Comte Robert Guy Jean-Marie de La Rochefoucauld (16 September 1923 – 8 May 2012) was a member of the French Resistance and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and later served as the mayor of Ouzouer-sur-Trézée, a canal town in the Loire Valley, for thirty years.

He studied at private schools in Switzerland and Austria, and, at age 15, received a pat on the cheek from Adolf Hitler on a class visit to his Alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden.

His father was taken prisoner[2] and he was also reported to the Gestapo so, with the help of the French Resistance, he took a pseudonym and fled to Spain in 1942,[3] hoping to go on to England and link up with de Gaulle's movement.

[2] The Spanish authorities (under Francisco Franco) interned the three men in the prison camp Miranda de Ebro, but La Rochefoucauld pretended to be English and was delivered to the British Embassy during an organised evacuation.

[1] The British, having secured the men's freedom, were so impressed with La Rochefoucauld's boldness and ingenuity that they asked him to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the clandestine unit which Prime Minister Winston Churchill created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze", as he put it, by working with resistance groups on the German-occupied Continent.

Over the course of the four-day mission, La Rochefoucauld, code-named "Sun", smuggled 40 kilos of explosives, concealed in hollowed-out loaves of bread and specially designed shoes, into the factory.

After sending a message to London (the reply read simply: "Félicitations"), he enjoyed several bottles with the local Resistance leader, waking the next day with a hangover.

[1] Paddling up the river, he approached the casemate, killed a guard there, and blew it up, forcing the Germans to pull back to their final defensive position on the coast at Verdon.

In 1997, La Rochefoucauld testified on behalf of Maurice Papon, who was being tried on charges of deporting 1600 French Jews to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps while an official with France's wartime collaborationist Vichy government.

The news of La Rochefoucauld's death at the age of 88 in Ouzouer-sur-Trézée emerged on 8 May 2012, first announced by his family in the French newspaper Le Figaro and then reported late in June in the British press.

[10][11] In addition, French Army records make clear that La Rochefoucauld was known to be a saboteur with foreign training, and cite his secret British handler, code-named "Henri".

[15] Nor does SOE's detailed report on its activities in France, submitted in June 1946, just prior to its amalgamation by MI6, and written by an officer with an intimate knowledge of its operations, make any mention of La Rochefoucauld.

[17] According to La Rochefoucauld, he was exfiltrated by submarine off the coast of Berck, near Calais, at the end of February 1944,[18] yet according to official sources SOE conducted no sea operations east of Brittany during this period.