Talk:Henri Giraud

Tangentially connected info

Most of the section headed "Cooperation with the Allies" appears to belong on the page for Operation Torch, rather than here. After the first paragraph the information is not about Giraud. I do not know enough about the subject to incorporate the data into the Operation Torch page myself. Molinari 20:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the original text to Talk:Operation Torch, and trimmed it down by several sentences. It still seems to go into too much extraneous detail, though. --Dhartung | Talk 23:24, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Also there is a strange comment here about Admiral Darlan stating that he "maintained Nazi-inspired racist laws and deported people to Vichy concentration camps." This is odd because such a fact about Darlan isn't mentioned on his own wikipedia entry. Darlan wasn't generally pro-German, had in some respects stood up to Hitler as head of the Vichy Government and is generally held to have protected French Jews and workers from being shipped to German - foreign jews would have fared less well as a general rule. Certainly Darlan was no eliminationist as this article suggests and such a charge should at least be sourced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tdrance (talk • contribs) 09:17, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Transitions

How did Giraud go from refusing to cooperate with the Germans to making contact with the Allies and getting on a British sub? There's a story there. Also, there should be some clarification of how either he was, or wasn't, an acceptable leader to the Allies. He seems to have been treated as a UK/US plant in the Darlan puppet government, but still wasn't acceptable to the Free French or particularly friendly to them. We should have more information on this, and not just vague comments like "enraged De Gaulle". Sounds like maybe they had personal ambition or principled differences that go way back, and that he certainly considered himself independent of De Gaulle or even perhaps more legitimate, but ultimately lost the political battle. --Dhartung | Talk 23:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:MILHIST Assessment

Length & detail are good overall, and I love that there's a picture. But I think the intro needs some work. It does properly summarize the most important aspects of the subject, along with its significance. But I feel like it implies that he was captured during WWI and didn't escape until WWII. Expand a bit in the intro on other elements of his life. And there must be references! LordAmeth 00:53, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Vichy POV

I removed this:

"Perhaps Giraud's only crime was being out of touch with the horrors occuring in Germany. While focusing on his job in the military and spending most of his time as a prisoner of war, the horrors occuring in Germany with limited support from the Vichy government were not clear to him."

Beside being unsourced, it is highly unlikely and a more than questionable defense of Giraud. According to Robert Paxton, already in July 1942, evadees from Auschwitz have provided proofs of the Holocaust [1]. Furthermore, in December 1942, the governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States, the UK, the USSR, Yugoslavia and the French National Committee issued a declaration in which they condemned "in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination" and made a "solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution" [2]. As co-leader of the French National Committee, I assume Giraud had heard of that statement that his own interim government signed. Tazmaniacs 18:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

General POV

This article seems quite biased in favor of Giraud. It doesn't even mention Darlan's assassin's-Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle-rushed execution. Giraud also favored racial discrimination laws and had himself ordered the imprisonment of resistants, btu not much is mentioned in the article.

Alternatively refer to section on Africa — Preceding unsigned comment added by Des Fourie (talk • contribs) 10:47, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 03:38, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Darlan a military not civil leader

It is not correct that "Darlan was the de facto head of the Vichy government, the Allies recognized him as head of French forces in Africa". He had no government status, he was commander in chief of the French armed forces.Royalcourtier (talk) 18:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Cooperation with the Allies

Paragraph 7 of section #Cooperation with the Allies currently ^[perma] reads:

Pro-Allied elements in Algeria had agreed to support the Allied landings, and in fact seized Algiers on the night of 7–8 November; the city was then occupied by Allied troops. However, resistance continued at Oran and Casablanca. Giraud flew to Algiers on 9 November, but his attempt to assume command of French forces was rebuffed; his broadcast directing French troops to cease resistance and join the Allies was ignored. Instead, it appeared that Admiral François Darlan, who happened to be in Algiers, had real authority, and Giraud quickly realized this. Despite the fact that Darlan was the de facto head of the Vichy government, the Allies recognized him as head of French forces in Africa, and on 10 November, after agreeing to a deal, Darlan ordered the French forces to cease fire and join the Allies.

