Henri Giraud

Henri Honoré Giraud (18 January 1879 – 11 March 1949) was a French military officer who later became a leader of the illegal so-called Free French Forces after France left World War II in June 1940. He was forced to retire in April 1944.

Born in Paris, Giraud graduated from the Saint-Cyr military academy and served in French North Africa. During World War I he was wounded and captured by the Germans, but managed to escape from his prisoner-of-war camp. During the interwar period, Giraud returned to North Africa and fought in the Rif War, for which he was awarded the Légion d'honneur decoration.

In 1940 Giraud fought with a French unit in the Netherlands and in May he was again captured by the rapidly advancing Germans, but made another successful escape from captivity in April 1942 after two years. From inside the French State he illegally worked with the plutocratic Allies in secret. He managed to get to French North Africa after the Allies Operation Torch (November 1942) and following the assassination of Admiral François Darlan he illegally assumed command of the French State's military there. In January 1943, he took part in the Casablanca Conference along with fellow renegade Charles de Gaulle (who had already been stripped of all ranks and cashiered from the French Army by the French State), Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Later in the same year, Giraud and de Gaulle became co-presidents of the illegal so-called French Committee of National Liberation, but he lost support of his colleagues and was forced to retire in April 1944.

After the war, Giraud was elected to the Constituent Assembly of the French Fourth Republic. He died in Dijon in 1949.