France 100 Francs Silver coin 1994 Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny
Commemorative issue: 50th Anniversary of the Liberation of Paris
Obverse: Bust of Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny wearing French Army kepi (five stars - Général d'armée "army general").
Lettering: RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE DE LATTRE DE TASSIGNY.
Engraver: Émile Rousseau.
Reverse: Flag of the United States of America and France & Insignia of First French Army during World War II. A map of the operation Dragoon (15 August – 14 September 1944, Southern France, Côte d'Azur).
Lettering: PROVENCE- RHONE- VOSGES- ALSACE- ALLEMAGNE 100F 1994 RHIN ET DANUBE DRAGOON.
Metal: Silver (.900).
Weight: 22.2 g.
Diameter: 37 mm.
Thickness: 2.2 mm.
Commemorative coins of France: 50th Anniversary of the Liberation of Paris
100 Francs Silver coin 1994 Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny
Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny (2 February 1889 – 11 January 1952) was a notable French military commander during World War II and the First Indochina War. De Lattre was posthumously promoted to Marshal of France.
Born at Mouilleron-en-Pareds (Vendée), in the same village of World War I leader Georges Clemenceau, to an aristocratic family.
He graduated from officer school in 1911 (ranked 5th in his class in Saint-Cyr).
World War I
De Lattre fought in World War I and was wounded twice. He was made a knight of Legion of Honour in December 1914.
Interwar Period
De Lattre specialized in cavalry and was made head of the French War College in 1935. After World War I, he served as an officer in the French headquarters during the Rif War.
He entered General Weygand's headquarters in 1932. Weygand had the choice between de Lattre and de Gaulle and chose de Lattre because of his superior rank and honors. De Lattre then served in the headquarters of an infantry regiment at Metz.
World War II
When war was declared in 1939, de Lattre commanded the French 14th Infantry Division until the armistice with the Axis troops. He won a minor battle in Rethel where a German officer said that the French resistance was similar to the Battle of Verdun.
He remained on active duty, commanding Vichy French forces in Tunisia in 1941. He took charge of the 16th Division in 1942, but began organizing an anti-German force, which led to his arrest and a 10-year jail sentence. However, de Lattre was able to escape to Algiers. There he took command of the French Army B, elements of which took Corsica.
Army B was then joined with the US Seventh Army, commanded by Alexander M. Patch, to form the Southern Group of Armies. Also known as the "Sixth United States Army Group", it was set up to organize the invasion of Southern France in Operation Dragoon. Army B landed in Provence, southern France on 16 August 1944, and began driving the Germans north. On 25 September 1944 it was redesignated the French First Army. It crossed the Vosges after heavy fighting, then Belfort, and halted. Doing so allowed the Germans to form the Colmar Pocket. During December 1944, the attempts to take Colmar were unsuccessful. The First Army was able to collapse the pocket in January and February 1945 after the successful defence of Strasbourg, which was held on the north by American troops and the French 3rd DIA and on the south by the French.
Under General de Gaulle's encouragement those French Resistance members who wished to continue fighting were incorporated into the French First Army by General de Lattre. Once France had been liberated, as part of the Alliance, his army crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany. There the First Army, now numbering more than 320,000 soldiers, took Karlsruhe, Ulm and Stuttgart before crossing the Danube and arriving in Austria. De Lattre represented France at the German unconditional surrender in Berlin on 8 May 1945.
Post-War Career
The Supreme Commanders on June 5, 1945 in Berlin: Bernard Montgomery, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Georgy Zhukov and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.
After World War II, he first became chief of staff of the NATO infantry in Europe. He was under the orders of Field Marshal Montgomery, organizing numerous training exercises. He also served as a French military ambassador in South America.
Vietnam Service
From 1950 to September 1951, he commanded French troops in Indochina during the First Indochina War. De Lattre was highly regarded by both his French subordinates and Vietminh adversaries, and has been described as the "Gallic version of [United States General Douglas] MacArthur - handsome, stylish, sometimes charming, yet egocentric to the point of megalomania" and "brilliant and vain" and "flamboyant". After de Lattre's arrival in Vietnam, Vietminh General Giap proclaimed that now his army would face "an adversary worthy of its steel". De Lattre's arrival raised the morale of French troops significantly at that time and he inspired his forces to inflict heavy defeats on the Vietminh. He won three major victories at Vinh Yen, Mao khé and Yen Cu Ha and defended successfully the north of the country against the Viet Minh.
At the Battle of Vinh Yen in January 1951, he defeated 2 Vietminh divisions (totaling 20,000 men) under General Giap by personally taking charge of the outnumbered French forces, flying in reinforcements, and mustering every available aircraft to bomb the massive Vietminh formations; Giap retreated after 3 fierce days of combat with approximately 6,000 dead and 8,000 wounded. De Lattre had anticipated Giap's attacks and had reinforced French defenses with hundreds of cement blockhouses and new airfields.
