1. Maurice Gamelin is remembered for his disastrous command of the French military during the Battle of France in World War II and his steadfast defence of republican values.
60 Facts About Maurice Gamelin
1. 2.
The Commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces at the start of World War II, Gamelin was viewed as a man with significant intellectual ability.
3.
Maurice Gamelin was respected, even in Germany, for his intelligence and "subtle mind", though he was viewed by some German generals as stiff and predictable.
4.
Historian and journalist William L Shirer presented the view that Gamelin used World War I methods to fight World War II, but with less vigor and slower response.
5.
In 1933 Maurice Gamelin rose to command the French Army and oversaw a modernisation and mechanisation programme, including the completion of the Maginot Line defences.
6.
Maurice Gamelin was born in Paris on 20 September 1872.
7.
From an early age Maurice Gamelin showed potential as a soldier, growing up in a generation seeking revenge on Germany for the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.
8.
Maurice Gamelin volunteered for service on 19 October 1891 before entering the military academy at Saint-Cyr on 31 October.
9.
Maurice Gamelin began in the French tirailleurs with the 3rd Regiment based in Tunisia.
10.
When Maurice Gamelin came back to Paris in 1897, he entered the prestigious Ecole Superieure de Guerre and finished second of his class of about eighty of the best future officers in the French Army.
11.
Maurice Gamelin joined the staff of the 15th Army Corps before commanding a company of the 15th battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins in 1904.
12.
Maurice Gamelin published Philosophical Study on the Art of War in 1906, which critics praised, predicting he would become an important military thinker in the near future.
13.
Maurice Gamelin then became an attache to General Joseph Joffre.
14.
In 1911, Maurice Gamelin was given command of the 11th battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins in Annecy.
15.
Early in the war, Maurice Gamelin helped draft the plans that led to the victory at the Battle of the Marne.
16.
Maurice Gamelin was promoted to lieutenant colonel and fought in Alsace on the Linge and later on the Somme.
17.
Maurice Gamelin became colonel in April 1916, and with good results on the battlefield was further promoted within eight months to the rank of brigadier general.
18.
Maurice Gamelin commanded the French 11th Infantry Division from April 1917 until the end of the war.
19.
From 1919 to 1924, Maurice Gamelin was the head of the French military mission in Brazil.
20.
Maurice Gamelin then commanded the French Army in the Levant, now Syria and Lebanon.
21.
Maurice Gamelin was the commander of the 30th Military Region in Nancy from 1919 to 1931, when he was named head of the general staff of the French Army.
22.
Maurice Gamelin prepared France's military until the beginning of World War II, although challenged by restricted funding and by the political inertia regarding German re-armament and later the Third Reich, which was intensified after the end of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland and its remilitarisation.
23.
Maurice Gamelin saw the Rome convention as a possible means for French forces to reach France's allies in Eastern Europe via Italy, and as a way to concentrate forces against Germany by transferring forces from the Franco-Italian border and from the border of French protectorate of Tunisia with the Italian colony of Libya.
24.
Badoglio, whom Maurice Gamelin was friendly with, sent him a series of telegrams saying he was still committed to an alliance with France and promised that he would resign rather than wage war on France.
25.
Maurice Gamelin was very strict in applying his policy that officers were not to express their opinions of the new government.
26.
At his first meeting with Blum on 10 June 1936 at the Hotel Matignon, Maurice Gamelin expressed his willingness to serve the new government while arguing for greater defense spending.
27.
Maurice Gamelin submitted to Daladier a four year plan for military modernisation that was budgeted at 9 billion francs, which Daladier rejected it out of hand as too far low and added an extra 5 billion francs.
28.
Maurice Gamelin argued that Germany's population outnumbered the population of France, but if France's eastern allies were included, the Allies would have a numerical superiority, leading him to argue that France needed a tighter alliance with Poland and must rebuild relations with Italy.
29.
Maurice Gamelin was opposed to Darlan's plans, arguing that it was better to seek a diplomatic rapprochement with Italy designed to win make Italy into a French ally rather than engage in a costly naval arms races with the Italians, which he noted would take away francs from the French Army.
30.
Maurice Gamelin had continued this tradition by planning for a "forward defense" in Belgium in the event of war.
31.
The Popular Front government had just approved of a major programme to modernise the French Army by committing 14 billion francs, and Maurice Gamelin did not wish to antagonise Blum by asking for billions of more francs to extend the Maginot line along the Franco-Belgian border as he knew that Blum in his heart deeply disliked military spending.
32.
Besides for the cost, Maurice Gamelin argued it would be cheaper and better to spend the money on modern tanks and artillery for a "forward defense" in Belgium.
