Maxime Weygand ( 21 January 1867 – 28 January 1965 ; ) was a French military commander in World War I and World War II.

Upon reaching adulthood, Weygand was legally acknowledged as a son by Francois-Joseph Weygand, an accountant in the employ of M. Cohen de Léon, thereby granting him French citizenship.

Clemenceau wanted to have Foch ( French Army Chief of Staff ) as French Military Representative on the Supreme War Council ( formally established 7 November 1917 ), to increase French control over the Western Front, but was persuaded to appoint Weygand as a more independent general instead.

Weygand was promoted Général de Division ( equivalent to the Anglophone rank of Major General ) in 1918.

In 1918 Weygand served on the armistice negotiations, and it was Weygand who read out the armistice conditions to the Germans at Compiègne, in the twice infamous railway carriage.

Weygand was briefly sent to Poland as member of Interallied Mission to Poland during July and August 1920.

Subsequently, for many years, the myth that the timely arrival of Allied forces saved Poland was begun, a myth in which Weygand occupies the central role.

He was the first uncomprehending victim, as well as the chief beneficiary, of a legend already in circulation that he, Weygand, was the victor of Warsaw.

Weygand was unemployed for a time after the military mission to Poland, but in 1923 he was made commander-in-chief Levant, the French mandate in Lebanon and Syria.

Weygand then oversaw the creation of the Weygand line, an early application of the Hedgehog tactic ; however, by this point the situation was untenable, with most of the Allied forces trapped in Belgium.

In June, Weygand was appointed by Pétain to the Bordeaux-Vichy cabinet as Minister for National Defence for three months ( June to September 1940 ), and then Delegate-General to the North African colonies.

Weygand was apparently favorable to collaboration with Germany, but with discretion.

One year later, in November 1942, following the Allied invasion of North Africa, Weygand was arrested.

In December 1924, French General Maxime Weygand announced the secession of the State of Alawites, which was proclaimed independent in 1925.

Wilson's funeral was a public affair attended by Lloyd George and the cabinet, Foch, Nivelle and Weygand from France as well as many of his former army colleagues including French, Macready, Haig and Robertson.

As far as General Maxime Weygand was concerned, " if the Germans crossed the Seine and the Marne, it was the end.

Weygand had avoided using the word armistice, but it was on the minds of all those involved.

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.

Paoli further claimed that Weygand had been born in mid-1865, not January 1867 as is generally claimed.

* May 19 – General Maxime Weygand replaces Maurice Gamelin as commander-in-chief of all French forces.

Weygand initially fought against the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, but then surrendered to and collaborated with the Germans as part of the Vichy France regime.

Weygand on TIME magazine in 1933.

Regardless, throughout his life Weygand maintained he did not know his true parentage.

After changing his name to Weygand and receiving French nationality, he became an instructor at Saumur.

Once promoted to Captain, Weygand chose not to attempt the difficult preparation to the Advanced War College (' Haute Ecole de Guerre ') because of his desire, he said, to keep contact with the troops.

Weygand passed the war of 1914-18 as a Staff Officer.

However, Clemenceau only agreed to set up an Allied General Reserve if Foch rather than Weygand were earmarked to command it.

Weygand travelled to Warsaw in the expectation of assuming command of the Polish army, yet he met with a very disappointing reception.

" Weygand had no divisions to offer.

Heidenstam was born in 1859, of a prosperous family.

Sherlock Holmes, the ancestor of all private eyes, was born during the 1890s.

Henrietta was discovering in the process of writing, as the born writer does, not merely a channel for the discharge of accumulated information but a stimulus to the development of the creative powers of observation, insight and intuition.

She was born Lilian Steichen, her parents immigrants from Luxemburg.

`` My mother read a book right after I was born and there was a Lilian in the book she loved and I became Lilian -- and eventually I became Paula ''.

By now she was sure she was going to have a baby, deciding it would be born in India or Burma that November.

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On April 10, 1904, his first child was born, a son named George after the late Senator.

Modern warfare was born in this campaign -- periscopes, camouflage, booby traps, land mines, extended order, trench raids, foxholes, armored cars, night attacks, flares, sharpshooters in trees, interlaced vines and treetops, which were the forerunners of barbed wire, trip wires to thwart a cavalry charge, which presaged the mine trap, and the general use of anesthetics.

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Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and saved only by the blood which he shed, and the death which he suffered after his incarnation??

Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ on the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obediences, in the time of his life here, after he was born of the Virgin Mary??

In the judgment of Chief of Staff Scott it was ironic that the draft policy of a Democratic President, aimed at Germany, had to be pushed through the House of Representatives by the ranking minority member of the Military Affairs Committee -- a Republican Jew born in Germany!!

Thus, the Church was born and because of its intrinsic character was soon identified as a conservative institution, determined to resist the forces of change, to identify itself with the political rulers, and to maintain a kind of splendid isolation from the masses.

And she replied, `` I was born in America, but I was conceived in Vienna ''.

I was born angry.

He kept his attacks on Republicanism for partisan campaigns, but that is part of the game he was born to play.