The Second Battle of the Marne

Conclusion: Honoring Foch

Conclusion: Honoring Foch Men on both sides of the lines immediately knew how important the Second Battle of the Marne had been. On August 6, Foch received a handwritten letter from Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau addressed to “my dear general and dear friend.” Clemenceau, an anti-clerical politician who distrusted generals, and Foch, a devoutly Catholic general who loathed politicians, had a long and tortured relationship. The two had first met in 1907, shortly after Foch had been told that he would not become commander of the prestigious École Supérieur de Guerre (ESG) in Paris because of rumors that he had awarded higher grades to Catholic students during his years as a professor there. On the advice of a friend, Foch went personally to talk to Clemenceau, then serving his first term as French prime minister. During the meeting, Clemenceau repeated the allegations, adding a new one from a personnel file that charged that Foch had anti-republican political tendencies. Foch defended himself, but seemingly to no avail. After the meeting, Foch sent Clemenceau copies of books he had written, based on the lectures he had given when he was a professor at the ESG. The books advocated aggressive offensive action and preached the moral superiority of French soldiers to Germans. Clemenceau was impressed enough with the books to recall Foch to his office and give him the job of commandant of the ESG. conclusion 183 Since that meeting Foch and Clemenceau had both come a long way. They had both learned how to fight a modern, industrial, total war whose meanings and solutions defied easy pontifications such as the ones in Foch’s books. Together these two very different men had formed the civilian-military team that had seen France to its recent triumphs. Clemenceau had supported Foch’s appointment to command of the Allied armies in March when things looked bleak, telling a group “at least [with Foch in charge] we’ll die with a rifle in our hands.”1 Since then, the war had seen ups and downs, but Clemenceau and Foch had done much more than just go down fighting; they had changed the momentum of the war and placed victory within France’s grasp. The relationship between the two men was not always friendly, and after the war it degraded to intense hostility and bitter diatribe. But as long as the war went on, each man knew that he needed the other. Clemenceau’s letter informed Foch that he was to be awarded the rank of marshal of France, the highest military honor France could give. The French Third Republic had actually banned the rank, out of fear of generals acquiring too much power and prestige, but the war’s need for heroes had forced a reconsideration. The government had revived the rank in 1916 as a way to cushion the blow of forcing General Joseph Joffre to give up his command of the French army. Thus the French government could sell Joffre’s forced retirement to the French people and the Allies as a promotion and a richly deserved honor for the man who had saved France in 1914. The government could then send Joffre on a triumphant speaking tour of the United States as a decorated hero rather than a humiliated failure. Unlike Joffre’s promotion, given to cover a defeat, Foch’s was awarded for his tremendous victory on the Marne. Clemenceau’s letter spelled out the connection directly, if somewhat verbosely: At the hour when the enemy, by virtue of a powerful offensive on a front of 100 kilometers, counted on forcing a decision and imposing on us a German peace that would mean the servitude of the world, General Foch and his soldiers vanquished him. Paris freed, Soissons and Château-Thierry reconquered after fierce struggle , more than 200 villages delivered from the enemy, 35,000 enemy prisoners and 700 guns captured . . . , the glorious armies of the Allies, buoyed by a single élan, victorious from the banks of the Marne to the banks of the Aisne, such are the results of a maneuver so well conceived by the high command and so superbly executed by the incomparable commanders. 184 The Second Battle of the Marne The honor would have been inconceivable a month earlier, when German forces were still advancing and doubts about Foch’s abilities pervaded French government circles. Now, with the Second Battle of the...