Henri Frenay

Henri Frenay (1905 - 1988) is a French Résistant and politician. Born on November 19th 1905 with Lyon, it is deceased on August 6th 1988 with Porto-Vecchio (Corsica - of-South). He married Doctor Chilina Ciosi, of which he makes knowledge during the war.

Youth

Henri Frenay is resulting from a family of officers, catholic and Lyons, which always remained with the variation of the policy. His/her father died during the First World War and Henri Frenay is raised by his mother. He makes his studies with the Ampère college of Lyon. Until its meeting with Berty Albrecht in 1934, it is held apart from the policy. Nevertheless, it is rather of nationalist and preserving tendency.

Military formation and pre-war period

In 1924, into 19 years, it integrates the military special École of Saint-Cyr military school from where it leaves Sous-lieutenant later two years. It is initially affected in the Army of the the Rhine. It then joined in Syria the 16th Regiment of Tunisian riflemen then the 8th Battalion assyro-chaldéen with Kamechlié. In 1933, it returns in metropolis, with Hyères, the 3rd alpine Regiment of infantry. It also carries out a training course of air observer. In 1935, it returns to the University of War from where it leaves Capitaine.

It meets Berty Albrecht in 1934. Thanks to it, it comes into contact with German refugees anti-nazis and comes from there to be interested in the Nazisme of which it then discovers the dangers through the reading of Mein Kampf. In 1938, Henri Frenay follows the courses of the Center of the High Germanic Studies and writes a report on the Germany.

At the beginning of the war

In 1939, Henri Frenay, then Captain, are affected as staff officer on the Ligne Maginot in 1939. June 13rd 1940, the 43e Army corps of which it forms part receives the order of fold for, four days later, being makes captive by the German armed . Henri Frenay succeeds in escaping, with the Adjudant Bourguet. With foot, they gain the free zone where they arrive on July 15th. Affected in garrison with Marseilles, it quickly takes conscience of the unconcern with which French attends the German projection. Having been sensitized very early at the German considerations ideological thanks to the meetings organized by Berty Albrecht, and having been convinced that France will end up being raised, it is put in having to gather around Berty Albrecht and him, in August 1940, a beginning of network for what will be the first historical movement of Interior Resistance, the Liberation movement Main road (MLN). During this same time, he quickly manages to set up a press service clandestine, which prints a newspaper then entitled the Small Wings , and which will be quickly famous Vérités .

It is with being noted that in these beginnings of Interior Resistance, the goal is not the combat of the Régime of Vichy. Frenay, as a soldier in particular, sees in Pétain a former Marshal of the Great War with which one can make confidence. The hope of clandestine, is then in a double game of this man, who prepares the safety of France inevitably in one way or another .

Frenay is then sent to the Second Office of the Staff of the Army (service of the military information) with Vichy, from where it continues his action, linking the movements incipient from each provinces, while taking care to respect a very strict bulk-heading to avoid all " blow dur". Succession of these successive fusions, the MLN is famous in MLF, Liberation movement Frenchwoman .

January 24th 1941, it requires to be put on leave of Armistice in a letter expressing its loss of confidence with respect to the High command. It is received by the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Picquendar general, who tries to convince it to remain. In front of his determination, the general Huntziger grants his resignation to him, stressing that it is final. Henri Frenay keeps nénmoins many contacts with the Army and in particular with the Second Office.

Founder of Combat

From now on the freehands, Frenay can be devoted entirely to the consolidation of its network. It extends the publication of the clandestine newspaper the Small Wings of North and the Pas-de-Calais to all the occupied zone, newspaper which then takes for name the Small Wings of France , then finally that of Résistance .

Sought by the Gestapo and the French police force, it plunges quickly in clandestinity and adopts various names of loan like Henri Francen , Morin , Molin , Lefèvre , or Charvet , name under which it was known British services. Into free zone, its newspaper Truths , after fusion with ''' Freedom ''', is transformed into Combat at the end of 1941, whose subtitle is " Body of the movement of Française" Resistance;. Thanks to the talents of organizer of its founder and with the multiplicity of his networks (military, lawyers university, catholic, Protestant and socialist in particular), Combat will become later, according to Laurent Douzou and Dominique Veillon, most effective of the movements of the noncommunist Resistance of the southern zone.

He will work in good intelligence with the movement Franc-Tireur animated by his friend Jean-Pierre Levy, but with difficulty with the last movement Libération animated by Emmanuel d' Astier of Vigerie.

Henri Frenay does not join immediately with de Gaulle for political reasons, at least until the end of 1941. Nevertheless, with time; Frenay must go obviously: Pétain is not the hero whom he hoped for, which appears more and more as handled and without reality capacity. The increasing influence of Pierre Laval on the Vichy government finishes convincing it: Combat will déavouera from now on through its aggressives publications the action of the government of Vichy.

Henri Frenay resistant

In spite of its activities of resistant, it meets several times of the members of the Régime of Vichy (the warrant for arrest launched against him is then suspended) like the Minister of Interior Department Pierre Pucheu or the Commander Rollin, of the French Police force, in 1942, which propose to him to rejoin its movement at the French secret services, which Henri Frenay refuses. These meetings nevertheless caused the handing-over in freedom of several members of Combat, stopped by the French police force. These meetings devalue it during a time with the eyes of unquestionable resistant of which Emmanuel d' Astier of Vigerie and Jean Moulin which wonders which play plays the chief of Combat. The situation is definitively clarified when Henri Frenay, later with London, writes a report/ratio explaining the object of these meetings which is sent to the various chiefs of the Résistance.

