Editing Maxime Weygand (section)

==== 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}}