Henri Guisan

Henri Guisan was a Swiss army officer who held the office of the General of the Swiss Army during the Second World War. He was the fourth and the most recent man to be appointed to the rarely used Swiss rank of General, and was possibly Switzerlands most famous soldier. He is best remembered for effectively mobilizing the Swiss army and Swiss people in order to prepare resistance against a possible invasion by Nazi Germany in 1940.

Henri Guisan was born in 1874 in Mzires, in the canton of Vaud, a Protestant part of Frenchspeaking Switzerland. He attended school in Lausanne, and initially studied agricultural medicine. Upon entering the Swiss military in 1894, he was assigned to a horsedrawn artillery unit in Bire as a Lieutenant. He was promoted several times, reaching the rank of Colonel in 1920.

Source: Wikipedia