67 Facts About Maxime Weygand

In 1931, Maxime Weygand was appointed Chief of Staff of the French Army, a position he served until his retirement in 1935 at the age of 68.

In May 1940, Maxime Weygand was recalled for active duty and assumed command of the French Army during the German invasion.

Maxime Weygand joined Philippe Petain's Vichy regime as Minister for Defence and served until September 1940, when he was appointed Delegate-General in French North Africa.

Maxime Weygand was noted for exceptionally harsh implementation of German Anti-Semitic policies while in this position.

Maxime Weygand died in January 1965 in Paris at the age of 98.

Maxime Weygand was born on 21 January 1867 at 39 Boulevard de Waterloo in Brussels of unknown parents.

In 2003, the French journalist Dominique Paoli claimed to have found evidence that Maxime Weygand's father was indeed van der Smissen, but the mother was Melanie Zichy-Metternich, lady-in-waiting to Charlotte.

Paoli further claimed that Maxime Weygand had been born in mid-1865, not January 1867 as is generally claimed.

Regardless, throughout his life, Maxime Weygand maintained he did not know his true parentage.

Maxime Weygand was transferred to a boarding school in Paris and thence to the Lycee Louis-le-Grand where Maxime was baptised Catholic.

Maxime Weygand says little about his youth in his memoirs, devoting to it only four pages out of 651.

Maxime Weygand chose not to attempt the difficult preparation to the Ecole Superieure de Guerre because of his desire, he said, to keep contact with the troops.

Maxime Weygand attended the last pre-war French grand manoeuvres in 1913 and commented that it had revealed "intolerable insufficiencies" such as two divisions becoming mixed up.

Maxime Weygand's regiment was deployed to the Franco-German border on 28 July 1914 and later fought at the Battle of Morhange.

Maxime Weygand served under Foch for much of the rest of the war.

The professional partnership between Foch and Maxime Weygand was close and fruitful, with Maxime Weygand operating as a highly competent subordinate able to translate Foch's instructions into clearer orders, analyse ideas, and collate information.

Maxime Weygand finalised the plans for the 9th Army's attack at the First Battle of the Marne and, in doing so, became one of the first staff officers to reconnoitre the battlefield from the air.

Maxime Weygand supported Foch, who was appointed to coordinate the Belgian, British, and French forces in the northern sector, during the Race to the Sea and First Ypres.

Maxime Weygand later wrote of the Anglo-French Somme Offensive in 1916, at which Foch commanded French Army Group North, that it had seen "constant mix-ups with an ally [the British] learning how to run a large operation and whose doctrines and methods were not yet in accordance with ours".

Maxime Weygand took effective command of the army group as alternate when Foch was in ill health; during tensions between Foch and subordinates, Weygand helped to mediate disputes.

At Foch's suggestion, Maxime Weygand's name was submitted for command of an infantry brigade, but after Foch was assigned out of inactivity to instead create a contingency plan for a German invasion of France via Switzerland, Maxime Weygand decided to stay with Foch.

Maxime Weygand later accompanied the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir William Robertson, on an inspection of the Italian front in early 1917 to discuss Anglo-French support for Italy's Isonzo campaign.

Foch was appointed chief of the army general staff in 19 May 1917; writing to his wife, Maxime Weygand expressed his loyalty to Foch and gave up his applications for a field command.

The new prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, wanted Foch as PMR to increase French control over the Western Front, but was persuaded to appoint Maxime Weygand, seen very much as Foch's sidekick, instead.

Maxime Weygand was promoted general de division in 1918.

However, Clemenceau only agreed to set up an Allied General Reserve if Foch rather than Maxime Weygand were earmarked to command it.

Maxime Weygand was in charge of Foch's staff when his patron was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in the spring of 1918, and was Foch's right-hand man throughout his victories in the late summer and until the end of the war.

From June 1918 onwards, under British pressure, Foch and Maxime Weygand poached staff officers from the French Commander-in-Chief Philippe Petain.

Maxime Weygand personally delivered the directive for the Amiens attack to Haig.

Maxime Weygand later questioned whether Petain's planned offensive by twenty-five divisions in Lorraine in November 1918 could have been supplied through a "zone of destruction" through which the Germans were retreating; his own and Foch's doubts about the feasibility of the plans were another factor in the seeking of an armistice.

In 1918 Maxime Weygand served on the armistice negotiations, and it was Maxime Weygand who read out the armistice conditions to the Germans at Compiegne, in the railway carriage.

Maxime Weygand can be spotted in photographs of the armistice delegates, and standing behind Foch's shoulder at Petain's investiture as Marshal of France at the end of 1918.

Maxime Weygand harboured similar disdain, calling them in a diary "the four old men".

