Hélie Denoix de Saint Marc (FRANCE)

Hélie Denoix de Saint Marc is a French former resistant, then military officer, and was notorious for participating in the Generals' Putsch against Charles de Gaulle. He joined the resistance at the age of 19. Caught in July 1943, he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. After the Second World War, he joined the French Foreign Legion and was sent to the First Indochina War. In Algeria, during the Algerian war of independence, at the head of the 1st foreign paratroop regiment, he accepted to support the April 1961 Generals' Putsch against president Charles de Gaulle. The putschists loathed de Gaulle's acceptance of Algerian independence. As the putsch failed, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was freed on Christmas, 1966.