Maurice Gamelin

“Monsieur le President, I see only one answer to your message: France alone counts.”

Born in Paris on September 20, 1872, Maurice Gamelin was born in Paris to a senior officer of the defeated army of Emperor Napoleon III. Growing up he demonstrated both an aptitude for military matters as well as artistic talent, attending college for the arts before switching to the military academy at Saint-Cyr, where he graduated in 1893 at the top of his class.

After graduating he would serve as a Lieutenant in a unit of tirailleurs in Tunisia, remaining there until 1897. he would then return home to Paris to attend the École supérieure de guerre, the most prestigious military academy in the Third Republic, graduating second in his class of eighty, identified by the future general Charles Lanzerac as an up-and-coming officer. He would follow his time at the school with the publishing of Étude philosophique sur l’art de la Guerre in 1906, which was well received and further ingratiated him with the French military leadership.

Gamelin also managed to impress Ferdinand Foch, a professor at the college, who was able to help Gamelin to secure a position as attache to General Joseph Joffre, a position he would retain as Joffre climbed the ranks to eventually become Commander in Chief of the French Army on the eve of the Great War in 1914.

French troops march to war in 1914. Gamelin would come into his own on the staff of Commander in Chief Joffre in the late summer of 1914

As the German Army swept across Belgium and bore down on Paris, Gamelin had a hand in drawing up the plans for a last ditch counterattack on the Marne River to stop the advance at the gates of Paris. The resulting “Miracle on the Marne” would save the French capitol, and perhaps France herself, turning the Germans back before settling into the pattern of trench warfare that would define the Great War in the West.

In November of 1914 he would leave Joffre to command a chasseur brigade for a period on the Western Front, eventually becoming a Brigadier General and taking a position as commander of the 9th Infantry Division in 1917. He would remain with the 9th until the Armistice in November of 1918, fighting along the Oise River Sector near Noyon, taking part in the massive Entente offensives that ended the war.

General Gamelin (in light uniform on right) with Prime Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour and General Maxime Weygand in the early 1930s

After the war Gamelin would serve as abroad in Brazil and the Levant, but would again return to France and in 1931 replaced Maxime Weygand as Chief of Staff of the French Army. In 1935 he also assumed the duties of the Inspector General of the Army, becoming arguably the most powerful figure in the French Army since his mentor Joffre.

As the Germans remilitarized Gamelin exaggerated the abilities of the Germans to the government in an attempt to secure sorely needed funding to accelerate the sluggish rearmament program in France, but found it difficult to persuade a civilian government bound by anti-war public sentiment. He was, however, promoted to the serve as Commander in Chief of the French Armed Forces in early 1938, and would now be responsible for overall command of France’s military response to German aggression.

General Gamelin at his desk

On September 1st, 1939 German forces entered Poland, and on September 3rd France and Britain declared a state of war between themselves and Germany. Gamelin was still Commander in Chief, and his strategy was mainly based around the strong bulwark of the Maginot Line, as well as the natural obstacles of the Ardennes and the fortresses of Belgium.

The French made the first move in the West on September 7th, as Gamelin ordered French troops over the border, moving some 11 divisions into the Rhineland, where they advanced with almost no opposition, with a minor German counterattack being repulsed on the 10th. On September 21, with the collapse of Poland imminent and fearing massive German air attacks followed by gound forces, Gamelin ordered his men to withdraw back behind the Maginot Line, completing an orderly retreat shorlty afterward.

Gamelin with Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, in late 1939

On May 10, 1940 the Germans commenced their offensive in the West, entering Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg. The Luftwaffe attacked French airbases as German forces swiftly overrun Luxembourg, and the German Army began to swing northward to the Ardennes, a dense forest considered to be basically impenetrable by Allied commanders, including Gamelin. As the battle in Belgium continued, the Germans emerged from the Ardennes near Sedan and quickly overran the French defenders, opening a route into the French interior to the panzers.

Gamelin beleived that the attack was aimed at Paris, as it had been in 1914, and withdrew his forces to defend the capitol, leaving the way clear for the Germans to advance to the coast and thus cut off the bulk of the Allied forces, who would be surrounded in Belgium. His caution and slow response to the rapid German movements would prove to be his undoing, and on May 18 was replaced as Commander in Chief by his predecessor General Maxime Weygand, a defeatist who was aided by the recalled Great War Marshal Philippe Petain in his attitude of the hopelessness of the defense against Germany.

The trial of the leaders of the Third Republic is announced in a Vichy newspaper

Weygand performed no better than Gamelin, and by June the situation in France was critical. On June 14th, Paris fell to the Germans, On the 17th Prime Minister Reynaud resigned and was replaced with Philippe Petain, the war hero turned defeatist who had his own designs for the future of France. Petain and Weygand would surrender to the Germans on June 22nd, and on June 29th Petain moved the government to the resort town of Vichy. It was here that the Third Republic died, and on July 9th the remnants of the National Assembly voted to dissolve the Republic, and the next day the new Vichy Regime took power as a collaborationist regime under Petain.

Gamelin, a lifelong staunch supporter of the Republic, was arrested by the new Vichy Government on 6th September, eventually facing a trial for treason alongside other high officials of the Republic, including Prime Minsters Daladier and Reynaud. When he took the stand, Gamelin refused to recognize the court and government as legitimate and kept silent on the stand. Eventually, as the trial became increasingly embarrasing to Petain’s government, the treason proceedings were quietly suspended.

Gamelin would subsequently be held in France by Petain’s regime until the Germans liquidated the Vichy Government in 1942, whereupon Gamelin was taken to Germany and held in Schloss Itter in Austria with other high ranking French figures. He would take up arms when the castle was besieged by SS troops amid the collapse of the Third Reich in May of 1945, joining forces with US forces and even a German Army detachment to defend his former prison in what is commonly known as the strangest battle of the Second World War.

Gamelin returned to France and published his memoirs, Servir. Les Armées Françaises de 1940, in 1946, in which he attempted to justify his actions during the war. He was called to testify to the French Parliament during investigations into the failure of the Third Republic running from 1946 to 1951, and thereafter withdrew from public life.

He died in his native Paris on April 18, 1958, and was buried in the Cimetiere de Passy with no fanfare, the government refusing to allow him final honors as a former General, only as a holder of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor.