Conference: ‘Rebuilding the French Army and Liberating France’

As part of its ‘History Mondays’ series, the École Nationale Supérieure Maritime (ENSM) is pleased to announce a lecture entitled ‘Rebuilding the French Army and liberating France, from both sides of the Mediterranean to Germany (1943-1945)’ by Tristan Lecoq, Inspector General of National Education (history and geography), member of the Marine Academy, and associate member of the General Inspectorate of Maritime Affairs.

“Rebuilding the French Army, from early 1943 to Victory in 1945, means addressing three issues. Rebuilding an army to liberate the country: this is the military and inter-allied dimension of the Liberation; rebuilding the Army of the Republic: this is the question of the military ‘tool’ under the orders of the political power; rebuilding the French Army means rebuilding an instrument of power to be reconstructed.
The army is, above all, a political instrument, under the command of a political power, serving the policies of a state. It is at the heart of the exercise of sovereignty and therefore of the means of sovereignty. “Defence! That is indeed the primary raison d’être of the state. It cannot fail in this without destroying itself,” said General De Gaulle in Bayeux on 14 June 1952[1].
Rebuilding the army therefore means rebuilding a military tool. Liberating France and marching on the Rhine means using the army as a political instrument, even if it is part of a coalition. The question of operational control of French troops by the Allied command lies at the confluence of these two aspects of the same political, military and war-related complexity: that of the military dependence, interdependence and independence of the French Army in combat between 1943 and 1945.

[1] Charles De Gaulle Discours et messages Tome II Dans l’attente 1946-1958 Paris, Plon 1970 p.527.

Registration link : https://www.billetweb.fr/conference-refaire-l-armee-francaise-et-liberer-la-france1