General Maxime Weygand, 1867-1965: Fortune and Misfortune

By Anthony Clayton

The career of the French general Maxime Weygand offers a fascinating glimpse into the perils and politics of military leadership and loyalty in the interwar years and after France’s defeat in 1940. Of obscure birth, Weygand had an outstanding career during WWI as chief of staff for Marshal Foch and served France after the war in Poland and Syria before returning home. Alarmed by Nazi Germany’s rearmament, Weygand locked horns with a political leadership skeptical of the growing military threat, leading to accusations that his desire for a strong army was anti-democratic. With German invaders again threatening Paris, Weygand argued for armistice rather than face certain military defeat. No friend of the newly-installed Vichy government, Weygand was soon shuffled off to North Africa, where he plotted the army’s return to the Allied cause. After the German entry into Unoccupied France, Weygand was imprisoned. Released at war’s end, he was rearrested on the orders of Charles de Gaulle and afterwards fought to restore his name. In this concise biography, Anthony Clayton traces the vertiginous changes in fortune of a soldier whose loyalty to France and to the French army was unwavering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Release date: Mar 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9780253015853

Anthony Clayton

Anthony Clayton was a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 1965 to 1993 and an Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey from 1994 to 2008. He was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of St. Andrews. He served in the colonial Government of Kenya until 1963 and in the Territorial Army in the infantry and later in the Intelligence Corps, finishing as a lieutenant-colonel. He has published works on British and French military history, among them "The British Empire as a Superpower 1919-1939" and "The British Officer from 1660 to the Present"; "France, Soldiers and Africa: The Wars of French Decolonisation"; "Paths to Glory: The French Army 1914-1918" and "Three Marshals of France". For his work on the French military he was made a Chevalier in the Odre des Palmes Académiques. He was also awarded the Medal of Honour of the Gesellschaft zur Forderung des Wiedevaufbaus der Frauenkirche Dresden for his work for the Dresden Trust. His other works include chapters in the Oxford History of the British Empire and the Cambridge History of War, 'Warfare in Woods and Forests'. Anthony Clayton is a widower visited frequently by his son, daughter and grandchildren. He lives with a cavalier King Charles spaniel in Farnham, Surrey.