Maxime Weygand

Maxime Weygand (21 January 1867 – 28 January 1965; French pronunciation: ​[v%C9%9B%C9%A1%C9%91%CC%83]) was a French military commander in World War I and World War II.

Weygand initially fought against the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, but then surrendered to and collaborated with the Germans as part of the Vichy France regime.

Weygand was born in Brussels of unknown parents. He was long suspected of being the illegitimate son of either Empress Carlota of Mexico (by General Alfred Van der Smissen); or of her brother Leopold II, King of the Belgians, and Leopold's Polish mistress. Van der Smissen always seemed a likely candidate for Weygand's father because of the striking resemblance between the two men. In 2003, the French journalist Dominique Paoli claimed to have found evidence that Weygand's father was indeed van der Smissen, but the mother was Mélanie Zichy-Metternich, lady-in-waiting to Carlota (and daughter of Prince Metternich, Austrian Chancellor). Paoli further claimed that Weygand had been born in mid-1865, not January 1867 as is generally claimed.

Regardless, throughout his life Weygand maintained he did not know his true parentage. While an infant he was sent to Marseille to be raised by a widow named Virginie Saget, whom he originally took to be his mother. At age 6 he was transferred to the household of David Cohen de Léon, a financier of Sephardic origins who was a friend of Leopold II. Upon reaching adulthood, Weygand was legally acknowledged as a son by Francois-Joseph Weygand, an accountant in the employ of M. Cohen de Léon, thereby granting him French citizenship.

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 disregard his connection with Mme. Saget and M. Cohen de Leon. Military career

He was admitted to the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, under the name of "Maxime de Nimal" as a foreign cadet (Belgian). Graduating in 1887, he was posted to a cavalry regiment. After changing his name to Weygand and receiving French nationality, he became 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.

Service 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 Hussars. On 28 August, he became a Lieutenant-Colonel on the staff of General Ferdinand Foch. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1916.

Georges Clemenceau wanted to have Foch (French Army Chief of Staff) as French Military Representative on the Supreme War Council (formally established 7 November 1917), to increase French control over the Western Front, but was persuaded to appoint Weygand as a more independent general instead. However, Clemenceau only agreed to set up an Allied General Reserve if Foch rather than Weygand were earmarked to command it. The Reserve was shelved for the time being at a SWC Meeting in London (14–15 March) as the national commanders in chief, Philippe Pétain and Haig, were reluctant to release divisions.

Weygand was promoted Général de Division (equivalent to the Anglophone rank of Major General) in 1918. He remained on Foch's staff when his patron was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in the spring of 1918, and was Foch's right-hand man throughout his victory at the Second Marne (for which Foch was promoted Marshal of France) in the late summer and until the end of the war.

In 1918 Weygand served on the armistice negotiations, and it was Weygand who read out the armistice conditions to the Germans at Compiègne, in the railway carriage. He can be spotted in photographs of the armistice delegates, and also standing behind Foch's shoulder at Pétain's investiture as Marshal of France at the end of 1918.

Inter-war period

Weygand in Poland

During the Polish–Soviet War, Weygand was a member of the Interallied Mission to Poland of July and August 1920, supporting the infant Second Polish Republic against the Soviet Union. (He had not been on the 1919 French Military Mission to Poland headed by General Paul Prosper Henrys.) The Interallied Mission, which also included French diplomat Jean Jules Jusserand and the British diplomat Lord Edgar Vincent D'Abernon, achieved little: its report was submitted after the Poles had won the crucial Battle of Warsaw. Nonetheless, the presence of the Allied missions in Poland gave rise to a myth that the timely arrival of Allied forces saved Poland, a myth in which Weygand occupies the central role.

Weygand traveled to Warsaw expecting to assume command of the Polish army, yet those expectations were quickly dashed. He had no good reply for Józef Piłsudski, who on 24 July during their first meeting asked "How many divisions do you bring?" Weygand had none to offer. From 27 July Weygand was an adviser to the Polish Chief of Staff, Tadeusz Jordan-Rozwadowski. It was a difficult position; most Polish officers regarded him as an interloper, and spoke only Polish, which he did not understand. At the end of July he proposed that the Poles hold the length of the Bug River; a week later he proposed a purely defensive posture along the Vistula River; both plans were rejected, like were most of his other suggestions. One of his few lasting contributions was to insist replacing the existing system of spoken orders by written documents. Norman Davies writes: "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 defense in the company of enthusiasts for the attack." During another meeting with Piłsudski on 18 August, Weygand became offended and threatened to leave, depressed by his failure and dismayed by Poland's disregard for the Triple Entente. At the station at Warsaw on 25 August he was consoled by the award of the Virtuti Militari, 2nd class, Poland's highest military decoration; 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 Cross of the Legion of Honor. He could not understand what had happened and has admitted in his memoirs what he said to a French journalist already on 21 August 1920: that "the victory was Polish, the plan was Polish, the army was Polish".[5] As Norman Davies notes: "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."

Weygand in France and the Middle East

Weygand was unemployed for a time after the military mission to Poland, but in 1923 he was made commander-in-chief Levant, the French mandate in Lebanon and Syria. He was then appointed High Commissioner of Syria the next year, a position he also only kept for a year.

Weygand returned to France in 1925, when he became director of the Center for Higher Military Studies, a position he had for five years. In 1931 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the French Army, Vice President of the Supreme War Council and Inspector of the Army, and was elected a member of the Académie française (seat #35). He remained in the positions, except Inspector of the Army, until his retirement in 1935 at 68.

