1914 On the outbreak of
World War I, Foch was in command of XX Corps, part of the
Second Army of General
de Castelnau. On 14 August the Corps advanced towards the
Sarrebourg–
Morhange line, taking heavy casualties in the
Battle of the Frontiers. The defeat of the 15th Army Corps (France) to its right forced Foch into retreat. Foch acquitted himself well, covering the withdrawal to
Nancy and the Charmes Gap before launching a counter-attack that prevented the Germans from crossing the
River Meurthe. Foch was then selected to command the newly formed
Ninth Army during the
First Battle of the Marne with
Maxime Weygand as his chief of staff. Only a week after taking command, with the whole French Army in full retreat, he was forced to fight a series of defensive actions to prevent a German breakthrough. During the advance at the marshes at St.-Gond he is said to have declared: "My centre is yielding. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking." These words were seen as a symbol both of Foch's leadership and of French determination to resist the invader at any cost, although there is little evidence that the signal was sent. Accordingly, on 4 October 1914, Foch was made the Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Zone under Joseph Joffre. Foch's
counterattack was an implementation of the theories he had developed during his staff college days and succeeded in stopping the German advance. Foch received further reinforcements from the
Fifth Army and, following another attack on his forces, counter-attacked again on the Marne. The Germans dug in before eventually retreating. On 12 September, Foch regained the Marne at
Châlons and liberated the city. The people of Châlons greeted as a hero the man widely believed to have been instrumental in stopping the
retreat and stabilising the Allied position. Receiving thanks from the
Bishop of Châlons (Joseph-Marie Tissier), Foch piously replied, "
non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam" ("Not unto us, o Lord, not unto us, but to Your name give glory", Psalm 115:1). As assistant Commander-in-Chief with responsibility for co-ordinating the activities of the northern French armies and liaising with the British forces; this was a key appointment as the
Race to the Sea was then in progress. General
Joseph Joffre,
Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the French Army, had also wanted to nominate Foch as his successor "in case of accident", to make sure the job would not be given to
Joseph Gallieni, but the French Government would not agree to this. When the Germans attacked on 13 October, they narrowly failed to break through the
British and French lines. They tried again at the end of the month during the
First Battle of Ypres, this time suffering terrible casualties. Foch had again succeeded in coordinating a defense and winning against the odds.
Field Marshal Sir John French, C-in-C of the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had described Foch in August 1914 to
J. E. B. Seely, a liaison officer, as "the sort of man with whom I know I can get on" and later in February 1915 described him to
Lord Selbourne as "the best general in the world". By contrast,
Lieutenant General William Robertson, another British officer, thought that Foch was "rather a flat-catcher, a mere professor, and very talkative" (28 September 1915). On 2 December 1914,
King George V appointed him an Honorary
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.
1915–16 In 1915, his responsibilities by now crystallised in command of the
Northern Army Group, he conducted the
Artois Offensive and, in 1916, the French effort at the
Battle of the Somme. He was strongly criticised for his tactics and the heavy casualties that were suffered by the
Allied armies during these battles, and in December 1916 was removed from command by Joffre and sent to command Allied units on the
Italian front; Joffre was himself sacked days later.
1917 Just a few months later, after the failure of General
Robert Nivelle's
offensive, General
Philippe Pétain, the hero of
Verdun, was appointed Chief of the General Staff; Foch hoped to succeed Pétain in command of
Army Group Centre, but this job was instead given to General
Fayolle. The following month Pétain was appointed C-in-C in place of Nivelle, and Foch was recalled and promoted to chief of the general staff. Like Pétain, Foch favoured only limited attacks (he had told Lieutenant General
Sir Henry Wilson, another British Army officer, that the planned
Flanders offensive was "futile, fantastic & dangerous") until the Americans, who had
joined the war in April 1917, were able to send large numbers of troops to France. Outside of the
Western Front, Foch opposed
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George's plans to send British and French troops to help Italy take
Trieste, but was open to the suggestion of sending heavy guns. The Anglo-French leadership agreed in early September to send 100 heavy guns to Italy, 50 of them from the French army on the left of Field Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig, C-in-C of the BEF, rather than the 300 which Lloyd George wanted. As the guns reached Italy,
Cadorna called off
his offensive (21 September). Until the end of 1916, the French under Joffre had been the dominant allied army; after 1917 this was no longer the case, due to the vast number of casualties France's armies had suffered in the now three and a half-year-old struggle with Germany. The
Supreme War Council was formally established on 7 November 1917, containing the Prime Minister and a Minister from each of the Western Front powers (i.e., excluding Russia), to meet at least once a month. Foch (along with Wilson and Italian general Cadorna) were appointed military representatives, to whom the general staffs of each country were to submit their plans. The French tried to have Foch as representative to increase their control over the Western Front (by contrast, Cadorna was disgraced after the recent
Battle of Caporetto) and Wilson, a personal friend of Foch, was deliberately appointed as a rival to General
Sir William Robertson, the British
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, an ally of Haig's, who had lost 250,000 men at the battle of Ypres the same year.
