French general (1852–1931)
The French general who stopped the German advance in 1914 when it looked unstoppable, then watched his authority crumble under the weight of Verdun and the Somme.
Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre commanded French forces on the Western Front from August 1914, inheriting a war that immediately went wrong. As allied armies retreated that September, he regrouped them and won the First Battle of the Marne—the fight that kept Germany from taking Paris and turned the war into the long stalemate it became. His offensives in 1915 gained little ground. When the Germans attacked Verdun in 1916 and the Anglo-French push on the Somme disappointed, his political capital drained away. In December 1916 he was promoted to Marshal of France, the first under the Third Republ…
Sourced, dated quotes from Joseph Joffre
Soldiers of Verdun! It is your valour which has made this possible, for your heroic resistance was the indispensable condition to our success.
I don't know who won the Battle of the Marne. But if it had been lost, I know who would have lost it.
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