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Agence France-Presse

Hubert Germain, the last of France’s officially designated Heroes of the Resistance, has died aged 101.
He was the only surviving member of the 1,038-strong Order of the Liberation – France’s highest bravery order – hand-picked by the country’s wartime hero, General Charles De Gaulle.
Germain made his last public appearance in June in a wheelchair alongside President Emmanuel Macron at a ceremony to mark the moment many consider the resistance to the Nazi occupation began – with de Gaulle’s radio broadcast from London on June 18, 1940.

The son of a general in France’s colonial army, he walked out of an entrance exam at France’s Naval College shortly after France fell to the Germans in the summer of 1940.
“I am going to war,” he told the shocked examiner.
Standing at 1.90 metres tall (six foot three inches), he boarded a ship carrying Polish soldiers to England, where he arrived on June 24, 1940.
His shock at the collaborationist General Philippe Petain’s call to lay down arms prompted him to take a decision many at the time thought rash and foolhardy.
Remains of Napoleonic general brought back to France from Russia
He said he would never forget his first meeting with de Gaulle.
“He stopped for a second, looked at me and said: ‘I am going to need you’. When at the age of 18 you get that amid a general disaster, it is something that moves you deeply.”
As a member of the French Free Forces and the Foreign Legion, he fought in key north African battles at Bir-Hakeim in Libya, El Alamein in Egypt and in the fierce battles in Tunisia with the Afrika Korps led by German general Erwin Rommel.
He then took part in the decisive French-led landing on the country’s Mediterranean beaches in August 1944, setting foot on home soil for the first time in four years.
He fell into the sand and “cried like a baby”, he later recalled. “I had returned to my country.”
He then helped liberate the key southern port of Toulon, the Rhone Valley and Lyon in central France, before slugging it out with the retreating Germans in the Vosges mountains and Alsace in the east. He was in the Southern Alps when Germany surrendered.

After the war Germain was named aide de camp to General Pierre Koenig, the commander of the French forces occupying Germany, before being demobilised in 1946.
He soon moved into politics and was the Gaullist mayor of Saint-Cheron, a town south of Paris, before becoming an MP in 1962 and serving as post and telecommunications minister from 1972 to 1974.
Germain will be buried alongside other members of the elite order at Mont Valerien, the military fortress west of Paris where more than 1,000 Resistance fighters and hostages were executed by the Nazis.


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France

France’s last WWII Resistance hero, Hubert Germain, dies aged 101

Hubert Germain. Photo: AFP

(FILES) In this file photo taken on June 18, 2021 Hubert Germain, a WWII Resistance fighter and the last "Compagnon de la Liberation" attends a ceremony to mark the 81st anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's resistance call from London at the Mont Valerien, in Suresnes, near Paris. - Hubert Germain, who was the last surviving Liberation companion, died at the age of 101, French Defense Minister announced on October 12, 2021. (Photo by Michel Euler / POOL / AFP)

(FILES) In this file photo taken on August 28, 2017 French war veteran and former member of the French Resistance, Hubert Germain poses for pictures during an interview at the Hotel des Invalides in Paris. - Hubert Germain, who was the last surviving Liberation companion, died at the age of 101, French Defense Minister announced on October 12, 2021. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT / AFP)

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Men dressed as Napoleon-era fighters walk towards a French flag-covered coffin containing the remains of late French General Charles Etienne Gudin during a ceremony at Le Bourget airport near Paris on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

Men, dressed as Napoleon-era fighters, carry a coffin containing the remains of late French General Charles Etienne Gudin during an official ceremony at Le Bourget airport, north of Paris on July 13, 2021. - Gudin's remains have been transferred to France from Russia, two years after a team of Franco-Russian archaeologists found them in Smolensk, Russia. The French general died in 1812 during Napoleon's Russian campaign. (Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP)

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epa09503035 (FILE) - French tycoon Bernard Tapie (L) and his lawyer Herve Temime (R), arrive at the Tribunal de Paris courthouse for the last day of his trial, in Paris, France, 04 April 2019 (reissued 03 October 2021). French businessman and former politician Bernard Tapie has died at the age of 78, his family announced in a statement to a Marseille newspaper on 03 October 2021. EPA-EFE/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON *** Local Caption *** 55103334

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Germain was among 1,038 decorated with the Order of the Liberation for their heroism by Charles de Gaulle
In June, Germain met President Emmanuel Macron to mark de Gaulle’s historic call to defy France’s Nazi occupiers despite the country’s capitulation



Hubert Germain was among 1,038 decorated with the Order of the Liberation for their heroism by Charles de Gaulle.
