Editing Maxime Weygand (section)

=== Second World War ===
[[File:Weygand-mai 1940-A.jpg|thumb|right|Weygand, leaving the [[Élysée Palace]] in May 1940 after being named commander-in-chief of French forces]]
[[File:Reynaud-Pétain-Weygand-mai1940-A.jpg|thumb|right|Weygand, foreign minister [[Paul Baudouin]], prime minister [[Paul Reynaud]], and deputy prime minister [[Philippe Pétain]] leaving a meeting of the Council of Ministers on 21 May 1940. On Weygand's right sleeve are the five stars of a [[général d'armée]]. ]] Immediately after the German army arrived in France, Weygand feared a [[Paris Commune|Paris Commune-like event]] might happen.<ref>Philip Nord: ''France 1940 – Defending the Republic'', New Haven (CT): Yale University Press 2015, pp. 114/115.</ref>

Weygand's service during the Second World War is controversial and debated. His reputation came under substantial criticism from [[Charles de Gaulle]] and his allies after the war.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hage |first=F E |date=2011-01-24 |title=none |journal=French History |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=134–135 |doi=10.1093/fh/crr012 |issn=0269-1191 |quote=Weygand is a controversial figure in French history... De Gaulle's hatred of Weygand was by moments absurd, for example when he criticised the choice of Weygand as generalissimo because he was 'without a drop of French blood in his veins' }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Catros |first=Simon |date=2016 |title=none |journal=French History |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=285–286 |doi=10.1093/fh/crw006 |issn=0269-1191 |quote=Controversial figure in twentieth-century French history... }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Greenhalgh |first=Elizabeth |date=2011 |title=none |journal=First World War Studies |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=250–252 |doi=10.1080/19475020.2011.613248 |issn=1947-5020 |quote=This balance [in the historical record] was destroyed, along with Weygand's reputation, by Charles de Gaulle's hijacking of the liberation of France, by the post-war insistence on trying Weygand as a security risk to the state along with Marshal Pétain, and by de Gaulle's petty refusal in 1965 to permit a funeral mass in the church of Saint Louis des Invalides for the 98-year-old general who had served France faithfully and well. }}</ref>{{sfn|Clayton|2015|p=x. "In the climate of the Liberation, de Gaulle and the Resistance were presented as the only paths of honour, and any senior figure who had served Vichy was considered to have been dishonourable and probably treacherous"}}{{sfn|Clayton|2015|p=140. "For many [Weygand] made a convenient scapegoat, especially in timeswhen his most bitter critic, de Gaulle, towered of his country's life"}} Much of this criticism related to claims that Weygand was negligent in rearming France while head of the army, was defeatist or incompetent during the [[Battle of France]] thereby leading to France's defeat in 1940, and was a German collaborator in the [[Vichy regime]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Young |first=Robert J. |date=2009 |title=none |doi=10.1353/jmh.0.0187 |journal=Journal of Military History |volume=73 |issue=1 |pages=303–304 |issn=1543-7795 }}</ref>

==== Recall to service ====
{{Further|Battle of France#Weygand Plan}}

By late May 1940 the military disaster in France after the [[Battle of France|German invasion]] was such that the Supreme Commander—and political neutral—[[Maurice Gamelin]], was dismissed, and Weygand—a figurehead of the right—was 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 Army (1935–1945)|German Army]] 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 defence|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.<ref>Current Biography 1940, p{{page needed|date=March 2013}}</ref>
{{sfn|Lacouture|1991|pp=206–7}}

==== Armistice ====
{{further|Second Armistice at Compiegne}}

On 5 June the German second offensive (''[[Fall Rot]]'') began.{{sfn|Lacouture|1991|p=189}} On 8 June Weygand was visited by de Gaulle, newly appointed to the government as Under-Secretary for War. According to de Gaulle's memoirs Weygand believed it was "the end" and gave a "despairing laugh" when de Gaulle suggested fighting on. He believed that after France was defeated Britain would also soon sue for peace, and hoped that after an armistice the Germans would allow him to retain enough of a French Army to "maintain order" in France. Weygand later disputed the accuracy of de Gaulle's account of this conversation, and remarked on its similarity to a dialogue by [[Pierre Corneille]]. De Gaulle's biographer [[Jean Lacouture]] suggests that de Gaulle's account is consistent with other evidence of Weygand's beliefs at the time and is therefore, allowing perhaps for a little literary embellishment, broadly plausible.{{sfn|Lacouture|1991|p=193}}

