Chronicles the remarkable career of Louis Dio, one of the most successful yet least known leaders of Free France during World War II
Général Louis Dio: The Wartime Epic of One of Free France’s Greatest Soldiers
relies on archival documents and eyewitness accounts to tell the amazing story of the most famous French unit of World War II and one of its most important leaders. Louis Dio’s tactical and human dimensions are on display here in this exciting biography of a truly extraordinary man.
Much has been written about Général Philippe Leclerc, from the moment he landed by canoe in Cameroon in 1940 until the Allied victory over Germany in 1945. Yet his combat companions have received much less attention. Among them, Louis Dio was the most consistent and most successful, yet he remains paradoxically one of the least known.
Prior to the war, Dio served in the legendary méharistes in Tunisia, in French Sudan, and in Chad. Commanding the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti when the war broke out in 1939, he was placed in command of a reinforcement detachment and ordered to France, but it was too late. Then he met Leclerc when he landed in Cameroon in August 1940. The two men remained together from then on, and Dio became Leclerc’s most trusted and capable subordinate. Dio was the only officer of the 2e Division Blindée who participated in every battle from Douala, to Gabon, Kufra, the Fezzan Campaigns, Tunisia, the liberation of France, and finally to the Nazi sanctuary above Berchtesgaden. With de Gaulle’s approval, Leclerc selected Dio to succeed him in 1945, and at 37 years old, he became France’s youngest general of the 20th century.