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Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, born in 1922 in Algiers and executed in that city on December 26, 1942, was a member of the French resistance who shot Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan, the former chief of government of Vichy France and the self-named high commissioner of French North Africa and West Africa, on December 24 1942. For this act, Bonnier de La Chapelle is considered a hero of the French resistance to Nazi tyranny in World War II.[1]

A student 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 then crossed in secret the demarcation line between German-occupied France and Vichy France and made his way to Algiers, where his father was a journalist. Having passed his baccalauréat examination in 1942, he was surprised by the Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) on November 8, 1940 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. An ardent anti-Vichyite, he regretted that his friends had not asked him to take part in the putsch.[2]

After Darlan surrendered Algiers to Allied forces, the continuation of Vichyite government in Algeria under his direction caused consternation among members of the French resistance. Bonnier de La Chapelle and three friends decided to eliminate the Admiral, and Bonnier de La Chapelle drew the short straw. Having obtained a revolver, Bonnier on December 24, 1942 waited in a corridor of the Summer Palace (Palais d’Été), the admiral's headquarters in Algiers, for Darlan to return to his office. He shot Darlan twice, once in the face and once in the chest, and then shot the admiral's aide-de-camp in the thigh. At that point, the occupants of the other offices in the Palais effected his capture.^[1]

A military tribunal was convened the next day, December 25. Bonnier de La Chapelle declared that he had acted alone, and he was condemned to death. He was executed by firing squad on December 26, 1942. On December 21, 1945, the Court of Appeals of Algiers overturned his conviction, stating that he had acted "in the interest of the liberation of France."[3]

• Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, New York: Henry Holt, 2002.

1. ^ Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, pp.251-52.