[[Fascist Italy (1922–1943)|Fascist Italy]] entered the war and [[Italian invasion of France|invaded France]] on 10 June. That day Weygand barged into the office of Prime Minister [[Paul Reynaud]] and demanded an armistice.{{sfn|Lacouture|1991|pp=195–6}} Weygand was present at the Anglo-French Conference at the Château du Muguet at [[Briare]] on 11 June, at which the option was discussed of continuing the French war effort from [[Brittany]] or [[French North Africa]]. The transcript shows Weygand to have been somewhat less defeatist than de Gaulle's memoirs would suggest.{{sfn|Lacouture|1991|p=197}} At the Cabinet meeting on the evening of 13 June, after another Anglo-French conference at Tours, Marshal Pétain, Deputy Prime Minister, strongly supported Weygand's demand for an armistice.{{sfn|Lacouture|1991|p=201}} On June 14 Weygand warned General [[Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke|Alan Brooke]], the new commander-in-chief of the British forces in France, that the French Army was collapsing and incapable of fighting further, leading him to evacuate the final [[British Expeditionary Force (World War II)|British Expeditionary Force]] contingents remaining on the [[Western Front (World War II)|Western Front]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Roberts |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/masterscommander0000robe_g9v1 |title=Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses Who Led the West to Victory in World War II |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-141-02926-9 |edition=1 |location=London |pages=38 |language=en |ref=None |via=Internet Archive }}</ref>

The French government moved to [[Bordeaux]] on 14 June. At Cabinet on 15 June Reynaud urged that they should follow the Dutch example, that the Army should lay down its arms so that the fight could be continued from abroad. Pétain was sympathetic,{{sfn|Atkin|1997|pp=82–6}} but he was sent to speak to Weygand (who was waiting outside, as he was not a member of the Cabinet).{{sfn|Williams|2005|pp=325–7}} After no more than fifteen minutes Weygand persuaded him that this would be a shameful surrender. [[Camille Chautemps]] then proposed a compromise proposal, that the Germans be approached about possible armistice terms.{{sfn|Atkin|1997|pp=82–6}} The Cabinet voted 13–6 for the Chautemps proposal.{{sfn|Williams|2005|pp=325–7}}

After Reynaud's resignation as Prime Minister on 16 June, [[President of France|President]] [[Albert Lebrun]] felt he had little choice but to appoint Pétain, who already had a ministerial team ready, as prime minister. Weygand joined the new government as Minister for Defence, and was briefly able to veto the appointment of [[Pierre Laval]] as minister of foreign affairs.

==== Vichy regime ====
[[File:BA144 Ain-Arnat-Sétif Prise d-armes viste Weugand 1940.jpg|thumb|BA144 [[Ain-Arnat]]-Sétif (French Algeria): Weygand inspection 1940]]

The [[Vichy France|Vichy regime]] was set up in July 1940. Weygand continued to serve in Pétain's cabinet as [[List of Defence Ministers of France|Minister for National Defence]] until September 1940. He was then appointed Delegate-General in French North Africa.

In North Africa, he persuaded young officers, tempted to join the [[French Resistance]] against the [[German military administration in occupied France during World War II|German occupation]], to go along with the armistice for the present, by letting them hope for a later resumption of combat. With the complicity of Admiral [[Jean-Marie Charles Abrial]], he deported opponents of Vichy to [[concentration camp]]s in Southern [[French Algeria|Algeria]] and [[French protectorate in Morocco|Morocco]]. Those imprisoned included [[Gaullism|Gaullists]], [[Freemasonry in France|Freemasons]], and [[History of the Jews in France|Jews]], and also [[French Communist Party|communists]], despite their obedience at the time to the [[Soviet Union]]'s orders not to support the resistance. He also arrested the foreign volunteers of the ''[[Légion Etrangère]]'', foreign refugees who were in France legally but were without employment, and others. He applied [[Vichy anti-Jewish legislation]] very harshly. With the complicity of the ''Recteur'' (University chancellor) [[:fr:Georges Hardy (historien)|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). This drove out most Jewish students from the colleges and the primary schools, including children aged 5 to 11. Weygand did this without any order from 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 [[Paris Protocols]] of 28 May 1941, signed by Admiral [[François Darlan]]. These agreements authorized the [[Axis powers]] to establish bases in French colonies: at [[Aleppo]], [[First Syrian Republic|Syria]]; [[Bizerte]], [[French protectorate of Tunisia|Tunisia]]; and [[Dakar]], [[History of Senegal|Senegal]]. The Protocols also envisaged extensive French military collaboration with Axis forces in the event of Allied attacks against such bases. Weygand remained outspoken in his criticism of Germany.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kitson |first=Simon |title=The hunt for nazi spies: fighting espionage in Vichy France |date=2008 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-43893-1 }}{{page needed |date=May 2024}}</ref>

Weygand opposed [[Wehrmacht]] bases in French territory not to help the Allies or even to keep France neutral, but rather to preserve the integrity of the [[French colonial empire|French Empire]] and maintain prestige in the eyes of the natives. Weygand apparently favoured limited [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|collaboration with Germany]]. The Weygand General Delegation (4th Office) delivered military equipment to the [[Panzer Armee Afrika]]: 1,200 French trucks and other [[Armistice Army]] vehicles (Dankworth contract of 1941), and also heavy artillery with 1,000 shells per gun. However, [[Adolf Hitler]] demanded full unconditional collaboration and pressured the [[Government of Vichy France|Vichy government]] to dismiss Weygand in November 1941 and recall him from North Africa. A year later, in November 1942, following the [[Operation Torch|Allied invasion of North Africa]], the Germans arrested Weygand. He remained in custody 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. He was liberated by [[United States Army]] troops after the [[Battle for Castle Itter]].