French Army Lieutenant General and Leader of the French Resistance during World War 2. He was admitted to the Saint-Cyr military academy in 1897. On October 1, 1900, as a fledgling 2nd lieutenant, he was assigned to the 16th infantry battalion. His early combat record was brilliant and noteworthy, but the Germans captured him during the attack on Chesnoy-Auboncourt, on August 30, 1914. He spent four years in the Plasemburg POW camp, being released in December 1918. After WW1, he continued serving in the French army, which led him to become "Second in Command" of the Versailles tank school in 1930. Promoted to the rank of colonel in 1932, he was given command of the 505th Vannes tank regiment. Then, in 1936, he was promoted to Lt. General and took over the 3rd tank brigade in Metz. He retired from military service in early 1939, but as a reserve officer, he was quickly recalled after the outbreak of hostilities in September of 1939. On June 3, 1940, during the Battle of France, he led the armored counterattack against the Germans in Abbeville, France. After the surrender of France on June 25, 1940, he was demobilized on July 1940, and retired to Bourg-en-Bresse. Delestraint strongly rejected the armistice, resisted the German occupation and fiercely opposed Nazism. Thus, Henri Frenay recruited him for the French Resistance. Delestraint began to organize resistance in Lyon. Which later led to him secretly meeting with the decamped FFI General Charles de Gaulle in London, who asked him to lead the Armée Secrète. He agreed to the position, and returned to France on March 24, 1943. Sadly, he was quickly betrayed by an informant, René Hardy, and was arrested by the Gestapo on June 9, 1943. He was interrogated by the dreaded Klaus Barbie. He was then taken, as a special prisoner (under the Nacht und Nebel decree), to Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp in France. Where he was later moved to Germany, to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was executed by SS-Oberscharführer Theodor Bongartz, on April 19, 1945, just ten days before the camp was liberated by U.S. Army soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division, and weeks before the war ended. Immediately after his execution, his body was burned in the camp crematorium by SS personnel, and his ashes buried on site. Many streets in France have been named in his honor.