Petit-Clamart attack

Petit-Clamart attack
Location	Paris, France
Date	22 August, 1962
Target	Charles de Gualle
Attack type	Assassination attempt
Deaths	0
Injured	0
Perpetrators	OAS Jean Bastien-Thiry (organizer)
No. of participants	17

The Petit-Clamart attack, also referred to by its perpetrators as Operation Charlotte Corday, was an assassination attempt organized by Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry with the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) that aimed to kill Charles de Gaulle, president of France at the time.

No one was killed or injured in the entire incident. The assassination was followed by an intensive and efficient operation by the French security services, in which almost all participants were caught within a few months. Bastien-Thirry was brought before a military court where he justified his act by claiming that De Gaulle was a tyrant, that is, that only preventing the independence of Algeria, which the OAS opposed, could prevent the genocide and ethnic cleansing of "Pied-Noir" and the pro-French natives. Bastien-Thirry was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in the spring of 1963.

Background

On 5 July 1962, the French Republic led by Charles de Gaulle recognized the independence of Algeria following the Evian Accords, which established a ceasefire between both countries during the Algerian War. The war ended with the repatriation of a million pieds-noirs of European origin, and Sephardic Jews, who fleed the abuses caused by the rejection of the guarantees of the Evian agreements, particularly after the massacre of Oran the same year.

In May 1958, in Algiers, a coup was carried out jointly by Pierre Lagaillarde, who was the sitting Deputy of Algiers and a reserve paratrooper officer, generals Raoul Salan, Edmond Jouhaud and Jean Gracieux, Admiral Auboyneau, with the support of the 10th Parachute Division of General Jacques Massu and Jacques Soustelle's allies. It's aim was to allow the return of power to de Gaulle who was then retired. The supporters of de Gaulle were banking on a radical change in government policy based on maintaining the integrity of the republican territory, and therefore the continuation of the policy of "pacification" in the French departments of Algeria that has been maintained since 1954.

After reassuring a European and Muslim Gaullist crowd fraternizing in Algiers on 4 June 1958, with a historic “I understand you”, followed by an unequivocal “ Long live French Algeria” in Mostaganem, de Gaulle, once he became President of the Republic in 1959, undertook to complete the decolonization policy that he had initiated in 1943 with Lebanon and Syria during his campaign to rally the colonies to Free France with a view to liberating the metropolitan territory itself occupied by Hitler's Nazi Germany. Later, on October 2, 1958, de Gaulle granted independence to Guinea following its rejection of the new constitution.

On 16 September 1959, de Gaulle used the term "self-determination" for the first time in relation to what was still in the media only "the Algerian affair", certain voices of protest began to arise, which were heard among certain Gaullists in Algeria and in mainland France. The protesters interpreted the policy reversal of the head of state, whom they themselves had helped to bring to power, as a “betrayal".

A few months later, on 24 January 1960, extremist defenders of the maintenance of French Algeria carried out a siege in the Algerian capital, then the second largest city in France, in what would become the "week of the barricades". Following statements to the West German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, de Gualle was immediately transferred to mainland France. Later, Massu was assigned to the occupation zone of the FRG, in Baden-Baden, from where he played a historic role in May 1968. It was the dismissal of the man who had allowed the "Gaullist putsch" of 1958 which served as a trigger in what the media described as “the events in Algiers".

Pierre Lagaillarde took charge of the insurrection operations and Colonel Gardes took military command. Civilians showed solidarity with the rebels but, to the surprise of the insurgents, Jean Crépin, replacing Massu, remained faithful to the army's duty of reserve and did not fraternize with them. Isolated, Lagaillarde had to make himself a prisoner to his superior after a week of siege. He was extradited to mainland France actions.

The OAS logo at the time of the attack.

In 1960, Lagaillarde took advantage of his conditional release to escape and went into exile in Madrid. In February 1961, following an agreement with Raoul Salan, who had also gone underground, the pair began the Secret Army Organization (OAS).

In April 1961, following the failure of the generals' putsch, this time aimed at overthrowing de Gaulle, who talked with a delegation of separatists, and replaced his authority with a military junta, as the OAS increased its clandestine operations.

