Henri Salmide

Henri Salmide (born Heinz Stahlschmidt, 13 November 1919 – 23 February 2010) was a German naval officer who, in August 1944, refused to blow up the port of Bordeaux, France when so ordered by his superiors during World War II. Instead, he blew up the bunker containing the ordnance that had been stock-piled for the purpose of destroying the port.

Early life Salmide was born in Dortmund, Germany. He joined Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine in 1939 and was trained in demolitions, becoming an expert in defusing British naval mines. While serving in the Navy, he survived the sinkings of three warships on which he was serving. Salmide "laid strips of dynamite inside the supply bunker filled with demolition hardware and thousands of pounds of ordnance and watched as the city shook from the huge explosion."

Salmide's actions were credited not only with saving thousands of civilian lives, but also with saving France's most important harbor and preserving a stable platform for the region's post-war economic recovery.

After the detonation, Salmide presented himself to the French resistance and reported what he had done. The resistance hid him from the German forces who had branded him a traitor and ordered that he be arrested or shot on sight. Salmide spent the last months of the war in hiding with a French woman whose grandson, Alain Moga, would later serve as Bordeaux's deputy mayor. He hid from both the Gestapo and French police and later recalled that French officials nearly shot him after the war because of his German military service.

Post-war life In post-war Germany, Salmide was regarded as a traitor, and his name was stricken from the list of German Navy personnel eligible to receive a pension. As his actions became known, he earned the gratitude of the French people who referred to him as "the little Frenchman" and the "Bordeaux Choltitz"—a reference to Dietrich von Choltitz, who disobeyed Adolf Hitler's order to raze Paris if it was threatened by Allied forces.

He adopted the French name, Henri Salmide, became a naturalized French citizen in 1947, married a French woman, Henriette Buison, and lived in Bordeaux for the rest of his life. He worked as a firefighter in Bordeaux's port fire brigade for more than 30 years.

In 2000, Salmide became a Knight of the French Légion d'Honneur. Salmide died in Bordeaux in February 2010, and Bordeaux city officials said at the time that the city intended to build a memorial in his honor. His body is interred at the Protestant cemetery in Bordeaux.

The headquarters of Bordeaux Port Atlantique, located in Bacalan, was named after Salmide in 2012.