Clemenceau was eventually persuaded to appoint Foch's protégé
Weygand instead, although many already suspected that Foch would eventually become the Allied Generalissimo. Late in 1917 Foch would have liked to have seen Haig replaced as C-in-C of the BEF by
General Herbert Plumer; however, Haig would remain in command of the BEF for the remainder of the war.
1918 In January 1918, in accordance with Lloyd George's wishes, an executive board was set up to control the planned Allied General Reserve, with
Clemenceau's agreement being obtained by having Foch on the board rather than
Maxime Weygand. Pétain agreed to release only eight French divisions and made a bilateral agreement with Haig, who was reluctant to release any divisions at all, to assist one another. The situation was worsened by Clemenceau's and Pétain's dislike of Foch. At a Supreme War Council meeting in London (14–15 March), with a German offensive clearly imminent, Foch protested to no avail for the formation of the Allied Reserve. On the evening of 24 March, after the
German spring offensive was threatening to split apart the British and French forces, Foch telegraphed Wilson (who by now had replaced Robertson as Chief of the Imperial General Staff) "asking what [he] thought of situation & we are of one mind that someone must catch a hold or we shall be beaten". Wilson reached France the following lunchtime. Pétain had sent a dozen divisions to plug the gap and it is unclear that a committee would actually have acted any faster during the immediate crisis. At the
Doullens Conference (26 March) and at the
Beauvais Conference (3 April), Foch was given the job of coordinating the activities of the Allied armies, forming a common reserve and using these divisions to guard the junction of the French and British armies and to plug the potentially fatal gap that would have followed a German breakthrough in the
British Fifth Army sector. Two days later, while Foch was writing in his notebook, he allowed an interview to a group of war correspondents. At a later conference he was given the title Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies with the title of
Généralissime ("Supreme General"). In May 1918, in the fifth session of the Supreme War Council, Foch was given authority over the Italian Front. ,
Haig,
Pétain and other British and French officers with King
George V, 1918 Foch was surprised by the German offensive (
"Bluecher") on the
Chemin des Dames (27 May). Foch believed it was a diversion to draw Allied reserves away from Flanders. This was partly true, although the planned German Flanders Offensive (
"Hagen") never took place. The Allied armies under Foch's command ultimately held the advance of the German forces. The celebrated phrase, "I will fight in front of Paris, I will fight in Paris, I will fight behind Paris", attributed both to Foch and Clemenceau, illustrated the Généralissime's resolve to keep the Allied armies intact, even at the risk of losing the capital. The British general
Sir Henry Rawlinson, commanding the
British Fourth Army, commented after meeting Foch: "I am overjoyed at his methods and far-sighted strategy. I was in close touch with him in 1916. He is a better man now than he was then, for his fiery enthusiasm has been tempered by adversity." At a major Allied conference at Beauvais (7 June)
Lord Milner agreed with Clemenceau that Foch should have the power to order all Allied troops as he saw fit, over the protests of Haig who argued that it would reduce his power to safeguard the interests of the British Army. inspecting the
Gordon Highlanders, 1918 The British were disappointed that Foch operated through his own staff rather than through the Permanent Military Representatives at
Versailles, and on 11 July 1918 British ministers resolved to remind Foch that he was an Allied, and not a French, C-in-C. An unintended consequence of Foch's appointment was that he sheltered Haig from British political interference. and its entry into force, "at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month", about 11,000 additional men on both sides were needlessly wounded or killed due to Foch – far more than usual for a similar time period according to the military statistics. On the day of the armistice, 11 November 1918, he was elected to the
Académie des Sciences. Ten days later, he was unanimously elected to the
Académie française. He received many honours and decorations from Allied governments. == Assessments ==