These actions, the most radical of which involved political assassination and terrorism, were carried out both in the French departments of Algeria and in mainland France, the OAS having a “Metro” branch, by the “Commando Delta”.

In Spain, Pierre Lagaillarde, who was still a fugitive, stood with colonels Charles Lacheroy and Antoine Argoud, who were key members of the generals' putsch in mainland France, at the head of the dissident branch OAS-Madrid, which opposed the Salan command by advocating a steering committee coordinating operations from abroad. Lagaillarde was arrested by the Spanish Civil Guard and placed under house arrest in October 1961.

On 20 May 1962 in Italy, Georges Bidault, former Minister of Foreign Affairs under de Gaulle, then during the Indochina War, was elected president of the National Council of the Resistance by the executive committee, which included Jacques Soustelle and Colonel Antoine Argoud. Bidault had held the position of president of the council following Jean Moulin in 1943. Several analysts criticize the amalgam practiced by the founders of the council of 1962, an amalgam which suggests a possible equivalence between Algeria and Alsace-Lorraine, as well as an identification of de Gaulle to Adolf Hitler.

Attack

On August 22, 1962, around 7:45 p.m., two unmarked Citroën DS 19s escorted by two motorcyclists (Robert Herry and Marcel Ehrman) left the Élysée Palace to take the General and his wife to the Villacoublay air base, where they must take a GLAM plane to Saint-Dizier to then reach Colombey-les-Deux-Églises by road. On board the first car are de Gaulle, returning from a Council of Ministers, and his wife Yvonne; Colonel Alain de Boissieu, son-in-law and aide-de-camp of the president, is seated next to the driver, Gendarme Francis Marroux. In the second DS led by police brigadier René Casselin, are the police commissioner Henri Puissant, one of the general's bodyguards, Henri Djouder and the military doctor Jean-Denis Degos.

Leaving Paris via the Porte de Châtillon, the procession takes the national road 306 (which became D 906 and has since been called “avenue du Général-de-Gaulle”) and heads towards Vélizy-Villacoublay where the presidential plane is waiting. As he arrived, at 8:20 p.m., at the crossroads of rue Charles-Debry, RN 306 and rue du Bois, approximately three hundred meters before the Petit Clamart roundabout, the Bastien-Thiry commando was hidden in ambush.

The latter is made up of Jean Bastien-Thiry, assisted by another metropolitan, Alain de La Tocnaye, who considers de Gaulle as a “cryptocommunist” in the same way as the Hungarians László Varga, Lajos Marton and Gyula Sári, also fiercely anti-communists. The rest of the group is made up of Metropolitans and Blackfoot. The latter intend to avenge the abuses committed against their community, in particular the shooting on Rue d'Isly (80 dead and 200 injured civilians), as well as the loss of French Algeria. The commando, of military type, is made up of twelve men equipped with automatic weapons, explosives and four vehicles.

Bastien-Thiry is hidden before the intersection, in a Simca 1000, from where he gives the signal by waving a newspaper. Five men are in a yellow Renault Estafette (Buisines, Varga, Sári, Bernier and Marton), equipped with machine guns; La Tocnaye is on board an ID 19, with Georges Watin and Prévost, equipped with submachine guns; a Peugeot 403 van, in which Condé, Magade and Bertin are ambushed, also with automatic weapons, is in reserve. The firepower of this commando is considerable: 187 bullets were fired by the commando, 14 riddled the presidential DS.

