Talk:Henri Giraud

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Contents 1 Tangentially connected info 2 Transitions 3 WP:MILHIST Assessment 4 Vichy POV 5 General POV 6 WikiProject class rating

[edit] Tangentially connected info

Most of the section headed "Cooperation with the Allies" appears to belong on the page for Operation Torch, rather than here. After the first paragraph the information is not about Giraud. I do not know enough about the subject to incorporate the data into the Operation Torch page myself. Molinari 20:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the original text to Talk:Operation Torch, and trimmed it down by several sentences. It still seems to go into too much extraneous detail, though. --Dhartung | Talk 23:24, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transitions

How did Giraud go from refusing to cooperate with the Germans to making contact with the Allies and getting on a British sub? There's a story there. Also, there should be some clarification of how either he was, or wasn't, an acceptable leader to the Allies. He seems to have been treated as a UK/US plant in the Darlan puppet government, but still wasn't acceptable to the Free French or particularly friendly to them. We should have more information on this, and not just vague comments like "enraged De Gaulle". Sounds like maybe they had personal ambition or principled differences that go way back, and that he certainly considered himself independent of De Gaulle or even perhaps more legitimate, but ultimately lost the political battle. --Dhartung | Talk 23:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:MILHIST Assessment

Length & detail are good overall, and I love that there's a picture. But I think the intro needs some work. It does properly summarize the most important aspects of the subject, along with its significance. But I feel like it implies that he was captured during WWI and didn't escape until WWII. Expand a bit in the intro on other elements of his life. And there must be references! LordAmeth 00:53, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vichy POV

I removed this:

"Perhaps Giraud's only crime was being out of touch with the horrors occuring in Germany. While focusing on his job in the military and spending most of his time as a prisoner of war, the horrors occuring in Germany with limited support from the Vichy government were not clear to him."

Beside being unsourced, it is highly unlikely and a more than questionable defense of Giraud. According to Robert Paxton, already in July 1942, evadees from Auschwitz have provided proofs of the Holocaust [1]. Furthermore, in December 1942, the governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States, the UK, the USSR, Yugoslavia and the French National Committee issued a declaration in which they condemned "in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination" and made a "solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution" [2]. As co-leader of the French National Committee, I assume Giraud had heard of that statement that his own interim government signed. Tazmaniacs 18:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General POV

This article seems quite biased in favor of Giraud. It doesn't even mention Darlan's assassin's-Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle-rushed execution. Giraud also favored racial discrimination laws and had himself ordered the imprisonment of resistants, btu not much is mentioned in the article.

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 03:38, 27 August 2007 (UTC)