Combatant Exile during World War II: Free French and Spanish Republicans
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the combatant exile during World War II of the 74,500 Free French who rallied around Charles de Gaulle, or were injured or even killed when trying to join him, from June 1940 to July 31, 1943, when the French Army in North Africa under General Giraud officially merged with the Free French Forces. (The Free French were officially disbanded in favor of the Combatant French Forces, whose governing body was the French Committee for National Liberation in Algiers under both
Giraud and de Gaulle.) Among these so-called Free French were the Spanish Republicans who joined de Gaulle and experienced a kind of double combatant exile—from their native land and then from France after the
disastrous defeat of 1940.3 Therefore, the experiences of these soldiers, provide an important and multi-faceted lens through which to explore the experience of combatant exiles.