biography
| name: |
Gamelin, Maurice Gustave
|
pronunciation:
[gamlĩ]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1872–1958)
|
| biography:
| French soldier, born in Paris, France. Trained at the Military Academy of St Cyr, he attained lieutenant-colonel's rank in 1914, but no divisional command until 1925. In 1935 seniority brought him the post of chief-of-staff of the army and president of the Supreme War Council, but his unfitness for overall command was exposed in his pronouncement that ‘to attack is to lose’. In 1940, blind to the lessons of the 1939 Polish campaign, he refused to rethink his outmoded defensive strategy of ‘solid fronts’, which crumbled under the German Blitzkrieg. He was hurriedly replaced by General Weygand, tried, and imprisoned (1943–5). |
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