In March 1951, at the Battle of Mao Khe near the port of Haiphong, de Lattre again defeated Giap. This time, Giap underestimated the de Lattre's army's ability to deploy naval guns and move reinforcements aboard assault boats on deep estuaries and canals.
However, de Lattre's only son, Bernard de Lattre de Tassigny, was killed in action during the war at the Battle for Nam Dinh in late May 1951, while obeying the elder de Lattre's orders to stubbornly hold that town at all costs against 3 Vietminh divisions. This approximately three-week battle was a victory that halted Giap's initiative in the Red River Delta.
On September 20, 1951, de Lattre spoke at the United States Pentagon to request American aid, warning of the danger of the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia if northern Vietnam fell completely to the Vietminh forces. However, the United States could only partially help because it was committed to the Korean War at that time. The United States did send de Lattre a number of transport planes, trucks, and other equipment - a "significant contribution", but "scarcely enough to turn the tide for France" in Vietnam.
In 1951, illness forced de Lattre de Tassigny to return to Paris where he later died of cancer; he was posthumously made Maréchal de France. After his return to France, his successors Raoul Salan and Henri Navarre did not enjoy the same level of success as de Lattre did.
State funeral
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was buried in a state funeral lasting five days, in what LIFE magazine described as the "biggest military funeral France had seen since the death of Marshal Foch in 1929". The Marshal's body was conveyed through the streets of Paris in a series of funeral processions, with the coffin lying in state at four separate locations: his home, the chapel at Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe and before Notre Dame. Those marching in the funeral processions, following the gun carriage on which the tricolor-covered coffin was carried, included members of the French cabinet, judges, bishops, and Western military leaders. The pallbearers included other Allied generals of World War II, such as Bernard Montgomery and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The route included the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs-Élysées, and the processions went from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame, and then from Notre Dame to Les Invalides. The stage of the journey from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame took place in the evening, and cavalrymen from the Garde Républicaine flanked the coffin on horseback bearing flaming torches. Walking behind the soldiers marching in the funeral processions was the lone figure of the Marshal's widow, Simonne de Lattre de Tassigny, dressed in black and praying as she walked. Thousands of people lined the funeral route, forming crowds standing ten-deep. The pageantry included the tolling of bells, and flags being flown at half-mast. The final stage of the funeral was a journey of 250 miles to the Marshal's birthplace of Mouilleron-en-Pareds in western France. In attendance there was the Marshal's 97-year-old father, Roger de Lattre. Aged and blind, and the last of the de Lattres, he ran his hands over the ceremonial accoutrements on the coffin, which included the posthumously awarded marshal's baton and his son's kepi. Then the coffin was lowered into the ground and the Marshal was laid to rest beside his only son, Bernard, who had been killed fighting under his father's command in Indochina some eight months previously.
Operation Dragoon
Operation Dragoon was the Allied invasion of southern France on 15 August 1944, during World War II. The invasion was initiated via a parachute drop by the 1st Airborne Task Force, followed by an amphibious assault by elements of the United States Seventh Army, followed a day later by a force made up primarily of the French First Army. The landing caused the German Army Group G to abandon southern France and to retreat under constant Allied attacks to the Vosges Mountains. Despite being a large and complex military operation with a well-executed amphibious and airborne component, Operation Dragoon is not well known as it was overshadowed by the larger Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy (D-Day) two months earlier.
First French Army
The First Army (French: 1ère Armée) was a field army of France that fought during World War I and World War II. It was also active during the Cold War.
The First Army was reconstituted as the French Army B under the command of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny in the summer of 1944. It landed in southern France after Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of the area. On September 25, 1944 French Army B was redesignated French First Army. Liberating Marseilles, Toulon, and Lyon, it later formed the right flank of the Allied Southern Group of Armies (also known as the U.S. Sixth Army Group) at the southern end of the Allied front line, adjacent to Switzerland. It commanded two corps, the French I and II Corps. The French First Army liberated the southern area of the Vosges Mountains, including Belfort. Its operations in the area of Burnhaupt destroyed the German IV Luftwaffe Korps in November 1944. In January 1945 it defended against operation Nordwind, the last major German offensive on the western front. In February 1945, with the assistance of the U.S. XXI Corps, the First Army collapsed the Colmar Pocket and cleared the west bank of the Rhine River of Germans in the area south of Strasbourg. In March 1945, the First Army fought through the Siegfried Line fortifications in the Bienwald Forest near Lauterbourg. Subsequently, the First Army crossed the Rhine near Speyer and captured Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Operations by the First Army in April 1945 encircled and captured the German XVIII S.S. Armee Korps in the Black Forest and cleared southwestern Germany. At the end of the war, the motto of the French First Army was Rhin et Danube, referring to the two great German rivers that it had reached and crossed during its combat operations.