Maxime Weygand

Born in Belgium in 1867 and raised in France, Weygand graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1887 and spent World War I as a staff officer to Ferdinand Foch, never leading troops himself. He advised Poland during the Polish-Soviet War, served as High Commissioner of the Levant, and became Chief of Staff of the French Army in 1931 before retiring in 1935. Recalled at seventy-three in May 1940 with no battlefield command experience, he took charge during the German invasion, watched the collapse, and urged armistice. He joined Pétain's Vichy government as Minister for Defence, then became Delegate-General in French North Africa, where he implemented German anti-Semitic measures with striking severity. His resistance to deeper collaboration led Hitler to demand his dismissal in November 1941; after the Allies landed in North Africa a year later, the Germans arrested him and held him in an Austrian castle until May 1945. Cleared of collaboration charges in 1948, he lived another seventeen years and died in Paris at ninety-eight.