Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle

Who was Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle?

Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, was a member of the French resistance during World War II. He assassinated Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan, the former chief of government of Vichy France and the self-proclaimed high commissioner of French North Africa and West Africa, on December 24, 1942. Bonnier de La Chapelle's speedy trial and execution fueled theories about who may have been behind the assassination.

He was born in Algiers and studied at the Lycée Stanislas in Paris after France's surrender to Nazi Germany on June 22, 1940. Bonnier de La Chapelle participated in an anti-German student demonstration at the Arc de Triomphe on Armistice Day, November 11, 1940. He secretly crossed the demarcation line between German-occupied France and Vichy France and made his way to Algiers, where his father was a journalist.He was surprised by the Allied landings in North Africa on November 8, 1942 and by the participation of many of his friends in the so-called putsch of November 8, in which the resistance seized control of several Vichy government offices and headquarters in Algiers. A monarchist and ardent anti-Vichyiste, he regretted that his friends had not asked him to take part in the putsch.