33.
In 1937, Maurice Gamelin wrote the "experience of past wars" showed "the Ardennes has never favored [military] operations".
34.
The French defenses along the Meuse river area consisted of a series of blockhouses spread out over the countryside, and Maurice Gamelin assigned only second-class divisions to defend the Ardennes area.
35.
Maurice Gamelin insisted that the alliance with Poland brought France strategical benefits and contra Bonnet urged Daladier to "restructure" the Polish alliance to move Poland closer to France.
36.
Maurice Gamelin did not intend to launch an offensive into western Germany should the Reich invade Poland, but he encouraged Daladier's line of standing by Poland during the Danzig crisis against Bonnet as he maintained that France needed the Polish alliance.
37.
Maurice Gamelin was very strongly opposed to the British limited liability doctrine, which governed British rearmament.
38.
Maurice Gamelin stated that the British offer in late 1938 to send to France 2 British Army divisions along with 10 squadrons of RAF fighters was totally inadequate and would force the French Army to do the vast bulk of the fighting in a conflict with the Reich.
39.
Maurice Gamelin pressed Gort to send to France all of the forces in the United Kingdom, namely 5 divisions of British regulars plus four divisions from the Territorial Army.
40.
Maurice Gamelin gave orders for the Armee du Levant based in Syria to prepare to embark from Beirut to Thessaloniki on 25 August 1939 to open up an alternative eastern front in the Balkans.
41.
At the outbreak of the war in September 1939, Maurice Gamelin was considered one of the best commanding generals in Europe, and was respected even among the Wehrmacht.
42.
When war was declared in 1939, Maurice Gamelin was France's commander in chief, with his headquarters at the Chateau de Vincennes, a facility completely devoid of telephonic or any other electronic links to his commanders in the field: a massive oversight in the face of the Wehrmacht's subsequent swift and flexible 'Blitzkrieg' tactics.
43.
Maurice Gamelin ordered his troops back behind the Maginot Line, but only after telling France's ally, Poland, that France had broken the Siegfried Line and that help was on its way.
44.
Maurice Gamelin prohibited any bombing of the industrial areas of the Ruhr, in case the Germans retaliated.
45.
Maurice Gamelin was initially keen to open up a second front in the Balkans, and made extensive preparations to move the Armee du Levant to Greece in the first weeks of September 1939.
46.
Maurice Gamelin reserved himself on the new Salonika front for much the same reason, that he still had hopes of keeping Italy neutral.
47.
Maurice Gamelin was strongly opposed to the Daladier-Weygand plan for an expedition to the Balkans, which he called an unlimited commitment that would take divisions from the Western Front.
48.
Daladier, who very wanted to execute Weygand's plans for a new Salonika front, complained in December 1939 that Maurice Gamelin's advice "resembled sand running through your fingers".
49.
Maurice Gamelin was forced to abandon plans to raise an additional 13 divisions owing to manpower shortages as he could not conscript so many men without crippling French war industry.
50.
Maurice Gamelin provided an opening about asking for a study from Darlan about how best to aid Finland, and instead received a memo saying that France needed to strike before Germany signed another economic agreement with the Soviet Union by cutting Germany from the Swedish iron ore.
51.
Maurice Gamelin was opposed to Darlan's Scandinavian expedition, arguing that the best place for French manpower was in the defense of France, but by this point Daladier was clearly annoyed by what he perceived as Maurice Gamelin's passive stance of waiting behind the Maginot line.
52.
Maurice Gamelin had never assumed a purely defensive strategy relying on the Maginot Line as popularly depicted, and he always favored a forward defense in Belgium.
53.
Maurice Gamelin favoured an aggressive advance northward to meet the attacking German forces in Belgium and the Netherlands, as far removed from French territory as possible.
54.
Maurice Gamelin committed much of the motorised forces of the French Army and the entire British Expeditionary Force to this strategy.
55.
Maurice Gamelin was removed from his post on 18 May 1940 by Paul Reynaud, who had replaced Edouard Daladier as Prime Minister in March.
56.
The 67-year-old Maurice Gamelin was replaced by the 73-year-old Maxime Weygand, who crucially delayed planned counter-attacks before eventually launching them.
57.
Maurice Gamelin was both preceded and succeeded as General d'armee by Maxime Weygand.
58.
Maurice Gamelin refused to answer the charges against him, instead maintaining silence, and the entire proceeding collapsed.
59.
Maurice Gamelin was freed from the castle after the Battle for Castle Itter.
60.
Maurice Gamelin died in Paris in April 1958 at the age of 85.