One of France’s most illustrious generals during World War II and in the early stages of the Indochina War. In 1924, Leclerc graduated from Saint-Cyr and was promoted major in the Cavalry. During the interwar period, he worked as an instructor at Saint-Cyr and served in posts in Germany and Africa. In late May 1940, during the Battle of France, he was taken prisoner along with the rest of the General Staff of the 4th Infantry Division. He escaped, took up arms, was wounded, and sent back to prison. On 17 June he escaped again and made his way to London where he joined General Charles de Gaulle adopting the pseudonym of “Leclerc”. In August 1940, de Gaulle dispatched him to French Equatorial Africa where Leclerc helped win over the colony to the Free French cause. In November 1940, he became a colonel and the designated military commander for Chad. He commanded troops in major campaigns at the head of the 2nd Armored Division. He landed at Normandy in August 1944 and led the liberation of Paris.
With the war over, he took command of the French Expeditionary Corps on 16 August 1945 and was charged with re-establishing French sovereignty over Indochina. He traveled first to Tokyo to sign the Japanese act of surrender on 2 September 1945. In command of the 2nd Armored Division, he landed in Saigon on 5 October 1945 and asserted control of the major cities, routes, and bridges in most of Indochina below the 16th parallel. Following the Accords of 6 March 1946 and the concomitant military convention signed in early April 1946, 15,000 French troops were authorized to land in northern Indochina above the 16th parallel to replace the withdrawing Chinese troops. Leclerc entered Hanoi on 18 March to a cheering French population and a wary Vietnamese one. He also met on several occasions with Ho Chi Minh.
While Leclerc was aware of the reality of Vietnamese nationalism and was not adverse to dialogue with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), he was also committed to re-establishing French sovereignty over all of Indochina as de Gaulle had instructed him to do. If he made concessions during the 6 March Accords, it was largely because he was faced with combined Vietnamese and Chinese opposition to a coup de force against the north. Like Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, in mid-1946 Leclerc scolded General Jean Crépin for not showing the Vietnamese government “that we are stronger” (nous sommes les plus forts), “the only way to obtain a reconciliatory attitude from their representatives in Paris”. Leclerc left Indochina on 18 July 1946. He was named general (général d’armée) and general inspector of Land Forces in North Africa, having refused to replace Thierry d’Argenlieu as high commissioner for Indochina in early 1947. On 28 November 1947, Leclerc died in a plane crash in Algeria. He is buried in the Invalides and was posthumously named Maréchal de France (Field Marshal). One of his sons died in a DRV prisoner of war camp.