The son-in-law of the
prime minister Albert Sarraut, he was an insurance broker (assureur-conseils). He was in charge of the Normandy sector for the
French resistance under the pseudonym "Dragon". He was captured by the
Gestapo but succeeded in escaping and took part in organising the
Normandy landings, passing to
George Patton the information that allowed the Allies to reach Paris. He traveled to Hanoi on 22 August 1945 with American OSS officers,
Archimedes Patti and
Carleton B. Swift Jr. before being put under house arrest by the Japanese. In 1946, he was sent by the French government to Vietnam to negotiate with
Ho Chi Minh. In March 1946 he reached the
Ho-Sainteny agreement with Ho, recognizing the Vietnamese government as a “free state” (état libre) in the
French Union. The agreement became ineffective after the bombing of
Haiphong ordered by the High Commissioner
Thierry d'Argenlieu, and from then on Sainteny played only a minor role in French-Vietnamese relations. He was wounded in an ambush and after the
Geneva Accords, he returned to
Hanoi as a French envoy. == References ==