The commando opened fire on the presidential DS, the front tires of the vehicle were punctured. Georges Watin sends a burst of MAT 49s into the back of the car where de Gaulle and his wife are sitting. The rear window, on the de Gaulle side, shatters. During the assault, at the last minute, Alain de Boissieu shouted to the de Gaulles to duck, which prevented them from being hit. De Gaulle reports that his son-in-law ordered him to take shelter, telling him: “Down, Father! » Boissieu orders the driver, Francis Marroux (the same driver piloted the presidential DS 19, on September 8, 1961, during the attack on Pont-sur-Seine) to accelerate, which he does and succeeds, despite the condition of the car and the wet ground to reach the Vélizy-Villacoublay airfield at high speed. Of the 187 bullets fired by the commando, 14 impacts were identified on the DS, including one in the front passenger backrest where de Boissieu was sitting and several at the level of the faces of Mme de Gaulle and the general. Around the scene of the attack, several stores were riddled with bullet holes. Realizing the failure of the attack, Gérard Buisines tried to ram the DS with the Estafette while at his side Alain de La Tocnaye, beyond the door, tried to machine-gun the DS.

Upon arrival at Villacoublay Air Base, the general told those greeting them: “This time it was tangent. ". To the surprise of the police supervising them, Yvonne de Gaulle utters this single phrase, which remains famous: "I hope the chickens have had nothing", meaning not the police but the jellied poultry purchased from Fauchon. and transported in the trunk of the DS. The General whispers in the ear of his wife, sitting next to him on the return plane: “You are brave, Yvonne”.

During the attack, a Panhard, traveling on the other side of the road and in which there was a couple and their three children, came under fire from the shooters. The driver, Mr. Fillon, suffered a slight injury to a finger.

According to certain authors, such as the singer Jean-Pax Méfret, and the member of the commando Lajos Marton, the conspirators said they had benefited from secret support within the Élysée, that of Commissioner Jacques Cantelaube. The latter, controller general of the police and director of security for the president, resigned shortly before the attack. He felt antipathy towards the man whose protection he was responsible for following his conduct of Algerian affairs from 1959. These complicities would have allowed Bastien-Thiry to know the registration of the DS, the composition of the procession, as well as the different routes taken, including the one that will be chosen at the last moment as a security measure. According to Jean Lacouture:

"[...] thanks to the information, said the leader of the conspirators, of a "mole" that he had within the Élysée: but the countless speculations made on this subject did not lead to any serious information. It seems that Bastien-Thiry, on this level, bluffed, to panic or divide the general's entourage. In fact, it was based on telephone calls from lookouts placed around the Élysée – notably from a certain “Pierre” – as soon as a trip by the head of state was planned".

In 2015, Lajos Marton also revived the hypothesis of the involvement of the Minister of Finance at the time, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who — under the code name “B12” — would have informed the OAS of the movements of the head of the state.

Investigation

Manhunt

A gigantic manhunt was launched on the evening of August 22 to find the perpetrators of the attack. The investigation first focused on the Yellow Estafette, with several witnesses declaring that among its three occupants, one of them was limping. The police thought they recognized engineer Watin, known as “the Boiteuse”, a member of the OAS, but did not succeed in apprehending him. Two men were arrested by chance at a Tain-l'Hermitage gendarmerie road checkpoint. Among these two men was a deserter who bragged, saying, “I’m from the OAS.” First transferred to the regional Judicial Police service in Lyon, he admitted to Commissioner Geneston that he was part of the commando. Then, transferred to Paris, he continued his confession, giving Commissioner Bouvier all the names or nicknames of the conspirators he knew.

After two weeks, around fifteen suspects were arrested by the men of Divisional Commissioner Bouvier, while some of them were developing a new operation targeting de Gaulle. The last arrest, the most spectacular, was that of Bastien-Thiry on September 15, as he left his home in Bourg-la-Reine.

Trial

The trial was held at Fort Vincennes. During the first session, nine accused appeared before the Military Court of Justice on January 28, 1963: Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry defended by Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, Alain de La Tocnaye, Pascal Bertin, Gérard Buisines, Alphonse Constantin, Étienne Ducasse, Pierre-Henri Magade, Jacques Prévost and László Varga. Six other defendants were tried in absentia; those absent, on the run, were Serge Bernier, Louis de Condé, Gyula Sári, Lajos Marton, Jean-Pierre Naudin, and Georges Watin. The latter had fled to Switzerland where he was arrested in January 1964 and held in solitary confinement in order to escape the French police. There he met Marcel Boillat. False papers were provided to him and he reached South America. He died in Paraguay in 1994. All the accused were charged with attempted intentional homicide by ambush and attack against state authority with the use of weapons.