Attacks therefore fell on Maxime Weygand who was conspiratorially accused, by among others Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd George, as driving Foch's radical positions.

Maxime Weygand travelled to Warsaw expecting to assume command of the Polish army, yet those expectations were quickly dashed.

Maxime Weygand returned from Poland to his duties with the interallied council overseeing the implementation of the Versailles treaty and the renegotiation of peace with Turkey after they rejected the Treaty of Sevres.

Maxime Weygand declined to serve on a proposed French occupation force to occupy the Ruhr valley after Germany refused to meet reparation payments; he similarly refused appointment to Poland.

Maxime Weygand supervised infrastructure projects to support export of cotton and silk, reformed the school system, and established Damascus University in June 1923.

However, with the left-wing victory in the May 1924 elections, Maxime Weygand was recalled in place of Maurice Sarrail that December.

Maxime Weygand returned to France in 1925 embittered, seeing his recall as the product of political machinations and intra-army rivalries.

The eventual compromise saw Maxime Weygand made chief of staff with the more politically-safe Maurice Gamelin as deputy; Maxime Weygand was appointed chief of staff on 3 January 1930 at the age of 63.

On Petain's retirement to the post of air defence inspector on 10 February 1931, Maxime Weygand took up the vice presidency of the Conseil superieur de la guerre as well as inspector-general of the army; Gamelin was appointed chief of staff in his place.

Maxime Weygand's remained as vice president of the Conseil until his mandatory requirement at the age of 68 in February 1935.

Amid the breakdown in French civil-military relations in the 1930s, Maxime Weygand was neutral and "never indicated any support for any such projects" to replace the republican system with a military dictatorship.

Maxime Weygand was able to successfully lobby for creation of a light mechanised division as well as creation of a seven motorised infantry division in the early 1930s; he was able to lobby for extension of conscripts' service to two years in 1934.

Maxime Weygand spent some of this time writing articles in military journals on the state of the army, arguing that the now-superior German army could be held back by a well-equipped defence before motorised units would be eventually able to start a counteroffensive.

Maxime Weygand was recalled for active service in August 1939 by Edouard Daladier's government and appointed again to the Levant, resigning his position in the Suez Canal Company.

Maxime Weygand was tasked with inspecting and training the colonial garrisons.

Maxime Weygand's reputation came under substantial criticism from Charles de Gaulle and his allies after the war.

Much of this criticism related to claims that Maxime Weygand was negligent in rearming France while head of the army, was defeatist or incompetent during the Battle of France thereby leading to France's defeat in 1940, and was a German collaborator in the Vichy regime.

Maxime Weygand then oversaw the creation of the Maxime Weygand Line, an early application of the hedgehog tactic; however, by this point the situation was untenable, with most of the Allied forces trapped in Belgium.

Maxime Weygand complained that he had been summoned two weeks too late to halt the invasion.

Maxime Weygand believed that after France was defeated Britain would soon sue for peace, and hoped that after an armistice the Germans would allow him to retain enough of a French Army to "maintain order" in France.

Maxime Weygand later disputed the accuracy of de Gaulle's account of this conversation, and remarked on its similarity to a dialogue by Pierre Corneille.

That day Maxime Weygand barged into the office of Prime Minister Paul Reynaud and demanded an armistice.

The transcript shows Maxime Weygand to have been somewhat less defeatist than de Gaulle's memoirs would suggest.

Maxime Weygand joined the new government as Minister for Defence, and was briefly able to veto the appointment of Pierre Laval as minister of foreign affairs.

Maxime Weygand continued to serve in Petain's cabinet as Minister for National Defence until September 1940.

Maxime Weygand was then appointed Delegate-General in French North Africa.

Maxime Weygand arrested the foreign volunteers of the Legion Etrangere, foreign refugees who were in France legally but were without employment, and others.

Maxime Weygand did this without any order from Petain, "by analogy", he said, "to the law about Higher Education".

Maxime Weygand acquired a reputation as an opponent of collaboration when he protested in Vichy against the Paris Protocols of 28 May 1941, signed by Admiral Francois Darlan.

Maxime Weygand opposed Wehrmacht bases in French territory not to help the Allies or even to keep France neutral, but rather to preserve the integrity of the French Empire and maintain prestige in the eyes of the natives.

Maxime Weygand remained in custody in Germany and then in the Itter Castle in North Tyrol with General Gamelin and a few other French Third Republic personalities until May 1945.

Maxime Weygand was liberated by United States Army troops after the Battle for Castle Itter.

Maxime Weygand died on 28 January 1965 in Paris at the age of 98.

Maxime Weygand had married Marie-Renee-Josephine de Forsanz, the daughter of Brigadier General Raoul de Forsanz, on 12 November 1900.