Pierre Messmer
83rd Prime Minister of France (1916-2007)
Pierre Joseph Auguste Messmer (French: [pjɛʁ mɛsmɛʁ]; 20 March 1916 – 29 August 2007) was a French Gaullist politician. He served as Minister of Armies under Charles de Gaulle from 1960 to 1969 – the longest serving since Étienne François, duc de Choiseul under Louis XV – and then as Prime Minister under Georges Pompidou from 1972 to 1974. A member of the French Foreign Legion, he was considered one of the historical Gaullists, and died aged 91 in the military hospital of the Val-de-Grâce in August 2007. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1999; his seat was taken over by Simone Veil.
Early career
Pierre Joseph Auguste Messmer was born in Vincennes in 1916. He graduated in 1936 in the language school ENLOV and the following year at the École nationale de la France d'outre-mer (National School of Oversea France).
He then became a senior civil servant in the colonial administration and became a Doctor of Laws in 1939. In the outbreak of World War II, he was sous-lieutenant of the 12th regiment of Senegalese tirailleurs, and refused France's capitulation after the defeat. He then hijacked in Marseille an Italian cargo ship (the Capo Olmo), along with his friend Jean Simon (a future French General), and sailed first to Gibraltar, then London and engaged himself in the Free French Forces as a member of the 13th Demi-Brigade of the French Foreign Legion.
Messmer then participated to the campaign in Eritrea, in Syria, in Libya, participating to the Battle of Bir Hakeim, and in the Tunisia campaign.
The public source identifies “Pierre Messmer” as 83rd Prime Minister of France (1916-2007). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pierre, Messmer and 83rd.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pierre Messmer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.