This Military Court of Justice had, however, been declared illegal by the major judgment of the Council of State of October 19, 1962, on the grounds that it infringed general principles of law, in particular by the absence of any appeal against its decisions. Despite everything, De Gaulle extended the existence of this Court for this case. Indeed, reading the decision of the Council of State of Friday October 19, 1962, referring to the presidential order of June 1, 1962 establishing the Military Court of Justice, indicated:

"Considering that it does not follow from the investigation that, having regard to the importance and seriousness of the attacks that the contested order brings to the general principles of criminal law, with regard, in particular, to the procedure which therein is provided for and the exclusion of any means of appeal, the creation of such an exceptional jurisdiction was necessitated by the application of the government declarations of March 19, 1962; that the applicants are, therefore, justified in maintaining that the said order, which exceeds the limits of the delegation granted by article 2 of the law of April 13, 1962, is tainted with illegality; that it is therefore necessary to pronounce its annulment".

However, this Court, which was to be replaced by another exceptional jurisdiction, the State Security Court, was extended by the law of February 20, 1963.

On March 4, at the end of the investigation against officer Bastien-Thiry, the Military Court of Justice found him guilty of having planned and orchestrated Operation Charlotte Corday.

Tried as simple perpetrators, the shooters were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and benefited from a presidential pardon in 1968. But Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, Alain de la Tocnaye and Jacques Prévost, defended by Jacques Isorni, were sentenced to death. Two of the condemned were pardoned; only Bastien-Thiry was executed, shot at Fort Ivry on March 11, 1963. The five absent accused were sentenced in absentia to death sentences or imprisonment and also benefited, much later, from a presidential pardon.

Sentenced to capital punishment for conspiracy against state security and attempted assassination against the President of the Republic, not pardoned by De Gaulle because having attempted the life of his wife without a political role was in his eyes a aggravating circumstance 1, Lieutenant-Colonel Bastien-Thiry was shot by a military platoon at Fort Ivry on March 11, 1963 at dawn. He remains the last death row inmate shot in France.

Bastien-Thirty

On February 2, 1963, following the brief statements of his co-defendants present during the trial, the main accused of the Charlotte Corday operation, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry pleaded in a lengthy speech self-defense in defense of himself and his "comrades" and against the “men of power” and in particular against the most powerful of them, the one whom his lawyer and future presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour nicknamed the “Prince”.

Constituting the "Bastien-Thiry affair", the colonel's declaration, which René Wittmann published in a confidential edition on February 20, 1963 and whose publishing house close to the extreme right, Serp, published a series of 33-players the same year, began with these words:

The action for which we are answering before you today is of an exceptional nature, and we ask you to believe that only reasons of an equally exceptional nature could have induced us to undertake it. We are neither fascists nor factionalists, but national French, French by origin or French at heart. It is the misfortunes of the homeland that have led us to these benches.

— René Wittmann

For what it represents and the nature of Bastien-Thiry's declaration, this trial will be experienced at the time like that of the OAS and, to a certain extent, that of the Algerian war. It inspired a number of works from the 1960s to the present day, whether it be criticism of the death penalty, French public opinion then being predominantly unfavorable, or testimonies, the condemned man's family has since worked for his rehabilitation. through the “Bastien-Thiry circle,” or counter-investigations; in Bastien-Thiry: to the end of French Algeria, Jean-Pax Méfret, senior reporter, asks: "How did a man, endowed with deep Catholic convictions and superior cultural background, could it have come to this?".

In the national press, reactions to the "Bastien-Thiry affair", which led to both the last political execution in France and the last shooting, were not long in coming. The remarkable thing about the situation consists of three points: the virulence of Bastien-Thiry's criticism of the Algerian policy adopted by de Gaulle, the fact that the condemned were finally pardoned with the exception of one, the expeditious nature of the sentence. Thus the day after the execution, in L'Express, Jean Daniel wrote: "In fact, the inhumanity of the sovereign ends up overwhelming even his supporters", while in Le Canard chainé, from the pen of Jérôme Gauthier, it read: “It’s shame that tears down walls. A certain justice too, it seems...", followed by: "Lieutenant-Colonel Bastien-Thiry died, I do not say mourned, but pitied by a very large number of French people, even among those the most fiercely hostile to his cause.”

