Maurice Gamelin

Maurice Gamelin (1939)

Maurice Gustave Gamelin (born September 20, 1872 in Paris , † April 18, 1958 ibid) was a French général d'armée . In 1940 he was in command of the French armed forces and shared responsibility for the rapid defeat of France during the German Wehrmacht's campaign in the west .

Military career

Gamelin on the cover of Time (1939)

Maurice Gamelin came from a Parisian officer family. He attended the prestigious Collège Stanislas de Paris and entered the Saint-Cyr Military School on October 31, 1891 , from which he graduated in 1893 as the best of his year. He then served the 3e régiment de tirailleurs algériens in French North Africa . Between 1897 and 1899 Gamelin completed his training as a staff officer at the École supérieure de guerre , which he finished as the second best of his class. With the rank of captain , he was appointed to the staff of XV in 1900 Army corps before he took command of the 15th battalion of the Chasseurs alpins in Brienne-le-Château in 1904 . In 1906 Gamelin published the military treatise Étude philosophique sur l'art de la Guerre and was considered the coming military theorist of the French army. Gamelin received funding from General Joseph Joffre and served as his orderly officer until 1911 .

After three years of use as a battalion commander of the Chasseurs alpins in Annecy Gamelin was in March 1914 by Chief of Staff Joffre in the General Staff appointed. After the outbreak of the First World War, Gamelin initially stayed in the Grand Quartier Général (GQG) and became one of Joffres' closest employees. In this capacity he contributed to the victory in the Battle of the Marne . On November 1, 1914, Gamelin was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and switched to active service on the Western Front . As the commander of the 2e demi-brigade de chasseurs à pied , Gamelin fought in Alsace and on the Somme . In April 1916, he continued his ascent and became a colonel . After a brief return to the GQG, Gamelin became Chief of Staff of the Army Reserve Group under General Joseph Alfred Micheler . From May 11, 1917 until the end of the war on November 11, 1918, Gamelin was General de brigade in command of the 9th Infantry Division on the Oise and made a significant contribution to stopping the German offensive there.

After the end of the World War, Gamelin was head of the French military mission in Brazil (1919 to 1924). He then served from 1924 to 1929 as Commander-in-Chief of the French colonial troops in the Levant ( League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon ). There Gamelin put down local uprisings ( Syrian Revolution ) and pacified the region. In 1929 he returned to France as the commander of an army corps. In 1931 he finally succeeded Maxime Weygand as Chief of Staff of the French Army and in 1935 Vice President of the Supreme War Council and Inspector General of the Armed Forces.

The fact that Gamelin could only inadequately perform the duties of commander-in-chief was due to an advanced stage of syphilis from which he had suffered since 1930. The therapeutic methods of the time, which included the administration of arsenic-bismuth-mercury preparations and malaria therapies (which alleviated the symptoms of paralysis caused by syphilis), could not stop the progression of syphilis. As a result, Gamelin et al. a. Memory disorders and clouding of consciousness. The staff and troop officers were constantly confronted with contradicting statements from their commander-in-chief. The disease also appeared to irrationally reinforce his hostility to modern warfare. Mechanization and motorization of the troops as well as large formations of the armored troops and the massive use of air forces he firmly rejected; He viewed opposing opinions as personal treason.

For his rapid rise in the 1930s, in addition to his tactically defensive and strategically passive (non-interventionist) attitude, which found favor in French politics at the time, non-military reasons were also decisive. So Gamelin was considered a republican , which set him apart from numerous companions, such as the right-wing conservative Weygand, and was a factor for his appointment that should not be underestimated in a largely anti-republic political landscape of right-wing, monarchist and communist republican enemies. In addition, due to his poor health, he was considered to be easy to influence, which was beneficial to the government, which tried to prevent the military from developing a political life of its own .

Second World War

The commander-in-chief of the BEF Lord Gort (left) and Gamelin (center) on October 13, 1939

In 1939 the German Reich started the Second World War . As Chief of Staff, Gamelin had enforced a defensive and conservative attitude towards warfare, which was also reflected in France's cautious reaction to Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland and the Sudeten crisis in 1938. Nevertheless, with the beginning of the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces in France. Despite the extensive exposure of the German West, the Allied armies refrained from attacking the allied Poland . Only small, tentative advances were made in Saarland . The Allied troops under Gamelin's command stayed behind the Maginot Line , this non-war war is known as the Drôle de guerre or seated war .

With the start of the German attack on May 10, 1940, it became apparent that Gamelin was overwhelmed as Commander in Chief. He did not realize that the German Army Group B , which had invaded the Netherlands and Belgium , was only supposed to pretend to him a new version of the Schlieffen Plan . At his command, the Allied troops moved north to form the main front against the Wehrmacht together with the Dutch and Belgian forces. Gamelin stayed at his headquarters in Vincennes near Paris and very quickly lost track of the fighting; on the one hand due to its distance from the front, on the other hand due to the collapse of the communication systems. His basic defensive stance had also encouraged defeatism in the French army . Likewise, he had not recognized the importance of the armored weapon, advocates of more active warfare such as Charles de Gaulle had been ignored before the war in France.

The disastrous development of the situation for the Allies finally led to Gamelin's impeachment on May 19, around a week after the German attack began. He was replaced by General Maxime Weygand, his predecessor as Chief of Staff, and passed into retirement.

In February 1942, Gamelin was indicted by Vichy France at the Riom trial as contributing to the defeat. Philippe Pétain took him out of the proceedings. He was imprisoned in Fort du Portalet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). After Germany had occupied southern France ( Anton Company , November 11, 1942), he was extradited to Germany. The Nazi regime interned him together with French prewar politicians, e. B. Édouard Daladier and Léon Blum , in the satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp at Itter Castle in Tyrol . On May 5, 1945, those imprisoned there were liberated by troops of the Wehrmacht and the American army in action against the Waffen-SS at the Battle of Itter Castle .

After his liberation in 1945 he returned to France, wrote extensive memoirs and lived in seclusion. He died on April 18, 1958 in his native Paris.

literature

• Martin S. Alexander: The Republic in danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the politics of French defense, 1933-1940 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992. ISBN 0-521-37234-8 .
• James de Coquet: Le procès de Riom . A. Fayard, Paris 1945.

Web links

Commons : Maurice Gamelin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Maurice Gamelin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Maurice Gamelin in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Footnotes

1. ^ Martin Alexander: The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defense, 1933-1940. Cambridge University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-521-52429-2 .
2. ↑ Barnett Singer (2008): Maxime Weygand: A Biography of the French General in Two World Wars , p. 215
3. ^ Three volumes, published 1946/47 by Plon-Verlag; Title: Servir (Eng .: to serve). worldcat