Maxime Weygand (21 January 1867-28 January 1965) was a General d'armee of France who served as Commander-in-Chief of the French Army from 18 May to 11 June 1940 (succeeding Maurice Gamelin and preceding Charles Huntziger).
Biography[]
Maxime Weygand was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1867, the illegitimate son of Alfred Van der Smissen and Melanie Zichy-Metternich (the daughter of Klemens von Metternich). He was commissioned into the French Army in 1888, and he served as Chief of Staff to General Ferdinand Foch in World War I and, in 1920, was sent to aid the Poles in their ultimately successful defense against the advancing Red Army. In 1923-4 he was high commissioner of Syria and the Lebanon. A member of the war council from 1924 to 1929, he became Chief of the French General Staff from 1930 to 1935, when he completed the subjection of Morocco. In May 1940 he was called from retirement to command the French army. Unable to stem the German advance, he pressed for capitulation, effectively overruling Prime Minister Paul Reynaud. He was Minister of Defense for the Vichy government from June to September 1940, and was then sent to North Africa as Marshal Philippe Petain's emissary. Dismissed in 1941 as a result of German pressure, he was arrested and interned in Nazi Germany from 1942 to 1945. He was cleared of the charge of collaboration in 1948. He became a critic of all policies of decolonization of territories which he considered an integral part of France, such as Algeria. Weygand died in 1965 at the age of 98.