.