Ancient history

Maxime Weygand

Maxime Weygand (January 21, 1867 - January 28, 1965) was a French general officer, member of the French Academy. He played a major role in both World Wars.

Weygand was born on January 21, 1867 in Brussels, Belgium. According to some sources, he was the illegitimate son of Empress Charlotte of Mexico. Weygand has always refused to confirm or deny this rumor, which suggests that it was inaccurate.

According to Charles Fouvez, who published Le Mystère Weygand in 1967 with La Table Ronde, Weygand is the illegitimate son of King Leopold II of Belgium. Although formal proofs are not provided, there is, according to him, a body of clues forming quasi-proofs. In the periodical "Histoire pour tous" number 100 of August 1968, the author confirms his belief on the basis of the mail received by him after the publication of his book. Moreover, according to him, Weygand's mother was Countess Kosakowska, the wife of a nobleman of Lithuanian origin, but Russian in 1867.

He was raised in Marseille by the Jewish Cohen de Léon family. But curiously, his Memoirs remain completely silent about his adoptive parents, while he pays homage at length to his governess and the chaplain of his high school who instilled in him his Catholic faith.

Military debut

Under the name of Maxime de Nimal, he was received in 1885 at the Military School of Saint-Cyr as a foreign student (Belgian). Received in the exit contest in 1887, he chose the cavalry. He was then adopted by a Mr. Weygand, accountant of Mr. Cohen de Léon, whose name he took, and was naturalized French.

At the time of the Dreyfus affair, he signaled himself as an anti-Dreyfusard by subscribing in favor of the widow of Colonel Henry who had committed suicide when his falsification of the bordereau accusing Dreyfus was revealed.

Once a captain, Weygand chose not to prepare for the War School, citing his desire to remain in contact with his men. However, he became an instructor at the cavalry school in Saumur from 1902 to 1907, and from 1910 to 1912. In 1913, he entered the Center for Advanced Military Studies, where General Joffre noticed him.

First World War

At the start of the First World War, Weygand was a lieutenant-colonel in the 5th regiment of hussars in Nancy. He participated in the Battle of Morhange but was quickly appointed to the general staff. Indeed, following the reorganization of the French command, desired by General Joffre to avoid a probable debacle, he was assigned on August 28, 1914, as lieutenant-colonel, to General Foch. He was appointed Chief of Staff to the General. Promoted to brigadier general in 1916, and temporary general of division in 1917, it was this title and this function that he still held when Foch was appointed Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in March 1918. Foch, very satisfied with his collaborator, helps Maxime Weygand's career. He is a rare example in the history of the French army of the rise to the highest levels of the hierarchy of an officer who had not commanded at the front, which will be ironically underlined by General de Gaulle in his Memoirs . In 1918, Weygand assisted Foch in the armistice negotiations and read out the armistice conditions to the Germans, in Compiègne, in the Rethondes wagon.

Between the two wars

Poland

In 1920, General Weygand was appointed adviser to Józef Piłsudski in Poland. There he commanded a group of French officers, under the name of "French Military Mission", to come to the aid of the Poles in rout against the Russian forces. Indeed, the Poles, having engaged in 1918 in the war against Bolshevik Russia, were about to be defeated by the Soviet forces of Tukhachevsky.

French intervention helped the Poles win the Battle of Warsaw, after which they annexed Ukrainian and Belarusian territories.

The exact importance of the French Military Mission is discussed. Some Polish officers claimed that the Battle of Warsaw had been won by them alone, before the French mission could draft and send its report, a point of view shared, for example, by the historian Norman Davies. Nevertheless, French historians point out that the many French officers of his "mission", experienced in combat, unlike Weygand, supervised and instructed a large part of the Polish army and contributed to its reorganization. Not to mention the Polish air force, many of whose pilots were French or American.

In times of peace

Weygand was made general of the army in 1920 and general of the army in 1923. He succeeded General Gouraud in Syria, as High Commissioner of France. In 1924, he entered the Superior War Council. In 1925, he directed the Center for Advanced Military Studies. He was promoted to Chief of the General Staff of the Army in 1930. In 1931, he was elected to the French Academy in the chair of Joffre. Until 1935, he was vice-president of the Superior Council of War, and as such, denounced the danger of Hitler and condemned disarmament. He retired on January 21, 1935, giving way to General Gamelin, but was kept active without age limit. In 1938, he expressed his optimism about the ability of the French army to win in the event of a conflict.

