The First World War and the name Ferdinand Foch are closely bound to each other, and
from his actions, Foch would receive not only the highest French military honors, but also
those of England and Poland. However, much as the other commanders during the war, Foch
made military miscalculations, resulting in thousands of needlessly dead soldiers on the
battlefields of the Western Front. It’s indisputable, though, that he played a large
part in the actions of 1918, especially at the ending of the war.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to another special episode of Who did What in World War One.
Born October 2, 1851 in Tarbes, in the South of France, Ferdinand Foch was the son of a
state official. He decided early on in life that his was to be a military career and he
trained as an artillery officer from 1871 to 1873 at the École Polytechnique in Paris
and served as a lieutenant in the 24th artillery regiment.
He was known as an outstanding talent and was soon accepted by the French Military Academy
where he not only took his doctorate, but remained at the Academy first as a professor
and finally, as commander of the Academy in 1907.
Actually, many of his lectures have been published, among them two of his most important works,
“Les principles de la guerre” (the principles of war) in 1903 and “La conduite de la guerre”
(the conduct of war) in 1904. He remained at the academy until 1911.
When the war got going in August 1914, Foch was General of the 2nd French Army at the
Southern French line of defenses where he managed to stop the German advance at Nancy
in August. He followed that up with another crucial success at the Battle of the Marne
when the German advance on Paris was halted.
Thanks in large part to his success at the Marne, he was appointed Commander-in-chief
of the Northern troops on the Western Front in October. He would remain at this post until
December 1916.
However, his reputation suffered- first with the defeat at Artois in 1915 and then at the
First Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest battle of the war and a military disaster.
After, that, Foch became something of a scapegoat for all the other failures or miscalculations
on the Western Front, whether he had anything to do with them or not, and he was reposted
to the Italian Front in December 1916.
Several months later, though, he was allowed to return to the West, and on May 15th, 1917
was appointed Chief of Staff of the French army and became a member of the Supreme War
Council. A year later, Foch became Commander-in-Chief of the allied troops in France and Belgium.
On July 18th, 1918, Foch led a decisive attack against the German Army in Villiers-Cottrets,
which heralded the end of the four year stalemate. Not long after the battle, the German High
Command would realize that they had lost the war and must negotiate a peace.
On November 11th, 1918 Foch, as Supreme Commander, accepted the German surrender aboard a train
car in Compiégne. The same car in which 22 years later the French Army would sign its
own surrender to Hitler’s forces. Foch played a large part in the negotiations for the Treaty
of Versailles and was part of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He was unable, as he wished,
to for enforce the relocation of the French military border to the Rhine River.
After the war, the new Polish government gave Foch the honorary title of Marshal and he
was made Field Marshal by the British. He became a counselor for the French government
and was also a member of the prestigious academic society the Académie Francaise. As a popular
war hero streets, schools, memorials, barracks, an aircraft carrier, an alsatian variety of
grape, and even an island were named after Ferdinand Foch.
War had always been central to Foch’s life, though neither he nor anyone else really foresaw
the size, scope, and horrors of World War One. Even though it was Foch who gained much
of the French glory in 1918, and in spite of his talent, there’s no denying that he
made mistakes, such as at the Somme, and these mistakes were disasters that caused tens of
thousands of casualties, but he was certainly aware of the larger picture, and with depressing
foreshadowing realized at Versailles that the end of the war wasn’t really the end.
Here’s a quote from Foch from Versailles, “This is no peace. This is a truce for 20
years.” He was very much right.
Marshall Ferdinand Foch died March 20th, 1929 in Paris. His bones are buried with honor
at the Dome des Invalides in Paris.
If you’d like to see another world war one bio, click here for the Red Baron, and if
you’d like to see more about the First Battle of the Marne, click here to see those episodes.
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