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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

23. The Man Who Carried Out the Assassination of Darlan

The assassination of Admiral Darlan was carried out by Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle. La Chappelle was born in 1922 to a journalist father who dreamt of restoring the French monarchy, and combined that with ardent anti-fascism. After France’s defeat in 1940, the younger La Chappelle came to hate the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the fascists. Soon as the Allies landed in North Africa, La Chappelle joined a resistance group.

The resistance group loathed Darlan as a symbol of everything Vichy, and resented his continued hold on power. So they began planning his assassination. Lots were drawn to determine who would do the deed, and La Chapelle “won”. So he secured a pistol, received absolution from a priest, and went looking for Darlan on December 24^th, 1942. He waited in the hallways of the Summer Palace in Algiers, and when Darlan showed up, La Chapelle shot him twice. He was tried by a French military court the following day and was convicted and sentenced to death.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.