World War II

The Phoney War

At his request, Weygand was recalled to active service by President Édouard Daladier in August 1939 to lead the French forces in the Middle East. He was asked to resume the position of High Commissioner to the Levant and to ensure the French presence there with the limited staff available. There he prepared an offensive against Soviet oil in the Caucasus. Since the German-Society Pact, the USSR has been allied with Germany.

defeat

In May 1940, the military situation in France was so compromised that the Supreme Commander, General Maurice Gamelin, considered too passive, was dismissed. Weygand was then called on May 17 by Paul Reynaud to replace him. On the same date, Marshal Pétain entered the government. The German armored divisions, having pierced the front at Sedan since May 10, continued their course to the west and cut the French army in two, enclosing part of it as well as the British troops in Belgium. Weygand arrives in France on May 19. The change of command with General Gamelin lasts a few hours, during which he reports to him on the extent of the defeat and informs him of the absence of reservations. Unaware of the exact situation of the armies of the North, Weygand canceled Gamelin's last orders providing for a counter-offensive. Communications with the armies of the North being very difficult, he decided to go there himself. On May 21, he arrived by plane in Ypres, where he met the King of the Belgians Leopold III and the head of the French armies in Belgium, General Billotte. Weygand then decides to take up the idea of ​​a counter-offensive to cut off the advanced German armored columns. But it is too late:the infiltrated enemy tanks have been followed by the bulk of the German forces. moreover, General Billotte, in charge of the implementation of this counter-offensive, died accidentally the next day. General Blanchard who succeeded him did not attend the Ypres conference, nor did the head of the British expeditionary force Lord Gort, who had arrived too late for the meeting. Moreover, the latter refused to engage two divisions and began a retreat of British forces towards Arras, then Dunkirk. On May 24, Weygand had to give up any offensive. The Franco-British armies, locked up in Belgium, will have to seek salvation through Dunkirk. On May 25, a council of war takes place at the Elysée, bringing together the President of the Republic Albert Lebrun, the President of the Council Paul Reynaud, Philippe Pétain, César Campinchin, Minister of the Navy, and Weygand. It was at this meeting that the hypothesis of an armistice was first raised. In the days that followed, Paul Reynaud considered the creation of a Breton reduced, an option deemed unrealistic by Weygand.

The Briare conference

After the evacuation of 340,000 Franco-British to Dunkirk (May 31/June 3, 1940), the Wehrmacht launched an offensive on June 5 against a very weakened French army, because a lot of material had been lost in Belgium and in Flanders. Colonel de Gaulle, promoted to brigadier general, enters the government as under-secretary of state for war. On June 10, the French government leaves the capital declared an open city. On the same date, Italy entered the war against France.

On June 11, a Franco-Allied supreme council took place in Briare, in which Churchill and Eden took part. During this council, there will appear tensions between French and English, but also fractures between the military and the French political leaders. The French demand the massive intervention of the RAF alone likely to change the course of the battle. Faced with the refusal of Churchill, who needed these 25 fighter squadrons for the subsequent defense of the United Kingdom, the Franco-British alliance broke up, Churchill nevertheless obtaining from Paul Reynaud the assurance that no final decision from the French government would not be taken without referring to the British, and promising them that the victorious United Kingdom would restore France "in her dignity and greatness". Paul Reynaud is in favor of the continuation of the war. The idea of ​​the Breton redoubt having been abandoned, he envisaged the continuation of the fight in the Empire, while Marshal Pétain and General Weygand were in favor of a rapid armistice to avoid the annihilation and total occupation of the country. Paul Reynaud reminds Weygand that the decision of an armistice is political and does not come from the Generalissimo.

Churchill remarks that the only French government member not to sink into total pessimism is the very recent General de Gaulle. Like Churchill, he reasons in global terms and does not limit this conflict, which he sees as global, to a simple Franco-German issue. Weygand, on the contrary, believed that he was witnessing only a new episode in the cycle begun in 1870, and, like Marshal Pétain, he did not understand that the stakes of 1940 (national servitude in perpetuity in a Nazified Europe) had no nothing to do with that of 1870 (loss of three departments) or 1914. Both Winston Churchill and General de Gaulle described in their memoirs a defeatist, Anglophobic and anti-Republican Weygand.

The armistice

During the Councils of Ministers that took place in the days that followed, Weygand officially reiterated the need for an armistice, both for military and civic reasons. With the rout of the French armies, accompanied by the exodus of Belgian and French populations, Weygand fears that disorder will spread throughout the country. The armistice seems to him the indispensable condition for maintaining order. He invokes the myth of a possible installation at the Elysée of the communist leader Maurice Thorez, supposedly returned from the USSR in the vans of the Wehrmacht. The president of the council Paul Reynaud opposes him with political arguments, the danger of Nazism, the agreements with England. Philippe Pétain supports Weygand, citing civilian ignorance of military issues. The government splits.

On the 15th, in Bordeaux, Paul Reynaud, supported by Georges Mandel, evoked the possibility of continuing the fight alongside Great Britain:the army would capitulate in mainland France while the government and parliament would reach North Africa. Weygand violently refuses this solution which he considers dishonorable for the army because it would have involved only the military authorities. Only the armistice seems honorable to him. He puts his resignation in the balance. Like Pétain, he also considers it inconceivable that the government leaves the territory of the metropolis. Part of the government agrees with Camille Chautemps's proposal to inquire about the conditions of a possible armistice. Increasingly isolated, Paul Reynaud resigned on June 16, giving way to Philippe Pétain. He announced on June 17 that a request for an armistice had been filed. On the same day, Weygand was appointed Minister of National Defence.

