Maxime Weygand

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General Maxime Weygand
General Maxime Weygand

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

Contents

[edit] Early years

Weygand was born in Brussels. It has been alleged that he was the illegitimate son of either Empress Carlota of Mexico or of her brother Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Weygand refused to confirm or deny these rumours. He was educated in Marseille by the Jewish Cohen de Léon family.

In his memoirs he says little about his youth, devoting to it only 4 pages out of 651. He mentions the gouvernante and the aumônier of his college, who instilled in him a strong Roman Catholic faith. His memoirs essentially begin with his entry into the preparatory class of Saint-Cyr Military School in Paris, as if he had wished to erase his connection with the Jewish family that took him in and ensured his education. Indeed, he always expressed extreme antisemitism, especially during the Second World War. (It is not known under what conditions or for what reasons M. Cohen de Léon became his tutor.)

He was admitted to the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, under the name of "Maxime de Nimal", as a foreign cadet (Belgian). Successfully graduating in 1887, he was posted to a cavalry regiment. He was then legally acknowledged ['reconnu'] as his illegitimate son by an accountant under the employ of M. Cohen de Léon, François-Joseph Weygand, from whom he received both surname and French nationality... eventually becoming an instructor at Saumur.

During the Dreyfus affair, he was one of the most antidreyfusard officers of his regiment, supporting the widow of Colonel Henry, who had committed suicide after the discovery of the falsification of the charges against Captain Dreyfus.

Once promoted to Captain, Weygand chose not to attempt the difficult preparation to the Advanced War College ('Haute Ecole de Guerre') because of his desire, he said, to keep contact with the troops. This did not prevent him from later becoming an instructor at the aristocratic Cavalry School at Saumur.

[edit] Weygand during World War I

Weygand passed the war of 1914-18 as a Staff Officer. At the outbreak, he satisfied his taste for contact with the troops while spending 26 days with the 5ème Hussards. On 28 August, he became a Lieutenant-Colonel on the staff of Marshall Ferdinand Foch. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1916 and Major General in 1918, serving in the Supreme War Council from 1917. He remained on Foch's staff when the marshall was appointed Supreme Allied Commander. In 1918 he served on the armistice negotiations, and it was Weygand who read out the armistice conditions to the Germans at Compiègne, in the twice infamous railway carriage.

[edit] Inter-war period

[edit] Weygand in Poland

After the war his career continued well despite the retirement of Ferdinand 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 24 July 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 27 July, 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 Władysław 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 "représentant 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-croix de la légion d'honneur. 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 than forty years even in academic circles.

[edit] Weygand in France and the Middle East

Weygand 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. He was then recalled to active service by Prime Minister Edouard Daladier in August 1939 to head the French forces in the Middle East, where although France was at war only with Germany, he prepared his troops for a military takeover against the Soviet oil fields of Baku in the Caspian Sea.

[edit] Weygand in World War II

By late May 1940 the military disaster in France after the German invasion was such that the Supreme Commander, Maurice Gamelin, was dismissed, and Weygand recalled from Syria to replace him. Weygand arrived on May 17 and started by cancelling the side counter-offensive ordered by Gamelin, to cut off the enemy armoured columns which had punched through the French front at the Ardennes. Thus he lost 2 crucial days before finally adopting the solution, however obvious, of his predecessor. But it was by then a failed manoeuvre, because during the 48 lost hours, the German infantry had caught up behind their tanks in the breakthrough and had consolidated their gains. Weygand then oversaw the creation of the 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. After some further vain attempts to contain the enemy offensive he then favoured an armistice with Germany. Like the vast majority of French staff officers and antidreyfusards, Weygand was a monarchist pro-fascist who despised the Third Republic, commonly called by them la gueuse—"the beggar-woman". They were delighted to see her fall.[citation needed]

[edit] Under the Vichy Regime

In June, he was appointed to the Bordeaux-Vichy cabinet as Minister for National Defence for three months (June to September 1940), and then Delegate-General to the North African colonies. While there:

  • He convinced the young officers, tempted to resistance, of the justice of the armistice, by letting them hope for a later resumption of combat.
  • He deported opponents to terrible concentration camps in Southern Algeria and Morocco. There, he locked up, with the complicity of Admiral Abrial, adversaries of the Vichy regime (Gaullists, Freemasons, communists, etc.), the foreign volunteers of Légion Etrangère, foreign refugees without employment (but legally admitted into France), etc.
  • He applied Vichy's racist laws against Jews very harshly (see Vichy France). With the complicity of the Recteur (University chancellor) G. Hardy, Weygand instituted, on his own authority, by a mere "note de service n°343QJ" of 30 september 1941, a school "numerus clausus" (quota,) driving out from the colleges and from the primary schools most of the Jewish pupils, including small children aged 5 to 11. Weygand did this without any decree of Marshall Philippe Pétain's, "by analogy," he said, "to the law about Higher Education".

Weygand acquired a reputation as an opponent of collaboration when he protested, in Vichy, against the Protocols of Paris of 28 May 1941 signed by Admiral Darlan, agreements which granted bases to the Axis in Aleppo (Syria), Bizerte and Dakar and envisaged an extensive military collaboration with Axis forces in the event of Allied countermeasures.

Nevertheless the Weygand General Delegation (4th Office) collaborated with Germany by delivering to Rommel's Afrika Korps 1200 French trucks and other French army vehicles (Dankworth contract of 1941), as well as heavy artillery pieces accompanied with 1000 shells per gun.

Weygand was apparently favourable to collaboration with Germany, but with discretion. Additionally, when he opposed German bases in Africa, he did not intend to be neutral or to help the Allied camp. Rather, he only sought to prevent the French from losing prestige with the natives and keep their colonial empire. Nevertheless, since Adolf Hitler wanted full unconditional collaboration, he put pressure on the Vichy government to obtain the dismissal and recall of Weygand in November 1941. One year later, in November 1942, following the Allied invasion of North Africa, Weygand was arrested. He remained in confinement until May 1945, when he fell into the hands of the Americans.

[edit] Last years

After returning to France, he was held as a collaborator at the Val-de-Grâce but was released in May 1946 and cleared in 1948. He died in Paris at age 98.

Besides a Member of the French Academy, Maxime Weygand was an officer of the Legion of Honour.

[edit] References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] Polish period

[edit] Second world war

  • Henri Michel, Vichy, année 40, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1967.
  • William Langer, Our Vichy gamble, Alfred Knopf, New York 1947.
  • Yves Maxime Danan, La vie politique à Alger de 1940 à 1944, Librairie générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Paris, 1963.
  • Albert Merglen, Novembre 1942: La grande honte, L'Harmattan, Paris 1993.
Preceded by
Joseph Joffre		 Seat 35
Académie française
1931–1965		 Succeeded by
Louis Leprince-Ringuet
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