Theories

Objective of the attack

There is an alternative and controversial thesis according to which the primary aim of the operation was not to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle in Clamart but to kidnap him in order to bring him before the CNR tribunal. This thesis was defended by Maître Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, lawyer of Bastien-Thiry, to acquit the nine conspirators present during the trial. Subsequently, it was taken up and defended by Agnès de Marnhac (Bastien-Thiry's third and youngest daughter aged three at the time of the events) in her work My father, the last of the shot published by Michalon, April 7, 2005 A psychogenealogist and therapist by profession, she also supported a thesis based on psychogenealogy according to which “by donating his life, [her] father redeemed the fault of his ancestor the Duke of Massa who had sent to the platoon of . execution of an innocent man, the Duke of Enghien” (case of the Duke of Enghien). Agnès de Marnhac died on June 28, 2007 following cancer.

The thesis of the kidnapping was denied in the media in 2005 (including the daily newspaper Present and the program Tout le monde en parole) by the very members of the Petit-Clamart commando including Louis Honorat de Condé, Lajos Marton and Armand Belvisi (the latter was ousted from the operation at the last moment following a dispute with Alain de La Tocnaye).

Head of the attack

Agnès de Marnhac also rejects Bastien-Thiry's membership in the OAS, claiming that her father acted on orders from the CNR. However, some members of the commando dispute this version. The head of OAS-Métro was Captain Pierre Sergent and that of Mission III was André Canal known as “the Monocle”. Bastien-Thiry was not part of the OAS organization chart and had already organized the Pont-sur-Seine attack on his own initiative.

De Lajos Marton adds that in 1961 Bastien-Thiry contacted Colonel Argoud, disgraced since the week of the Barricades (January 1960), appointed in Metz to a “closet” post where he spent most of his time preparing the putsch which took place on April 21, 1961. Despite the sympathy that Bastien-Thiry inspired in him, Argoud could not take the risk of associating him with the action in progress, and even less providing him with help for the project. to execute de Gaulle. He nevertheless saw Bastien-Thiry again in 1961. No one knows how, Bastien subsequently made contact with Jean Bichon, “former resistance fighter, liaison officer between the “Old Staff” and the High Command of the OAS” .

In The Attack: Indicative Echo-Gabriel, Armand Belvisi writes: “I contacted the Monocle so that he could give me the weapons I needed. We were the only ones at Mission III to have a large stock of ammunition. Neither the Old General Staff nor Jean Bichon could help Bastien-Thiry. They had almost nothing left. [...] I hid all of this in my studio [...] and, on April 27, with Bernier, I went to try them in the woods".

After the Algiers putsch of April 1961, General Raoul Salan took charge of the OAS with General Edmond Jouhaud as his deputy. On March 25, 1962 Jouhaud was arrested in Oran, then on April 20, 1962 it was Salan's turn to be arrested in Algiers. On April 24, General Paul Gardy announced on Oran pirate radio (the only transmitter of the OAS) that he was taking his place at the top of the organization chart, but command was also claimed by Jean-Jacques Susini. In fact, General Gardy only exercises complete control over the OAS of Oran. On May 20, 1962, Georges Bidault, in exile in Munich, Federal Republic of Germany, founded the CNR in Milan with Jacques Soustelle.

Vehicle involved

Two years after the attack, the damaged DS 19 was restored, the bullet holes being erased, then sold on October 15, 1964 to General Robert-Pol Dupuy, former military commander of the Élysée. He seriously damaged the vehicle a few years later during an accident with his son during the winter of 1971-1972, near Verdun. It is stored in a garage in Lissey, awaiting possible repairs. In 1980, seven years after the death of General Dupuy, his family donated the DS in very poor condition to the Charles-de-Gaulle Institute. Citroën agreed to restore this historic car free of charge, but it turned out to be too damaged.

