Jacques Soustelle; Leader in French Resistance

Jacques Soustelle, one of the first to rally to Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s call for a resistance movement during World War II, but who later broke with the French president over Algeria, died Tuesday.

The former cabinet minister, world-renowned ethnologist and wartime head of the Free French secret services was 78.

He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a spokesman for the Academie Francaise announced.

An anthropologist noted for his study of pre-Colombian cultures, Soustelle was named to the prestigious academy in 1983. The organization’s statement announcing his death did not give a cause or list survivors.

Soustelle was born in Montpellier, the son of a railway worker, and studied letters at the Ecole Normale Superieure.

Strongly opposed to fascism, Soustelle was among the first to respond to De Gaulle’s June 18, 1940, appeal from London to fight the Vichy government that collaborated with Nazi Germany.

After the liberation of France in 1944, Soustelle worked as minister of information and later minister of colonies. He served as governor of Algeria in 1955-56 during the outbreak of the war for independence.

De Gaulle returned to power in 1958 as the Algerian war threatened to tear France apart. Soustelle again became minister of information and later a deputy foreign minister.

But the two men had a falling out when De Gaulle made clear his intention to grant independence to the North African country.

Soustelle lived in exile until 1968, when he returned to France under a general amnesty and resumed his academic and political career.