Maxime Weygand

Maxime Weygand (January 21, 1867 - January 28, 1965) was a French military commander in both World War I and World War II.

Early life

Weygand was born in Brussels, Belgium. Some sources say that he was the illegitimate son of Empress Carlota of Mexico, which Weygand refused to either confirm or deny. He was educated in Marseille by the family Cohen de Léon, and later inParis before joining the military academy at Saint-Cyr, under the name of "Maxime de Nimal". Graduated in 1887 he was posted to a cavalry regiment. Then he was adopted, by Mr. Weygand, accountant of Mr. Cohen de Léon. He was then an instructor at Saumur.

WW I

At the outbreak of WW I he was a Lieutenant-Colonel on the staff of Joseph Joffre but in August 1914 he became chief-of-staff to Ferdinand Foch. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1916 and Major General in 1918, serving on the War Council from 1917. He remained on the staff of Foch when Foch was appointed Supreme Allied Commander. In 1918 he served on the armistice negotiations and actually read them out to the Germans at Compiegne, in the famous railway carriage.

Inter-war period

After the war his career continued well despite the disgrace of Foch. Weygand was briefly sent as an advisor to Poland in 1920 during the Polish-Soviet War, trying without much success to aid Józef Piłsudski. The mission also included French diplomat Jean Jules Jusserand and the British diplomat Lord Edgar Vincent D'Abernon. It achieved little; indeed, the crucial Battle of Warsaw was fought and won by the Poles before the mission could return and make its report. Subsequently, for many years, the myth that the timely arrival of Allied forces saved Poland was begun, a myth in which Weygand occupies the central role.

Weygand travelled to Warsaw in the expectation of assuming command of the Polish army, yet he met with a very disappointing reception. His first meeting with Piłsudski on July 24 started on the wrong foot, as he had no answer to Piłsudski's opening question, "How many divisions do you bring?" Weygand had no divisions to offer. On July 27, he was installed as adviser to the Polish Chief of Staff, Rozwadowski, but their cooperation was poor. He was surrounded by officers who regarded him as an interloper and who deliberately spoke in Polish, depriving him not only of a part in their discussions but even of the news from the front. His suggestions for the organization of Poland's defence were systematically rejected. At the end of July he proposed that the Poles hold the line of the Western Bug; a week later he proposed a purely defensive posture along the Vistula. Neither plan was accepted. One of his few contributions was to insist that a system of written staff orders should replace the existing haphazard system of orders passed by word of mouth. He was of special assistance to General Wladyslaw Sikorski, to whom he expounded the advantages of the River Wkra. But on the whole he was quite out of his element, a man trained to give orders yet placed among people without the inclination to obey, a proponent of defence in the company of enthusiasts for the attack. On 18 August, when he met Piłsudski again he was told nothing of the great victory, but was "regaled instead with a Jewish tale". It offended his dignity as a "representant de la France" and he threatened to leave. Indeed there was nothing to do but leave. The battle was won; armistice negotiations were beginning; the crisis had passed. He urged D'Abernon and Jusserand to pack their bags and make as decent an exit as possible. He was depressed by his failure and dismayed by Poland's disregard for the Entente. On the station at Warsaw on 25 August he was consoled by the award of the medal, the Virtuti Militari; at Cracow on the 26th he was dined by the mayor and corporation; at Paris on the 28th he was cheered by crowds lining the platform of the Gare de l'Est, kissed on both cheeks by the Premier Alexandre Millerand and presented with the Grand Order of the Legion of Honour. He could not understand what had happened and has admitted in his memoirs that "the victory was Polish, the plan was Polish, the army was Polish". He was the first uncomprehending victim, as well as the chief beneficiary, of a legend already in circulation that he, Weygand, was the victor of Warsaw. This legend persisted for more then forty years even in academic circles.

He was elected a member of the Académie française (seat #35) in 1931. He also served as high commissioner in Syria and as Inspector-General of the army from 1931 before retiring in 1935. Weygand was recalled to active service by Edouard Daladier in August 1939 to head the French forces in the Middle East.

WW II

By May 1940 the military disaster in France was such that the Supreme Commander, Maurice Gamelin, was dismissed and Weygand was recalled to replace him. He arrived on May 17 and after having lost one day to react to the german panzer offensive, he attempted to hold the German advance, but too late, and became in favour of an armistice. Some of the military tactics Weygand and his staff developed in that period (Hedgehog tactic) have influenced later anti-blitzkrieg tactics.

In June, he was appointed in the Bordeaux-Vichy cabinet, where he was made Minister for National Defence for three months (June to September 1940), and then Delegate-General to the North African colonies. There he applied very harshly the vichyst racist laws against jewishes and extended their application to little children: he expelled them, without any law, from the primary and secondary schools.
He deported opponents in southern Algeria and Marocco concentration camps, and his Delegation offices collaborated with German in delivering 1200 French army lorries and other vehicles to Rommel Africa Korps (Dankworth contract in 1941). Nevertheless, as later he protested against Franco-German agreements of Paris, concluded by Darlan and giving bases to German, in Syria, Bizerte and Dakar, he has been believed to be an anti-German.
But, in fact, he had been favourable to "collaboration" with Germans, but with discretion. Also,when he refused German bases in Africa, he did not intended to help allied camp, but only to avoid losing of French prestige with the natives. But as Hitler wanted a full collaboration, he made pressures on the Vichy government to obtain the recall and the dismissal of Weygand in November 1941; one year later, in November 1942, following the Allied invasion of North Africa, Weygand was promptly arrested. He remained imprisoned until May 1945, when he was liberated by the Americans.

Last years

Returned to France, he was held as a collaborator at the Val-de-Grâce but finally was released in May 1946 and cleared in 1948.

References

• Edgar Vincent D'Abernon, The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World: Warsaw, 1920, Hyperion Press, 1977, ISBN 0883554291.
• Piotr Wandycz , General Weygand and the Battle of Warsaw, Journal of Central European Affairs, 1960
• Henri Michel, Vichy, année 40, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1967.
• Jean-Pierre Azéma et François Bedarida,Vichy et les Français, Paris, Fayard, 1996.
• Professeur Yves Maxime Danan, La vie politique à Alger de 1940 à 1944, Librairie générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Paris, 1963.
• William Langer, Le jeu américain à Vichy, Plon, Paris 1948.
• Général Albert Merglen, Novembre 1942: La grande honte, L'Harmattan, Paris 1993.
• Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20, Pimlico, 2003, ISBN 0712606947.