France
| Armed Force | Name | Highest Rank | Highest Award | Fate | Casualties inflicted | Theatres / Battles | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Army | Charles de Gaulle | Général de Brigade | Grand Master Legion of Honor | Took control of France as President and was instrumental in creating the Fifth French Republic. |
|
||
| Defied Vichy France by vowing to continue fighting after the French surrender. He headed with de Tassigny the Free French Forces, who assisted the Allies in the liberation of France in 1944. | |||||||
| Jean de Lattre de Tassigny | Marshal of France | Grand Master Legion of Honor | Later commanded French troops in the First Indochina War. |
|
|||
| Defied Vichy France by vowing to continue fighting after the French surrender. He headed with Charles de Gaulle the Free French Forces, who assisted the Allies in the liberation of France in 1944. | |||||||
| Maurice Gamelin | Général d'Armée | Died in 1958. |
|
||||
| Commander-in-Chief of French army during Battle of France, was replaced in 20 May 1940. | |||||||
| Maxime Weygand | General | Arrested on charges of treason but acquitted. |
|
||||
| Commander-in-Chief of French army during the Battle of France from 20 May 1940 until the surrender of France. Oversaw the creation of the Weygand line, an early application of the Hedgehog tactic. | |||||||
| French Navy | François Darlan | Admiral of the Fleet | Murdered by Bonnier de La Chapelle December 1942. |
|
|||
| Built up the French Navy to prepare for war, only to see it destroyed by the British Navy. Served the Vichy France government and was tipped to become Pétain's successor. Was commander of Vichy French forces in Operation Torch. After arranging a ceasefire, he defected to the Allied side. | |||||||
Read more about this topic: Commanders Of World War II, Military Commanders, Allied Powers
Famous quotes containing the word france:
“I shall not bring an automobile with me. These inventions infest France almost as much as Bloomer cycling costumes, but they make a horrid racket, and are particularly objectionable. So are the Bloomers. Nothing more abominable has ever been invented. Perhaps the automobile tricycles may succeed better, but I abjure all these works of the devil.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world—and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish—she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.”
—Lillian Hellman (1907–1984)