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Jean de Lattre
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JEAN-MARIE-GABRIEL de LATTRE de TASSIGNY (1889-1952) graduated from Saint Cyr in 1911, taking part in WWI and was appointed head of l'Ecole de Guerre in 1935.
De Lattre was the youngest general in the French Army in 1939 when war was declared. De Lattre commanded Vichy forces in Tunisia and then the 16th Division at Montpellier in 1942. He was the only Vichy commander to thwart German control after the Allied landings in North Africa. His efforts brought him a ten-year prison sentence.
De Lattre escaped to Algiers where he took command of what would become the French First Army in October 1943. De Lattre's troops landed in southern France as part of the Allied Sixth Army Group along with the American Seventh Army on August 16, 1944. The French troops liberated Toulon and Marseilles and then joined the American troops in the march up the Rhone River Valley.
After the liberation of France his army crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany. De Lattre represented France at the German unconditional surrender in Rheims on May 7, 1945 and the signing in Berlin on the 9th.
After WWII, de Lattre commanded French troops in Indochina until 1951, when illness forced a return to Paris where he died the following year.
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