As He Marches East to Meet the Russian Army, Cutting off the German Forces, General George S. Patton Rejoices with General Henri Giraud, Former Leader of the Free French, at the Impending End of the War

He also updates the General on the safety of a key member of the French resistance, saying he has evaded the SS and lives

Henri Giraud commanded the French 9th Army during the Battle of France. In May 1940, he was captured by the Germans, but made a successful escape from captivity in April 1942, after two years of careful planning. From within Vichy France he worked with the Allies in secret, and after Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa by the Allies in November 1942, he assumed command of French troops in Allied-held North Africa. In January 1943, he took part in the Casablanca Conference along with Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Later in the same year, Giraud and de Gaulle became co-presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation, but he lost support and retired in frustration in April 1944.

Following Giraud’s daring 1942 escape from a German prison, Heinrich Himmler ordered Giraud’s assassination, and had seventeen members of his family arrested, including his daughter and her four children. They were held in compulsory residence in a guest house in Türingen, until Patton’s Third Army liberated the town and the family, along with Princess Ruspoli, who had been arrested as part of the resistance (and is thought to have been a spy).

In March 1945, as the Allies put the strangle hold on German forces, General Patton’s U.S. 3rd Army, in conjunction with the U.S. 7th Army, dealt a devastating blow to the Germans. In five days of battle, from March 18-22, Patton’s forces captured over 68,000 Germans.

On April 4, 1945, the US 4th Armored Division and a division of Patton’s US 3rd Army, came face to face with the horrors of Nazi brutality. The men discovered Ohrdruf, a Nazi labor camp and a subcamp of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Ohrdruf was the first Nazi camp to be liberated by US forces. On April 12, a week after the camp’s liberation, Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley toured the site, led by a prisoner familiar with the camp. Numerous corpses were found scattered around the camp grounds, lying where they were killed prior to the camp’s evacuation. A burned out pyre was discovered with the charred remains of prisoners, proof of the SS’s hurried evacuation and attempt to cover their crimes. Evidence of torture was present, and prisoners demonstrated for the generals various torture methods used by the guards. Patton, a man privy to the violent scenes of war, refused to enter this shed as the sights and smells in the camp had previously caused him to vomit against the side of a building. German citizens from the nearby town of Ohrdruf were forced to view the camp and bury the dead, a practice that was later repeated in other camp liberations. Following the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf and his wife were discovered to have hung themselves in their home. Ike and Patton ordered German citizens – especially those who were members of the Nazi Party – living near concentration camps to walk through the camps and witness the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand.

This was an incredibly eventful time. Elbe Day, April 25, 1945, was the day Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River, near Torgau in Germany, marking an important step toward the end of War in Europe. This contact between the Soviets, advancing from the East, and the Americans, advancing from the West, meant that the two powers had effectively cut Germany in two. Patton would join just a day or so later.

Typed letter signed, on his Third United States Army letterhead, April 25, 1945, in proficient but stilted French, liked typed by Patton himself, to Giraud, whom he addresses as “Mon General”. “I was pleased to receive your kind letter and rejoice that after so many trials you have finally reunited with your loved ones.

“It was a great pleasure for me to receive in the General Quarter your sisters in law and Princess Ruspoli, who accompanied them. I admired in them the guts they showed and hope their return voyage has not been too difficult because of present conditions.

“It will undoubtedly be particularly pleasing to you to learn that Captain Rateau has been able to evade the hands of the SS, despite an injury sustained to the arm. He is presently in treatment in an American hospital from which he will shortly evacuated to France.

“You have had the kind attention to me to impending arrival of old bottles from Bourgogne. I thank you in advance. We await them with impatience and will drink them, believe me, to your health. I renew, my General, the assurances of my most cordial sentiments and of my faithful friendship.”