Alphonse Juin

Initial career

Resulting from a modest family (wire of gendarme), Frenchwoman of Algeria, it leaves major Saint-Cyr military school in 1912 in same promotion as the Général de Gaulle.

During the First World War, Alphonse Juin fights with the Morocco until in 1914, then on the French face with the head of the Moroccan tabors. Seriously wounded in Champagne in 1915, it definitively loses the use of its right-hand man.

Named brigadier general in 1938, it receives with the mobilization the command of the 15 {{E}} Division of Motorized Infantry: covering the retirement on Dunkirk, this unit is encircled in the pocket of Lille and fights with the grouping of the general Molinié until the exhaustion of its ammunition. June is made prisoner and internee with the Forteresse of Königstein.

June with the service of Vichy

Released on June 15th 1941, on the request of the Vichy government, pursuant to the agreements of Paris (agreements collaboration military) made by Darlan with Germany, it is named commander-in-chief of the forces of North Africa.

It goes then to Germany, on December 20th, 1941, with the minister of Brinon, to meet there the marshal Göring, who asks him to accommodate in Tunisia the German-Italian troops of Rommel, in the event of fold of these last. Brinon, which accompanied June, supported that this general would then have answered very favorably Göring. June, on the contrary, affirms in its memories that he would have opposed to Göring his most formal refusal. What is certain it is that, in practice, at the time of the entry of German-Italian in Tunisia, on November 9th, 1942, the subordinates of June were going to deliver to them this protectorate without only one shot, in same time that they drew on the allies with Oran and Morocco, which would confirm the declaration of Brinon at the time of its lawsuit.

November 8th, 1942, at the time of the unloading combined in North Africa, Alphonse Juin was initially stopped by a group of young patriots ordered by the candidate of Pauphilet reserve, while 400 badly armed civilians neutralized its 19th Army corps in Algiers, and thus allowed the allies to unload without opposition, to encircle the city and to obtain his capitulation the day-even.

June, recipient of a letter of F. Roosevelt asking him to accommodate the allied troops as friends, refused this application which was presented by the Murphy consul, while sheltering behind the authority of the Admiral Darlan, present in Algiers, then, released in the morning by the mobile guard, it organized the reconquest of the city against the resistant ones. At 5 p.m. 30, whereas resistance still held its principal strategic point, the Central police station, and that the allies penetrated finally in the city, June capitulated, but for Algiers only.

The same November 8th 1942, in Oran and Morocco, the subordinates of June, who could not have been neutralized as in Algiers, there accommodated with blows of guns the allies, while they were going to deliver without resistance Tunisia to the Germans. During this time in Algiers, June, commander-in-chief and Darlan by refusing to order cease it fire in Morocco and the resumption of the combat to the troops of Tunisia started.

It took 3 days of pressure and threats of the American general Clark, so that June and Darlan order finally the Cessez-le-feu November 10th and 11th 1942 (human costs of these 3 days of obstinacy of June and Darlan: 1 346 killed French and 479 allied + 1 997 wounded French and 720 allied) .

June gave finally, on November 14th, the order with the army of Tunisia folded up on the Algerian border, to face the Germans, but its chief the Barré general will wait until November 18th to take again the combat. The army of Tunisia reinforced by allied elements was going then to fight very courageously, but the 6 months human costs of war required then to reconquer the Regency which had not been defended were going to be very high.

June in war against Germany

June, under the authority of Darlan, autoproclamé High commissioner of France in Africa and the general Giraud (see Mode of Vichy in released Africa (1942-1943)), adopted Anglo-American finally and accepted the command of the committed French forces in Tunisia. Those, which only required to fight, contributed, at the price of heavy losses to the destruction of the occupying forces of the Axis and the Afrika Korps of Rommel.

1943 Named by De Gaulle with the head of the French task force in Italy, which includes/understands four divisions, Alphonse Juin covered glory by taking the View-point of Cassino but this triumph was sullied by violences and the rapes on populations (country of Ceccano, Sgurgola, Giuliano, Cassino, Frosinone) close to the Cassino mount by part of the same Task force (the legendary soldiers " goumier s"), violences which were not only made against adults, but also against children, old men and, in certain case, of the animals. These rapes if they were not always punished as they would have owed the being, were however not the result of a policy deliberated on behalf of the allied political leaders or soldiers.

The battles of the Mount-Cassin revealed the military engineering of the general Alphonse Juin who while launching an attack of light infantry to overflow the German position on his sides gained a total success, contrary to the American general Clarke who by trying a frontal attack of heavy infantry preceded by a catastrophic strategic bombardment sent to dead without any utility nearly 1.700 GI' S.

1944 June made adopt by the Alliés a plan of daring operation. In May 1944, by its victory of the Garigliano, it opened with allied the road Rome and of His.

Its troops will take part then, but without him, with the unloading of Provence, under the orders of the general of Tassigny, which, with its difference, had tried to resist, when on November 11th, 1942 the German troops had invaded the free zone.

1944 - 1947, chief of staff of national defense.

June in the post-war period

1947 - 1951, resident general with the Morocco it is opposed to the sultan Mohammed V Ben Youssef and with the nationalist party, while resting on Thami El Glaoui, pasha of Marrakech. Its right-hand man is then Marcel Vallat (1898-1986).

1951 - 1956, commander-in-chief of the sector Center-Europe of the Atlantic Organization (of which the supreme commander is the general Eisenhower).

July 14th 1952, high with the dignity of Marshal of France.

1954 - 1955, guarantees the liberal policy of Mendès France in Tunisia,

1955, is opposed to the independence of Morocco, like the abandonment in Algeria.

Like pied-noir and soldier, it is opposed to the policy self-determination carried out by de Gaulle, without supporting however the putsch of the generals in 1961. It was drawn aside, so of any function starting from 1962. It is said that its public disagreement with the government made that no marshal was promoted more of alive sound.

Distinctions

Academies

Elected with the French Academy the November 20th 1952, with the armchair 4, succeeding Jean Tharaud. Its official reception under the Cupola took place on June 25th 1953.
Member of the colonial Academy of Science

Decorations

Grand' Cross of the Legion of honor
Military decoration
Military Cross 1914-1918

See too

Place of the Marshal June

Basic sources and bibliography

Memories of the main characters

General Alphonse Juin, memories of the marshal June, Paris, “Le Figaro”, March 1949.
Jose Aboulker, We who stopped the general June, Paris, “the Nave”, n° April 25th, th and th 1959.
General Giraud, Only one goal: victory, Algiers 1942-1944 , Paris, Julliard, 1949.

Official reports of time of the actors of the putsch of November 8th, 1942, in Algiers

Books French, share of Resistance French in events of North Africa (Reports/ratios of the chiefs of the groups of volunteers which seized Algiers on November 8th, 1942), Commissariat with the Information of the French National committee, London, August 1943.

Scientific works

Professor Yves Maxime Danan, political life in Algiers of 1940 to 1944 , Paris, L.G.D.J., 1963.
Christine Levisse-Touzé, North Africa in the war, 1939-1945 , Paris, Albin Michel, 1998.
Jacques Cantier, Algeria under the mode of Vichy , Thesis, Toulouse II, 1999.
Professor Jose Aboulker and Christine Levisse-Touzé, November 8th, 1942: the armies American and English take Algiers in fifteen hours , Paris, “Hope”, n° 133,2002.

External bonds

"The ciociara" A film by Vittorio De Sica on IMDB
Biographical note of the French Academy
war crimes after Casino (in Italian)

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