Claude Hettier de Boislambert (26 July 1906 - 22 February 1986) came to prominence during the German occupation of France in the 1940s as a Resistance leader, appointed by the Général a Companion of the Liberation in 1943.

[1][2][3] Claude André Charles Antoine Marie Hettier de Boislambert was born at Hérouvillette (Calvados) just outside Caen into an upper-middle-class family with long roots in this part of Normandy.

The French army was more active closer to home, however, and Claude Hettier de Boislambert was called up in September 1939 as part of a generalised mobilisation: he was to serve as a cavalry lieutenant.

[1] During the brief invasion of Germany which took place from eastern France in September/October 1939, his reconnaissance group was one of the first to undertake some of the many patrols that the French army high command ordered in the occupied Saarland, notably in the Sierck sector adjacent to the Luxembourg frontier.

Hettier de Boislambert took part with a tank unit in the fighting around Tienen and Louvain in which French and British forces attempted to resist the German advance towards the English Channel.

They travelled on a liner/troop ship that the English had sent to pick up Polish troops who had been fighting in France against the German invasion, having fled the German-Soviet occupation of their own country.

On 19 June 1940 Claude Hettier de Boislambert became the first French officer to offer his services to France's self-appointed wartime resistance leader in London.

There followed long weeks of interrogation in prisons at Dakar and, later, Bamako during which he faced, among others, the Vichy-appointed colonial governor general Pierre Boisson, but sources insist that these sessions left his interlocutors and their Vichy bosses none the wiser about the resistance activities in which he had been engaged.

By the time of his escape from custody, just over two years later, the Nazi-Soviet pact had been upended in June 1941 and the German army had been haemorrhaging men and capability at Stalingrad since the late summer of 1942.

[2] The head of the MMLA, supported by representatives from not yet created government ministries, had to ensure the security of civilian populations, reorganise health provision in each territorial sector as it was liberated, deal with reanimating hospitals and to prepare to address the housing needs of displaced persons.

It had to attend to provision of essential supplies directly following liberation, the installation of civil administration and take the first steps to restore a civilian police force and internal security more generally.

It reflected his determination that as the Germans were beaten back there should be no hint of a power vacuum in France that British or US generals might be tempted to fill with some kind of military rule driven from London and Washington.

The Provisional Consultative Assembly was expanded between December 1943 and November 1944 as the liberation progressed, notably through the appointment of an additional 16 Resistance representatives from outside metropolitan France ("Représentants de la Résistance extra-métropolitaine").

[1] The division of the western two thirds of postwar Germany into four military zones of occupation had been agreed between the wartime allies well before the actual end of the war, and the Rhineland represented approximately 50% of the German territory that came under French control in 1945.

Hettier de Boislambert himself stated that the differing historical traditions of the former Prussian and Bavarian provinces involved were so disparate that he could foresee no prospect that such a territorial amalgamation would endure.

There were rival bids for university investment from Speyer and Mainz, but the bishop and Hettier de Boislambert were able to insist on the superior strategic position of Trier in relation to Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Koblenz, Luxembourg and the economically (and politically) vital Saarland.

In 1948 Hettier de Boislambert delivered the formal Catholics' Day greeting to General Kœnig, the French army commander in the occupation zone.

Hettier de Boislambert took the opportunity of the greeting to General Kœnig, which took place in Mainz, to deliver a shamelessly Gaullist speech setting out a vision for a future Europe united in Christian faith.

[1][2] In June 1951 Claude Hettier de Boislambert stood for election to the national assembly as a representative for the Manche department under the flag of the RPF party.

The RPF had been launched a couple of years earlier as a national political party by Charles de Gaulle in order to campaign for a presidential constitution.

De Gaulle observed the political status quo of the 1930s and 1940s and concluded that the parliamentary system, which he characterised as "the regime of the parties" did not permit the operation of a strong and efficient state.

Nevertheless, the other parties were unanimous over rejecting the idea of giving significantly increased political power to any president, so the RPF was excluded from government coalitions during Hettier de Boislambert's time as a parliamentarian.

[2] It was presumably out of personal regard for a former Free France comrade that Hettier de Boislambert merely abstained in the investiture vote for Prime Minister René Pleven on 24 July 1951.

The next month he backed what became known as the "Marie and Barangé laws", which provided for financial support for children educated in private schools and was bitterly opposed by left wingers and by secularists.

On 6 January 1953 Hettier de Boislambert voted in support of the appointment as Prime Minister of René Mayer, and on 27 May 1953 he took part in the investiture debate for Paul Reynaud.

He never concealed the fact that his voting actions were driven by his continuing and absolute backing for constitutional reform, and on this point he had been encouraged by undertakings that Reynaud was understood to have provided.

In respect of the treaty establishing the European Defence Community, Hettier de Boislambert called for certain additional safeguards: to be sure, "stability and government continuity [were] indispensable", but it could not be possible to impose them at too high a price.

[2] He gave vent to his mistrust of the Vietnamese political leader, Ngo Dinh Diem and denounced the election rigging: "The referendum was held in conditions that would be comical if the situation were not so serious".

He suggested that the United States were calling the shots with the Vietnamese at a time when there should be a pulling together to confront the main danger presented by the communism in the north of the territory.

[2] The 1958 general election represented a popular endorsement, by a sufficient albeit far from overwhelming majority, for a return to national leadership by Charles de Gaulle and for the new constitution which gave the president very significantly increased executive powers.