He was recalled for active service in August 1939 by Prime Minister Édouard Daladier and appointed commander-in-chief for the Orient Theatre of Operation.

Weygand in World War II

By late May 1940 the military disaster in France after the German invasion was such that the Supreme Commander—and politically neutral—Maurice Gamelin, was dismissed, and Weygand—a figurehead of the right—recalled from Syria to replace him.

Weygand arrived on 17 May and started by cancelling the flank 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 two 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. Weygand complained that he had been summoned two weeks too late to halt the invasion. After some further vain attempts to contain the enemy offensive, he then joined in seeking an armistice and cooperation with the German occupiers.

Collaboration during the Vichy Regime

In June, Weygand was appointed by Pétain 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 concentration camps in Southern Algeria and Morocco. There, he locked up, with the complicity of Admiral Jean-Marie Charles Abrial, adversaries of the Vichy regime (Gaullists, Freemasons and Jews. He also arrested communists, despite their non-support for the resistance ordered by Moscow at the time.), the foreign volunteers of Légion Etrangère, foreign refugees without employment (but legally admitted into France) and others. He applied Vichy's racist laws against Jews very harshly (see Vichy France). With the complicity of the Recteur (University chancellor) Georges 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 Marshal Philippe Pétain, "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 François Darlan, agreements which granted bases to the Axis in Aleppo, Syria, Bizerte, Tunisia and Dakar, Senegal and envisaged an extensive military collaboration with Axis forces in the event of Allied countermeasures. As Simon Kitson demonstrated in his book The Hunt for Nazi Spies, Weygand remained outspoken in his criticism of Germany.

Nevertheless, the Weygand General Delegation (4th Office) collaborated with Germany by delivering to Erwin 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 favorable 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 France from losing prestige with the natives and keep its colonial empire. Nevertheless, since Adolf Hitler demanded full unconditional collaboration, he pressured 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 in Germany and then in the Itter Castle in North Tyrol with General Gamelin and a few other French Third Republic personalities until May 1945, when he fell into the hands of the Americans after the Battle for Castle Itter.

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 the age of 98. He had married Marie Renee, the daughter of Brigadier General Viscount de Forsanz of Brittany. They had a younger son Jacques.

Beirut still holds his name on one of its major streets, Rue Weygand.

Maxime Weygand est né le 21 janvier 1867, à Bruxelles. Un enfant portant le prénom de Maxime, mais sans nom de famille, a tout au moins été déclaré le 23 janvier à l'hôtel de ville de Bruxelles. L'identité des parents de l'enfant sera plus tard l'objet de nombreuses hypothèses, dont aucune ne sera jamais vérifiée. Le général Weygand se refusera toujours à donner la moindre indication à ce sujet, et affirmait qu'il ignorait tout de ses ascendants.

Il porte d'abord le nom de Saget, la nourrice à laquelle il est confié - sans que l'on sache par qui, - puis il devient le pupille d'un négociant marseillais en cuirs et peaux, M. David Cohen. Il prend alors le patronyme de de Nimal (Mme Cohen était née Denimal).

C'est sous cette identité qu'il entre à Saint-Cyr, où il est admis en 1885, à titre étranger, puis à Saumur.

En 1888, François-Joseph Weygand, comptable de la maison Cohen, signe un acte de reconnaissance qui dote le jeune officier d'un nom et de la nationalité française. Telles sont du moins les seules indications précises que M. Guy Raïssac, scrupuleux biographe du général, a pu recueillir et contrôler (1).

Chef d'état-major de Foch

La carrière militaire de Maxime Weygand, qui épouse en 1900 la fille de son colonel, Mlle de Forsanz, est rapide et brillante. En 1914 il est lieutenant-colonel au 5e hussard, à Nancy. Foch, nommé au commandement de la IXe armée, le prend pour chef d'état-major. Il restera, à l'exception d'un bref passage à l'état-major général, son collaborateur direct et son confident. Il sera à ses côtés comme chef d'état-major du groupe des armées du Nord, sous-chef de l'état-major général de l'armée et, après la rencontre de Doullens, le 26 mars 1918, major général des armées alliées.

Les 8, 9 et 10 novembre 1918, il est à Rethondes lorsque le généralissime dicte les termes de la capitulation allemande. Et Foch, qui estime que, sans avoir combattu à la tête d'une unité, Weygand n'en a pas moins " pris une part capitale à la campagne de France ", le fait participer avec lui au défilé de la victoire.

Le Monde

- "(...) le 18 octobre 1888, Maxime de Nimal est reconnu comme son fils naturel par François-Joseph Weygand (1846-1915), issu d'une vieille famille alsacienne de Rhinau. Cet acte de reconnaissance dote le jeune homme du nom de Weygand et lui permet, selon son vœu, d'acquérir presque aussitôt la nationalité française (le décret de naturalisation intervient en effet le 3 décembre de la même année). Maxime n'aura cependant jamais, par la suite, de relations personnelles avec ce père purement formel.(...)" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxime_Weygand

-"(...) Freycinet, alors ministre de la Guerre, indique à Cohen que, si Maxime était « reconnu » par un Français de souche, cette reconnaissance lui donnerait la nationalité française de naissance et assurerait sa carrière dans l'armée française à titre français. Cinq jours après cette suggestion, Maxime est, miraculeusement, « reconnu » par François-Joseph Weygand, comptable de la maison Cohen (...)"http://provence-historique.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/Pdf/PH-1996-46-183_02.pdf