but this is somewhat misleading. Giraud was offered supreme command of North Africa by Eisenhower in Gibraltar, but Giraud refused, bickering for a higher position (Eisenhower's own: supreme command of all Allied Forces) which Eisenhower wasn't about to resign and give to him instead. By the next day, Giraud had relented, but by then it was too late, because events were moving too quickly. Darlan happened to be in Algiers, and was *given* authority by the Allies while Giraud dithered, in a last-minute deal brokered by Gen. Robert Murphy. Murphy's orders from Roosevelt were to prevent North African troops from firing on Allied troops during the landings, which were already starting. Murphy's mission was about to fail, until he proposed a deal with Darlan: be named to the position previously offered to Giraud, in exchange for allowing free passage to the Allies during the landings, and throughout their march through N. Africa to Tunisia to fight Rommel. Darlan agreed, and was named to the post. See Operation Torch#The Darlan Deal, Satloff (2017), and Groom (2006). Mathglot (talk) 21:08, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

References

"In 1933, he was transferred to Morocco"

1933 doesn't make sense since he already was in Morocco in 1926 for the capture of Abd-del-Krim. I suspect 1933 here is just a typo for 1923.--Pere prlpz (talk) 10:03, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

According to our French article "in January 1920, Giraud was sent to the French protectorate in Morocco under the orders of Marshal Lyautey, who personally claimed him at his side. As Lieutenant-Colonel, he participated in the Rif War and received the surrender ofAbd el-Krim, on May 27, 1926. He was a professor at the War School from 1927 to 1929. When the government created, on March 1, 1930, the military region of the Algerian-Moroccan borders, it entrusted the command to Colonel Giraud with the mission of pacifying them. He was appointed brigadier general in December 1930." DuncanHill (talk) 10:37, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguating

I recently discovered that there are other notable henri giraud people: https://fr.m.wiki.x.io/wiki/Henri_Giraud. 19:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Namangwari (talk • contribs)

Good to know going forward, but not needed at en-wiki, which doesn't have articles on any of the namesakes of the general. Mathglot (talk) 20:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Controversial claim of Giraud "praising Nazi Germany"

Under the heading "Military career: Army of Africa leader", the following claims are made: "In the US, he praised the achievements of Nazi Germany. The Cremieux decree was only restored by General de Gaulle. De Gaulle consolidated his political position at Giraud's expense because he was more up to date with the political situation. Giraud went to the U.S. in July on a useless trip while de Gaulle gained strength. Giraud made a fool of himself in Detroit with a speech praising Nazi achievements in Germany" (emphases added).
There are a few problems here. First, the repetition: the first sentence is repeated in the last. Second, terms like "useless" and "made a fool of himself" are inappropriate in an encyclopedia. Third, the source provided for this claim is a book which few readers will own, and likely, few would even have access to. In such situations, editors who rely upon books for controversial claims, the relevant excerpt from the book should be provided in the footnotes. Finally, it seems implausible to me that the man whose country had been invaded by Nazi Germany, who had (twice!) been captured and imprisoned by them, and whose family members were being hunted and held prisoner by Germans, would be praising their achievements. Of course I may be wrong, but to quote Carl Sagan -- "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Bricology (talk) 00:19, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Feel free to remove it. I found no source confirming this. I did find a NYT article from that day, reporting on Giraud’s visit to Canada and Detroit, and they certainly would have mentioned it if he had said any such thing: https://www.nytimes.com/1943/07/16/archives/giraud-is-greeted-warmly-in-canada-government-officials-and-the.html. Thanks for spotting this. Mathglot (talk) 12:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

The Militant of July 24 also reports on it, but I wouldn’t trust their reports, which may have been the origin of this. Mathglot (talk) 12:14, 16 August 2024 (UTC)