Baron
Philippe de Gunzbourg, whose mettle was displayed is his exploits
with the Special Operations Executive's French section during
the Second World War, died on July 10.
The son of a Russian banker and a French mother, de Gunzbourg
never felt at ease in the cosmopolitan Jewish world of his
parents, and, as a young man, he was a playboy and a rebel.
When the French Army demobilized in 1940, he rejected all
thoughts of emigrating to safety and chose instead to buy
a farm near Agen in the unoccupied zone. As early as 1941,
he made contact with a British emissary of the SOE's French
section and began working for the organization.
By 1943, when the Germans occupied the whole of France, his
involvement had grown and he sent his wife Antoinette, their
two children and English nanny to the safety of Switzerland.
Under the command of George Starr, one of the SOE's most successful
agents in south-west France, de Gunzbourg assumed responsibility
for the area around Sarlat, Bergerac and the northern Lot-et-Garonne.
He proved himself an outstanding organizer, welding those
around him into an effective fighting force and frustrating
German attempts to destroy it.
His achievements bore fruit June, 1944, at the time of the
Normandy landings, when |
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the Germans needed withoutdelay to transfer their 2nd SS Panzer
Division (Das Reich) through his fief to the Normandy battlefield.
Ordered from the neighbourhood of Toulouse on D+1, the Reich
division was scheduled to reach the battle front - where its
heavy tanks of the newest type might well have had decisive
effect on D+3..
In the event, the division received such harassment from de
Gunzbourg's section, and at the hands of other SOE-organized
Maquis further north, that the move took seventeen days -
a delay of strategic significance at a time when the Allies
were fighting fiercely to consolidate and extend their beach-head
foot-hold. and would have regarded with considerable anxiety
the addition of another first- class, fully-equipped, armoured
division to the German defence.
As it was, by the time the Reich division move into its lagers
close to the battlefield on D+17, it was with fighting qualities
and morale much in undermined by the attacks of the guerillas.
Many felt that de Gunzbourg's MBE (military) was scant recognition
of his role in these events.
After the war, he devoted much time and considerable resources
to the problems of those who had been his companions-in-arms;
and despite a considerable local standing he never sought
political office (…) |