General GOURAUD - The French Colonies and Adolf Hitler.

General Henri GOURAUD (1867.1946)

Letter signed to Alain Gheerbrant, Director of the French Colonial Institute.

A page in-4°. Paris. October 21, 1938.

“It is clear that Germany only has to obtain the Colonies for having completely destroyed the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler does not hide it in his speeches . »

Remarkable letter from Gouraud worrying about the fate of the French colonies in the face of the annexationist wishes of Adolf Hitler.

“Mr. Director, In January I gave my membership to the Committee formed for the safeguard and integrity of the French Colonial Empire. My opinion has not changed, and recent painful events still confirm it. It is clear that Germany only has to obtain the Colonies for having completely destroyed the Treaty of Versailles, which is its goal; Mr. Hitler does not hide it in his speeches . I can therefore only repeat to you what I wrote to you, namely that the more we give in to Germany, the more it increases its claims. Moreover, it was noted in England itself that before invading Austria, Mr. Hitler had affirmed on several occasions that he was not thinking of dealing with the internal affairs of this country and in no way of annexing it. . We saw the same statement come back before the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I therefore consider more than ever that we must defend what remains of the colonies which are part of the French Empire and which have the right to count on France . Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to attend Wednesday's meeting; but you will do with my paper what you think fit. »

General Gouraud distinguished himself in the colonies (French Sudan, Mauritania, Chad) then, during the Great War, in Argonne and the Dardanelles. High Commissioner of the French Government in the Levant from 1919 to 1923, then Military Governor of Paris from 1923 to 1937, he was one of the great figures in the history of French colonization in the wake of Gallieni and Lyautey. Under the Sykes-Picot agreements of 1916 on the mandatory division of the Ottoman Empire between the British (Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine) and the French (Syria and Lebanon), Gouraud was sent by Clémenceau as High Commissioner to the Levant. He landed in Beirut on December 21, 1919. In 1920, Gouraud had to face the ambitions of King Faisal of Arabia who wanted to seize Syria of which he was proclaimed King. Gouraud urgently requests reinforcements from Paris and has 35,000 men, including units of the Foreign Legion. The French then pushed back the Arabs at Khan Meyssaloun on July 24, 1920. Henri Gouraud then demonstrated realism and divided Syria into several entities with different statuses in order to respect “compact identities”. Thus, the Sunni, Shi'ite, Christian and Druze "Greater Lebanon" was proclaimed during Zahle's Speech. In 1937, revered by Parisians, General Henri Gouraud left military life. In 1940, deeply affected by the German invasion, he left Paris for Royat, not far from Clermont-Ferrand. He did not return until 1945 before dying on September 16, 1946, the same year as the independence of Syria and Lebanon. On September 26, the Government of General de Gaulle paid tribute to him with a national funeral in front of the Navarin Farm Monument in Souain, in the Marne department. He rests in the crypt of the same monument “among the soldiers he loved so much. »