Pierre Brossolette

Allegiance
 Service/branch
 Rank
 Commands
 Service History

General **Pierre Brossolette** was born in 1903 to a family of fierce republican tradition, his parents and grandparents having fought ardently for secular education in France.

The Revolution and the establishment of the Social Republic did not effect much such a patriotic and republican family in the shameful capitulation of the 3rd and 4th Republic. Pierre continue his live in metropolitan France rather uneventful. But his academic capacity and bright mind have been proven when he enters the École Normale Supérieure, the most prestigious school in France, where he demonstrated himself as an exceptional student, graduating 2 years before Jean-Paul Sartre, his later bitter enemy.

## Service for the Federation

After his graduation, unwilling to be pursuit a simple academic career like many of his fellow graduates. In the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1920s like many people, enlisted in the new French Revolutionary Army. His organising capacity and personality made him a natural leader with other enlistee, voted to be a Lieutenant in 1925, promoted to Captain when the elected officer system was abolished a year later. The follow years saw him advance rapidly through the rank, in a similar fashion with many of the young officers of that generation. After the Revolution, the French Army was still comprised on the top mostly of old officers, some republican, some only accepting the post out of patriotic convictions. But the fact is that the army leadership was in conflict with the Government as well as the rank and files and the revolutionary mood of France, and vice-versa. The peak culminated in the Gamelin Affair in 1937, which marks the decisive turn in policy to replace the officer corps with a new proletarian, republican and revolutionary generation, although changes were already in place prior to this with many young officers pushed through the rank and providing military training to the revolutionary commanders during the Civil War. Thus it was in that context that in 1937, he became a Colonel in the ARF.

The liberal army atmosphere of the Federation and under the Social Republic means that its young commanders are often politicised, Pierre himself identify with what's left of the SFIO that collapsed into the civil war years, not sympathetic to the Jacobin faction, which later became the PRFT, nor the Travailleur faction represented by the French Workers Party and the CGT faction aligned with it, he instead was sympathetic to the Committee of Syndicalist Revolutionaries, which was dubbed the Radical Travailleurs. As such, he identify mostly as an SR, until the CSR became too absorbed by the PRFT that it could no longer maintain independence that he became disassociated with it. Pierre was a frequent writer to the Le Populaire, to express his discontent toward the Jacobin government after the Year of Changes, his usual polemic rival was Jean-Paul Sartre, in the Jacobin-dominated L'Humanité, while Brossolette strongly protests the Jacobin as potential lead to corruption and authoritarianism, Sartre remains firm that the changes were needed and defend the government. His criticism continues throughout the war, although in 1941, the paper would not print his harsh criticism from the Front anymore due to the war situation. After that, Pierre retreats from political life and focus on his military career.