André Beaufre (25 January 190213 February 1975) was a French Army officer and military strategist who attained the rank of Général d'Armée (Army General) before his retirement in 1961. He was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine and entered the military academy at École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1921, where he met the future French president Charles de Gaulle, who was an instructor. In 1925 he saw action in Morocco against the Rif, who opposed French rule. Beaufre then studied at the École Supérieure de Guerre and at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and was subsequently assigned to the French army's general staff. By the end of World War II, he had attained the rank of colonel and was well known in the English-speaking world as a military strategist and as an exponent of an independent French nuclear force. He commanded the French forces in the 1956 Suez War campaign against Egypt in 1956. Beaufre later became chief of the general staff of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe in 1958. He was serving as chief French representative to the permanent group of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Washington in 1960 when he was promoted to général d'armée. Beaufre retired from the Army in 1961 for health reasons. He died in 1975 while engaged in a series of lectures in Yugoslavia. Military career World War II While serving as permanent secretary of national defence in Algeria in 1940–41 during World War II, he was arrested by the French Vichy regime, and after his release in 1942 he served in the Free French Army on several fronts until the end of the war in 1945. In his book 1940: The Fall of France, Beaufre writes: "The collapse of the French Army is the most important event of the 20th century". He states that had the French Army held, the Hitler regime would have almost certainly fallen. There would have been no Nazi conquest of Western Europe, no Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, no Holocaust, most likely no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe. He later gave his views on France's fall during interviews for the now famous production by Thames Television, The World at War. Indochina French Indochina, 1952, General Beaufre was the leader of the group for NATO tactical studies. He was considering a structure of small buried defensive positions for protection against nuclear strike – they were