56 Facts About Ferdinand Foch

Ferdinand Foch was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War.

Ferdinand Foch successfully coordinated the French, British and American efforts into a coherent whole, deftly handling his strategic reserves.

Ferdinand Foch stopped the German offensive and launched a war-winning counterattack.

In November 1918, Marshal Ferdinand Foch accepted the German cessation of hostilities and was present at the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

Ferdinand Foch was then promoted again to assistant commander-in-chief for the Northern Zone, a role which evolved into command of Army Group North, and in which role he was required to cooperate with the British forces at Ypres and the Somme.

Ferdinand Foch was appointed "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies" on 26 March 1918 following being the commander-in-chief of Western Front with the title Generalissime in 1918.

Ferdinand Foch played a decisive role in halting a renewed German advance on Paris in the Second Battle of the Marne, after which he was promoted to Marshal of France.

On 11 November 1918, Ferdinand Foch accepted the German request for an armistice.

Ferdinand Foch advocated peace terms that would make Germany unable to pose a threat to France ever again.

Ferdinand Foch considered the Treaty of Versailles too lenient on Germany.

Ferdinand Foch was born in Tarbes, a municipality in the department of Hautes-Pyrenees, in southwestern France, into a devout Catholic family.

Ferdinand Foch attended school in Tarbes, Rodez, Gourdan-Polignan and at the Jesuit in Saint-Etienne before attending the Jesuit in Metz.

In 1885 Ferdinand Foch undertook a course at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre where he was later an instructor from 1895 to 1901.

Ferdinand Foch was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1898, and colonel in 1903.

An extremely short man, Ferdinand Foch was known for his physical strength and his sharp mind who always maintained a highly dignified bearing.

Ferdinand Foch was a quiet man, known for saying little and when he did speak, it was a volley of words accompanied by much gesturing of his hands that required some knowledge of him to understand properly.

In 1907 Ferdinand Foch was promoted to General de Brigade, and in the same year, he assumed command of the French War College.

Ferdinand Foch held this position until 1911, the year in which he was appointed General de Division.

Ferdinand Foch influenced General Joseph Joffre when he drafted the French plan of campaign in 1913.

Ferdinand Foch was later acclaimed as "the most original military thinker of his generation".

Ferdinand Foch became known for his critical analyses of the Franco-Prussian and Napoleonic campaigns and of their relevance to military operations in the new twentieth century.

At the college, Ferdinand Foch was a professor of military history, strategy, and general tactics while becoming the French theorist on offensive strategies.

The cult of the offensive came to dominate military circles, and Ferdinand Foch's reputation was damaged when his books were cited in the development of the disastrous offensive that brought France close to ruin in August 1914.

Ferdinand Foch was seen as a master of the Napoleonic school of military thought, but he was the only one of the Military College Commandants still serving.

Ferdinand Foch acquitted himself well, covering the withdrawal to Nancy and the Charmes Gap before launching a counter-attack that prevented the Germans from crossing the River Meurthe.

Ferdinand Foch was then selected to command the newly formed Ninth Army during the First Battle of the Marne with Maxime Weygand as his chief of staff.

Accordingly, on 4 October 1914, Ferdinand Foch was made the Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Zone under Joseph Joffre.

Ferdinand Foch's counterattack was an implementation of the theories he had developed during his staff college days and succeeded in stopping the German advance.

Ferdinand Foch received further reinforcements from the Fifth Army and, following another attack on his forces, counter-attacked again on the Marne.

Ferdinand Foch had again succeeded in coordinating a defense and winning against the odds.

Ferdinand Foch was strongly criticised for his tactics and the heavy casualties that were suffered by the Allied armies during these battles, and in December 1916 was removed from command by Joffre and sent to command Allied units on the Italian front; Joffre was himself sacked days later.

Just a few months later, after the failure of General Robert Nivelle's offensive, General Philippe Petain, the hero of Verdun, was appointed Chief of the General Staff; Ferdinand Foch hoped to succeed Petain in command of Army Group Centre, but this job was instead given to General Fayolle.

Outside of the Western Front, Ferdinand Foch opposed British Prime Minister David Lloyd George's plans to send British and French troops to help Italy take Trieste, but was open to the suggestion of sending heavy guns.

Ferdinand Foch were appointed military representatives, to whom the general staffs of each country were to submit their plans.

Late in 1917 Ferdinand Foch would have liked to have seen Haig replaced as C-in-C of the BEF by General Herbert Plumer; however, Haig would remain in command of the BEF for the remainder of the war.

At a Supreme War Council meeting in London, with a German offensive clearly imminent, Ferdinand Foch agreed under protest to shelve the Allied Reserve for the time being.

At the Doullens Conference and at Beauvais, Ferdinand Foch was given the job of coordinating the activities of the Allied armies, forming a common reserve and using these divisions to guard the junction of the French and British armies and to plug the potentially fatal gap that would have followed a German breakthrough in the British Fifth Army sector.

In May 1918, in the fifth session of the Supreme War Council, Ferdinand Foch was given authority over the Italian Front.

Ferdinand Foch controlled the Military Board of Allied Supply, an Allied agency for the coordination of logistical support of the Allied forces.

Ferdinand Foch was suprised by the German offensive on the Chemin des Dames.

Ferdinand Foch believed it was a diversion to draw Allied reserves away from Flanders.

Ferdinand Foch is a better man now than he was then, for his fiery enthusiasm has been tempered by adversity.

At a major Allied conference at Beauvais Lord Milner agreed with Clemenceau that Ferdinand Foch should have the power to order all Allied troops as he saw fit, over the protests of Haig who argued that it would reduce his power to safeguard the interests of the British Army.

The British were disappointed that Ferdinand Foch operated through his own staff rather than through the Permanent Military Representatives at Versailles, and on 11 July 1918 British ministers resolved to remind Ferdinand Foch that he was an Allied, and not a French, C-in-C.

On 6 August 1918, Ferdinand Foch was made a Marshal of France.

An unintended consequence of Ferdinand Foch's appointment was that he sheltered Haig from British political interference.

Ferdinand Foch received many honours and decorations from Allied governments.

In 1940, after the defeat of France by Germany early in World War II, when France signed an armistice with Germany, Adolf Hitler, in a calculated gesture of disdain to the French delegates, left the carriage, as Ferdinand Foch had done in 1918.

In January 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference Ferdinand Foch presented a memorandum to the Allied plenipotentiaries in which he stated:.

However, the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the American President Woodrow Wilson objected to the detachment of the Rhineland from Germany so that the balance of power would not be too much in favour of France, but agreed to Allied military occupation for fifteen years, which Ferdinand Foch thought insufficient to protect France.

Ferdinand Foch considered the Treaty of Versailles to be "a capitulation, a treason" because he believed that only permanent occupation of the Rhineland would grant France sufficient security against a revival of German aggression.

On 1 November 1921 Ferdinand Foch was in Kansas City, Missouri, to take part in the groundbreaking ceremony for the Liberty Memorial that was being constructed there.

Ferdinand Foch made a 3000-mile circuit through the American Midwest and industrial cities such as Pittsburgh and then on to Washington, DC, which included ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery for what was then called Armistice Day.

Ferdinand Foch was buried in Les Invalides, next to Napoleon and other famous French soldiers and officers.

Ferdinand Foch is the only Frenchman ever to be made an honorary field-marshal by the British.

Ferdinand Foch received an honorary doctorate from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow in 1918.