Edmond Jouhaud (; 2 April 1905 – 4 September 1995) was one of four French generals who briefly staged a putsch in Algeria in April 1961.

Early life

Edmond Jouhaud was born on 2 April 1905 in

French Algeria French Algeria (french: Alger to 1839, then afterwards; unofficially , ar, الجزائر المستعمرة), also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of French colonisation of Algeria. French rule in the region began in 1830 with the ...

. He was a descendant of early Algerian pioneers from

Limoges Limoges (, , ; oc, Lemòtges, locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region ...

, in France.

Military career

Edmond Jouhaud entered the

École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr The École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr (ESM, literally the "Special Military School of Saint-Cyr") is a French military academy, and is often referred to as Saint-Cyr (). It is located in Coëtquidan in Guer, Morbihan, Brittany. Its motto is ...

in 1924. With the rank of

commanding officer The commanding officer (CO) or sometimes, if the incumbent is a general officer, commanding general (CG), is the officer in command of a military unit. The commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitu ...

, Jouhaud led the resistance against

German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...

in the region of

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

since 1943. He fled to Britain in March 1944 to join the

Free French Forces __NOTOC__ The French Liberation Army (french: Armée française de la Libération or AFL) was the reunified French Army that arose from the merging of the Armée d'Afrique with the prior Free French Forces (french: Forces françaises libres, l ...

. As

army general Army general is the highest ranked general officer in many countries that use the General officer#French (Revolutionary) system, French Revolutionary System.　 In countries that adopt the general officer four rank system, it is rank of genera ...

he had been the inspector general of the Air Force in French North Africa. After the failure of the putsch, he became the deputy of

Raoul Salan Raoul Albin Louis Salan (; 10 June 1899 – 3 July 1984) was a French Army general. He served as the fourth French commanding general during the First Indochina War. He was one of four retired generals who organized the 1961 Algiers Putsch op ...

in the

Organisation armée secrète The ''Organisation Armée Secrète'' (OAS, "Secret Armed Organisation") was a far-right French dissident paramilitary organisation during the Algerian War. The OAS carried out terrorist attacks, including bombings and assassinations, in an att ...

. While Salan fled to Spain, Jouhaud remained out of loyalty to his birthplace. He had served as air force commander during France's war in Indochina and air force chief of staff in Algeria. He left the air force in 1960 and allied himself with French Army Gen. Raoul Salan, who shared his hatred for de Gaulle. Generals Maurice Challe and Andre Zeller joined them in a group that seized power in Algiers April 21, 1961, after de Gaulle agreed to negotiate on Algerian independence with National Liberation Front guerrillas. In Paris, the government handed out weapons in the streets and told citizens to be ready for an invasion of rebel troops from North Africa. But the coup fizzled in five days. Gen. Jouhaud went underground in the OAS—Organization Armee Secrete—which waged a campaign of killings and bombings in Algeria and mainland France, including several plots to kill de Gaulle. He was arrested in the Algerian city of Oran in 1962 and condemned to death by a military court. Jouhaud was captured in March 1962 and rapidly sentenced to death by a military court. However, after his OAS superior Salan was given only a prison sentence in a civilian court, opinion turned against executing him. He called for the remaining activists of OAS to end their

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

campaign, and after a harrowing five-month period of uncertainty his sentence was commuted by

Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (; ; (commonly abbreviated as CDG) 22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government ...

. He was released in 1967."Milestones Sep. 18, 1995"
''Time''. 18 September 1995. He was rehabilitated by a law passed in 1982 under the presidency of

François Mitterrand François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he ...

. Jouhaud was one of the most decorated officers in the French military prior to participating in the putsch.

Death

Jouhaud died on 4 September 1995.

References

, - 1905 births 1995 deaths People from Oran Province People of French Algeria Pieds-Noirs French people of Corsican descent French Air Force generals Chiefs of the Staff of the French Air and Space Force French Resistance members French military personnel of World War II French military personnel of the First Indochina War French military personnel of the Algerian War Members of the Organisation armée secrète Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Recipients of French presidential pardons Migrants from French Algeria to France {{France-mil-bio-stub