Weygand, Maxime

(1867-1965)

   general

   Born in Brussels, Belgium, Maxime Weygand was educated at saint-cyr and, at the beginning of World War I, served as chief of staff for general Ferdinand foch and was his close adviser for the rest of that conflict. He was sent to Poland in 1920 as a military adviser during the Polish-soviet War, then, in 1923, served as high commissioner in Syria. A member of the Supreme War Council (1924) and director of the Center for Military Studies (Centre des hautes études militaires), he was named as chief of the French Army General Staff and left military service in 1935. In 1939, with war imminent, general Weygand was named commander in chief of the Mediterranean theater of operations and, in May 1940, was called by paul reynaud to replace general maurice gamelin as supreme commander. He tried to oppose the enemy invasion with a resistance at the Somme and at the Aisne Rivers, and then was advised to accept an armistice for which the government accepted full responsibility. Named minister of national defense in the vichy government (June-september 1940) and delegate-general of Marshal Philippe pétain in North Africa (1940-41), he signed the agreements with the Americans that would facilitate the Allied landing of 1942 (Weygand-Murphy Accords, 1941) and succeeded in preventing the application of the Darlan-Warlimont agreements. Recalled to France on the orders of the Germans, he was arrested and interned in Germany (1942). Freed (1945), he was tried before the High Court of Justice by the government of General charles de gaulle, but in 1948 he was exonerated of all the main charges against him. Besides his Mémoires (1950-57), general Weygand left Histoire de l'armée française (1938) and a biography, Foch (1947). He was elected to the Académie Française in 1931.