Capture, Detention and Death
Mandel was arrested on 8 August 1941 in Morocco by General Charles Nogues on the orders of Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of the Vichy government. He was conveyed to the Château de Chazeron via Fort du Portalet, where Paul Reynaud, Édouard Daladier and General Maurice Gamelin were also being held prisoner. Churchill tried unsuccessfully to arrange Mandel's rescue. He described Mandel as "the first resister" and is believed to have preferred him over Charles de Gaulle to lead the Free French Forces. Following pressure from the Germans and trials in Riom, all four were sentenced to life imprisonment on 7 November 1941.
In November 1942, after the Germany Army moved into unoccupied France and took it over, the Vichy government transferred Mandel and Reynaud to the Gestapo. The Nazis took over the former Free Zone to counter the threat from the Allies, who had just landed in North Africa. The Gestapo deported Mandel to Oranienburg, and then to Buchenwald, where he was held with the French politician Léon Blum.
In 1944 the German Ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz suggested to Laval that Mandel, Blum, and Reynaud should be executed by the Vichy government in retaliation for the assassination of Philippe Henriot, Minister of Propaganda, by the Algiers Committee, the Communist Maquis of the Resistance. Mandel was returned to Paris on 4 July 1944, supposedly as a hostage. While being transferred from one prison to another, he was captured by the Milice, the paramilitary force.
Three days later, the Milice took Mandel to the Forest of Fontainebleau, where they executed him. He was buried at Passy Cemetery.
Laval was appalled and protested that he could not condone the execution: "I have no blood on my hands...and no responsibility for these events." He added that the members of the Vichy Cabinet were unanimous "in favour of refusing to hand over any hostages in future or to condone reprisals of this nature." Both Laval and Robert Brasillach, a French Fascist who had called for Mandel's trial or execution, were ultimately executed.
Read more about this topic: Georges Mandel
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