In 1942, it meets Jean Moulin in Marseilles, parachuted in January 1942. It is Henri Frenay who will form it and will introduce it with clandestinity, making from the start confidence with this envoy. He reveals to him the operation of Combat , but arranges also the meetings with Astier and Levy. Jean Moulin, brings to him with him the financing of London, which will feed the resistance movements consequently.

Henri Frenay plays in free zone a part of unifier of the French Résistance, by amalgamating several networks with his and while trying to gather the three more important movements of the free zone (Franc-Tireur, Libération, Combat), which leads later to the creation of the Plain Movements of Resistance or WALL of which it is one of the members of the management Committee. In October 1941, it meets Jean Moulin which is charged to unify the French Résistance and to rejoin it with de Gaulle. He then frequently sees it until in 1943.

Henri Frenay, accompanied by Emmanuel d' Astier of Vigerie, share on September 17th 1942 for London, while passing by Gibraltar. It meets the General de Gaulle, the chief of the free France, and finds in him the majority of its designs of the Résistance. It contacts also the members of the BCRA of which the Colonel Passy.

Henri Frenay will know then serious dissensions with Jean Moulin, delegated of the de Gaulle General to direct political Resistance and soldier to France, considering that this one deliberately sought to decrease the effectiveness of the WALL to the profit of certain radical mobilities pro-Soviet. In particular, the de Gaulle General, by Mill, wished to basically separate the political combat from military Resistance, considering that it was with the government exiled in London then in Algiers to fulfill this role, his patronage, whereas Frenay, having attended the failure of IIIe republic, considered that Resistance, could not accommodate the old parties in its center, and had as such having its place in the creation of new institutions post-war period.

As from March 1943, Henri Frenay helps RNPG of François Mitterrand and Maurice Pinot against the movement of Michel Cailliau, nephew of the general de Gaulle.

In June 1943, " Charvet" , alias Henri Frenay, entrusts the direction of the movement to his assistant Claude Bourdet and goes back to London. In July, it leaves for Algiers where, the next month, the de Gaulle general gives the Cross of the Release to him.

Post-war period

Minister for the prisoners, deportees and taken refuge

Frenay, which, having played such a part in Interior Resistance, révait of a role of width to the ministry for the Interior of the French Comité of the national Release of Algiers. Nevertheless, because of its ideas opposed to those of De Gaulle, it is somewhat isolated rebuilding, obtaining a station of second plan as of November 1943, the Ministry for the Prisoners, Déportés and Refugees, station which it will preserve at the Provisional government of the French Republic, in 1944 and until October 21st 1945. It is harnessed nevertheless with the difficult task to ensure the return in France of the 1 million 330.000 prisoners, refugees and off-set of the American zone and to reinstate them in the national life in four months (between April and July 1945). The French deportees of the Soviet zone are released more slowly. Henri Frenay and his ministry must provide the complete listing of the missings whom the Russian authorities then seek in the camps where they are the only ones with being able to enter. The load of minister of Henri Frenay stops when the provisional government of the French Republic gives its capacities to the constituent Assembly in November 1945.

Political life

With the Release, the war having made it evolve to the left and a Marxist socialism not , it is one of the founders of the democratic and socialist Union of Resistance (UDSR). It thinks that Resistance should not stop " with the last blow of canon" but to become the engine of a political and social rebuilding of the country.

It is a savage adversary of the Communists, of which it undergoes them violent and continual attacks, in particular via the Humanité. Henri Frenay ends up translating this newspaper into justice. Débouté in first authority, it will gain in call. The purpose of these attacks are to discredit Henri Frenay with the eyes of his close relations, his/her collaborators, and the deportees whom it repatriates and also to increase the popularity of the Communist party in associations of prisoners.

Its hope to build a strong and solid republic is disappointed at the time of resurgence of the parties and their internal conflicts as of the Libération. At the time of the bringing together of its movement with the Radical party within the Gathering of the Republican lefts, he resigns of the UDSR and turns then to European construction. President of the European Union of federalists (UEF), it does not share the European designs of De Gaulle with whom it does not get along any more but it also runs up against the actors of the IVe République. Its faith in the European construction industry the conduit to be taken part in the congress of $the Hague in 1948, which creates the European Mouvement. Frenay resigns of the presidency of the UEF after the rejection of the European Community of defense (CED) in 1954.

He is unfortunate candidate of SFIO to the legislative elections of 1958. The return of de Gaulle appears necessary to him to give new institutions and to put an end to the Guerre of Algeria. Nevertheless, in 1965, it wishes the election of Defferre to the presidency, and invites to vote against de Gaulle.

He is also administrator of companies of edition.

Decorations

Companion of the Release, Henri Frenay receives the Croix of the Release in 1943.
Grand Cross of the Legion of honor
Military Cross 39-45 (two quotations)
Grand Cross of the National order of the Merit

Publications

Combat , ED. Denoël, 1946
the Night will finish , ED. Robert Laffont, 1973
Voluntary of the Night , ED. Robert Laffont, 1975
the Enigma Jean Moulin , ED. Robert Laffont, 1977

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