Although Weygand did not believe in a victory for the United Kingdom, now isolated in its fight against Germany, he nevertheless ordered the transfer for the benefit of Great Britain of all the armament contracts signed by France with the industries of American armaments, as well as the delivery in the British ports of all the armaments in transit, while the French ports were under German control. This fact is attested by Jean Monnet in his Memoirs.

Weygand also refused General de Gaulle's dissidence, and on June 19, he ordered him to return from London, ignoring the latter's invitation to continue the fight. Shortly after, he demoted de Gaulle to the rank of colonel, then successively summoned two military tribunals:Finding the sanctions pronounced by the first tribunal insufficient, he summoned a second which sentenced the leader of Free France to death on August 2, 1940.

The Vichy regime

Weygand served as Minister of National Defense in the Vichy government for three months (June 1940 to September 1940), then was appointed General Delegate in French Africa. There, he worked to prevent young officers from joining de Gaulle's dissidence. Hostile to the Republican government, he shares Philippe Pétain's National Revolution project and his social project, and applies Vichy policy in all its rigor in North Africa.

In particular, he applied the racial laws decided by the Vichy government, in particular those which excluded Jews from the public service, from almost all private activities and from the university, and which placed their property under sequestration (see:Laws on the status of the Jews). But he goes further than Vichy, by excluding, without any law, Jewish children from schools and high schools, with the complicity of the rector Georges Hardy:He establishes in fact, by a simple memorandum n°343QJ of September 30, 1941, a school “numerus clausus” excluding almost all Jewish children from public educational establishments, including primary schools, “by analogy with the legislation of higher education”, which did not happen in mainland France.

It prohibits Freemasonry, and locks up, with the support of Admiral Abrial, in prison camps in southern Algeria and Morocco, foreign volunteers from the Foreign Legion, opponents of the regime, real or presumed, and foreign refugees without a work contract (although regularly entered France).

The United Kingdom having resisted victoriously, contrary to his initial forecasts, he persisted in thinking, with Marshal Pétain, that, even if the United Kingdom was not going to be beaten, it was incapable of winning the war. Weygand, like Pétain, therefore envisaged a final agreement with Germany, with, if possible, the mediation of the United States (Robert O. Paxton, L’Armée de Vichy, p. 240). Weygand conceals certain personnel and armaments from the Italian and German Armistice Commissions. He also strives, after the attacks of Mers-El-Kébir and Dakar, to strengthen the French armistice army in Africa, and gives his agreement to René Carmille for the mechanical equipment of the recruitment offices. He also made certain colonial units pass for simple police forces, and tried to remobilize people's minds, notably with the creation of the "Chantiers de la jeunesse française" (created by General de La Porte du Theil), which, in a strict Marshalism, try to accustom the youth to a new moral order.

But when he learned, following a denunciation, that some officers of his entourage (Commander Faye, Commander Dartois, and Captain Beauffre) were preparing a plan for him to return to war with American military aid, he had them arrested and handed over to the courts, saying:"It is not at my age that one becomes a rebel." »

However, he negotiated with the Americans, in order to avoid the discontent of the natives, the conditions of supply, leading to an agreement signed with Robert Murphy on February 26, 1941.

By his protests to the Vichy government, he caused the failure of the Paris protocols of May 28, 1941 signed by Darlan, and in particular the attribution to the enemy of bases in Bizerte and Dakar, as well as military collaboration with the Axis, in the event of an Allied response. But, for him, it was above all a question of not losing face with the natives. Indeed, he actively collaborated behind the scenes with the enemy when the 4th Bureau of his General Delegation delivered to Rommel's Afrika Korps 1,200 French trucks and other vehicles from French army stocks (Dankworth contract in 1941), as well as a number of heavy artillery pieces, accompanied by 1,000 shells per piece.

Nevertheless Hitler, not content with partial collaboration, exerted pressure on the Vichy government to obtain the dismissal of Weygand, which resulted in his recall to France in November 1941. In November 1942, after the he Allied invasion of North Africa and the total occupation of the metropolis, the Germans placed Weygand under house arrest in Germany. Paul Reynaud, Édouard Daladier and Léon Blum kept it away until, in May 1945, it fell into American hands. Sent back to France, he was first interned as an accused of collaboration in Val-de-Grâce, then finally released in May 1946 and cleared of all responsibility in 1948, benefiting from a dismissal on all counts. by the High Court of Justice.

He campaigned until his death for the rehabilitation of Marshal Pétain and his memory. When he died in 1965, General de Gaulle refused to allow a solemn ceremony to be held at the Invalides.