With the support of Citroën and PSA, a replica of the DS du Petit-Clamart was therefore created with an identical model, notably with the bullet holes marked by white crosses on the bodywork (in fact not exactly in the right place for some). The license plates of the authentic vehicle are affixed to this replica, and are the only original parts to be added. This replica was first exhibited in a veranda of Charles de Gaulle's birthplace in Lille. It then joins the vast Charles-de-Gaulle memorial museum in Colombey les Deux Églises. The museum does not clearly indicate that this is not the real vehicle, other than the vague mention "DS 19 called du Petit-Clamart", and uses the vague terms "reconstitution" or "restoration » of the historic car.

The replica, always presented as the real one, made two trips to China, in 2003-2004 and 2013-2014, in traveling exhibitions on the occasion of the 40th and then 50th anniversaries of the recognition of the People's Republic of China by France in 1964.

References

Bibliography

• France. Cour militaire de justice, Le Procès de l'attentat du Petit Clamart : [devant la Cour militaire de justice, 28 janvier-4 mars 1963], compte-rendu sténographique. Paris : Albin Michel, 1963, 2 vol. (1019-IV p.). (Collection des grands procès contemporains).
• Joan-Daniel Bezsonoff, L'année de Syracuse, éditions Balzac, 2016, traduit du catalan
• Alain de La Tocnaye, Comment je n'ai pas tué de Gaulle, éd. Nalis, 1969
• Frederick Forsyth a tiré de cette histoire un roman paru en 1971, The Day of the Jackal (Chacal), Paris, éditions Tallandier, 400 p., adapté au cinéma en 1973 (Chacal).
• Jacques Delarue, L'OAS contre de Gaulle, 1981
• Alain de Boissieu, Pour servir le Général, 1982.
• Jean Lacouture, Charles de Gaulle – Le souverain 1959-1970, Template:T.III, éd. du Seuil, 1986 ISBN 2-02-009393-6.
• Georges Fleury, Tuez de Gaulle ! Histoire de l'attentat du Petit Clamart, 1996.
• Lajos Marton, Il faut tuer de Gaulle, 2002.
• Jean-Pax Méfret, Bastien-Thiry : Jusqu'au bout de l'Algérie française, 2003.
• Gastón Segura Valero, A la sombra de Franco, El refugio de los activistas franceses de la OAS (À l'ombre de Franco, Le refuge des activistes français de l'OAS), Ediciones B, 2004, ISBN 8466614427
• Agnès Bastien-Thiry, Mon père, le dernier des fusillés, 2005
• Roland C. Wagner en a fait une uchronie Template:Écrit dans laquelle le Général meurt lors de l'attentat.
• Abbé Olivier Rioult, Bastien-Thiry, De Gaulle et le tyrannicide, éd. des Cimes, Paris, 2013 ISBN 979-10-91058-05-6.
• Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Un attentat. Petit-Clamart, 22 août 1962, Seuil, 2016.
• Simon Treins (scénario), Munch (dessins), (couleurs Scarlett), "Tuez de Gaulle !", Delcourt, coll. Histoire & histoires.

Videography

• Fred Zinnemann, The Day of the Jackal (1973), based on the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth. The first minutes of this film are a reconstruction of the attack, closing with the execution of Bastien-Thiry.
• Jean-Teddy Filippe, They wanted to kill de Gaulle (2005)

Audio recordings

• Men and facts of the 20th century: the Petit-Clamart trial, Serp (1963)
• Extract from the sound recording of the declaration of Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry at the tribunal of the Military Court of Justice, February 2, 1963 (4 minutes, 10 seconds)
• The Grains of Sand of History: the Petit Clamart attack, RMC Découverte, broadcast on 3 November 2015
• Hondelatte recounts: the Petit Clamart attack, Europe 1, broadcast on 22 July 2017
• Killing de Gaulle, the Petit-Clamart attack, Sensitive Affairs, France Inter, broadcast on 22 June 2020