Weygand, General Maxime

Weygand, General Maxime (1867–1965),French Army officer, born in Brussels of unrevealed parentage. He was Foch's chief of staff during the First World War and commanded the Polish forces which successfully defended Warsaw against the Red Army in 1920. On 20 May 1940 he succeeded Gamelin as supreme Allied commander during the fighting which preceded the fall of France, having been brought out of retirement the previous year to command French forces in the Levant (Syria and Lebanon). His Weygand Plan, to attack from two directions the German corridor which stretched to the coast, came to nothing; the Dunkirk evacuation followed; soon after, his Weygand Line, which stretched along the Seine and Aisne rivers to the Maginot Line at Montmédy, was breached; and on 5 June he called on the politicians to arrange an armistice. He then served as defence minister in Marshal Pétain'sVichy government before becoming its delegate general in North Africa in September 1940.

According to the Nazis' ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, Weygand was an irreconcilable enemy of Germany and a major factor in ensuring that the Paris protocols remained unratified. Hitler forced his resignation in November 1941 but he continued to influence Pétain and was at least partly responsible for the marshal's strongly worded protest when the Germans invaded unoccupied France in November 1942. Soon afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned in Germany. After the war he was charged with treason but was acquitted.