Edgar Puaud

Edgar Joseph Alexandre Puaud (29 October 1889 – 5 March 1945) was a French army officer, who, in 1945, briefly became commander of the Charlemagne Division, a French unit of the Waffen-SS in the service of Nazi Germany. Puaud was born in Orléans, and joined the French Army as a private soldier in 1909. By 1914 he was a sergeant, and was selected to attend the military academy at Saint-Maixent for petty officer training. On the outbreak of World War I, however, he and fellow "aspirants" were immediately given commissions. During the course of the war he was promoted from Sub-Lieutenant to Captain, and won the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour. After 1918 he served with the French army of occupation in the Rhineland, then with the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Syria and French Indo-China. By 1939 he was a major, based at Septfonds in the south-west of France, and as a result did not see action during the German invasion of 1940. Following the French defeat in 1940, he served in the much-reduced "Armistice Army" in Vichy France. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Puaud accepted the collaborationist argument that "Bolshevism" was a greater threat to French interests than the Germans. In October 1941, he joined the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (Legion des Volontaires Français Contre le Bolchevisme, LVF) as a battalion commander. The LVF was not a unit of the French Army, and was not under the control of the Vichy French government. It was part of the German Army and was officially known as Infantry Regiment 638. It had two battalions of 2,271 men with 181 officers and an additional staff of 35 German officers. They fought near Moscow in November 1941 as part of the 7th Infantry Division. The LVF lost half their men in action or through frostbite. In 1942, the remaining men were assigned to Bandenbekämpfung ("bandit-fighting" against partisan supporters and Jews), first around Bryansk and then in Ukraine. In September 1943 Puaud, promoted to Général de Brigade (brigadier), was appointed commander of the LVF.