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Born: October 4, 1851 Tarbes, France
Died: March 20, 1929 Paris, France
“Great results in war are due to the commander. He must . . . be a man, who being deeply imbued with a will to conquer, shall derive from that will . . . the strength to make an unwavering use of the most formidable right, to approach with courage all difficulties and all sacrifices, to risk everything.” —Marshal Ferdinand Foch, in Damien Fenton, “Unjustly Accused: Marshal Ferdinand Foch and the French ‘Cult of the Offensive.’”
Marshal Ferdinand Foch had a great influence on the French military during his lifetime. Head of the national military academy for three years, he led several French regiments in many of the critical battles of World War I. Near the end of the war he was made head of all the Allied armies, and his bold strategies and strong will helped ensure the victory over Germany in 1918. Though many have disagreed with his philosophy and his tactics, Foch is still viewed as the single person most responsible for the Allied victory in World War I.
Dreams of War
Ferdinand Foch was born in the town of Tarbes, at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains in southwestern France, on October 4, 1851. His family was solidly middle class and had lived in the region for generations before Ferdinand and his sister and two brothers were born. Ferdinand’s father, Bertrand Foch, was a lawyer and civil servant (a person employed by the government). Strict and demanding, he was not a harsh man, but one who loved his children and expected hard work and good behavior from them. Ferdinand’s mother, Sophie, was kindhearted, though like her husband, she believed in teaching discipline and religious devotion.
At a very early age, Ferdinand Foch began to long for the life of a soldier. His mother’s father had been a soldier in the army of Emperor Napoléon I (1769–1821), the flamboyant French military leader. Foch reveled in the war stories told by his great-aunt Jenny Nogues, who had been married to a soldier in Napoléon’s army. Foch listened for hours while his great aunt told stories of the battles and adventures of the dashing Napoléon, one of France’s great heroes. While he learned about the great battles, Foch also learned about Napoléon’s strong personality and great force of will, both of which made Napoléon a powerful leader. Napoléon embodied a characteristic that Foch would come to value highly. In French it is called élan, which means spirit and energy plus a little showmanship and flash. Foch would come to believe that élan was one of the most important qualities for achieving military victory.
Because his parents wanted him to have a solid religious foundation, Foch was educated by Roman Catholic monks, first at a seminary near Tarbes, then at St. Michel, a Jesuit college in the town of Saint-Étienne, where his father had gone to work. Foch was always an excellent student, winning prizes and impressing his teachers with his accomplishments. In 1869, he attended the Jesuit school of St. Clement in the town of Metz and began to come closer to his dream of being a soldier.
Metz is in northern France in a region called Alsace- Lorraine; control of this region had long been disputed by France and Germany. In the summer of 1870, when Foch was with his family between school terms, war broke out between the two countries. The school at St. Clement’s was temporarily closed, and nineteen-year-old Foch enlisted in the army. The Franco-Prussian War ended in January 1871, but Foch, though ready and eager to defend his country, had never been sent into battle.
He began to understand some of the pain of war, however, when he returned to school at St. Clement’s. As a result of the war, Metz now belonged to Germany, and Foch was angered and shamed to see German soldiers striding boldly through the streets of the town he considered to be French. The time he spent in Metz under German occupation left him with a lifelong dislike of Germans, and it renewed his desire to be the kind of military hero who could liberate France.
War College
In 1871, after graduating from St. Clement’s, Foch attended the École Polytechnique (Polytechnic School), a military school in Nancy, another formerly French city that had been occupied by Germany since the Franco-Prussian War. Graduating in 1874 with the rank of second lieutenant of artillery, Foch was finally where he had wanted to be all of his life—in the army. He served at various garrisons in France for the next ten years, then decided to continue his education by entering the École Supérieure de la Guerre (War College) in 1885.
In 1895, after serving in a variety of staff positions, including two appointments with the General Staff, Foch returned to the War College to teach strategy. He taught for many years, developing a philosophy of war that was exciting to students and fellow teachers alike. Foch favored an offensive approach to fighting. He still placed a lot of importance on élan and the will to win, but he also taught that flexibility was an important quality of a good military leader and that a commander needs to inspire confidence and a positive attitude in his men. Foch’s lectures were so respected that they were collected and published as The Principles of War in 1903 and The Conduct of War in 1904. By 1908, Foch had risen to the rank of general and was appointed head of the War College from 1908 to 1911.
A Military Hero
In 1913, Foch, already at retirement age, took command of the French Twentieth Army at Nancy. When World War I broke out, he did such a good job defending against a German attack there that he was given command of another force, the Ninth Army, which fought in the first battle of the Marne in early September 1914. In that battle and in later ones, such as the first battle of Ypres (October 19 to November 22, 1914) and the battle of the Somme (July 1 to November 13, 1916), Foch’s offensive tactics caused the loss of many French lives. His strategy of aggressive attacks did not work well against the Germans, who were heavily armed with the most modern weapons. Other generals began to blame Foch because the war was going badly for France. As a result, Foch’s command was taken from him, and he was removed from active service for several months while other generals, such as Robert Georges Nivelle (1856–1924) and Philippe Pétain (1856–1951), replaced him on the front.
In 1917, Foch was called back to active duty and made chief of the French general staff. He led his troops so successfully on the Italian Front that in March 1918 he was appointed supreme commander of the British, American, and French armies. Though he had some conflict with the American general John J. Pershing (1860–1948), Foch used skill and training to coordinate the Allied efforts, and he masterminded an Allied counterattack against Germany that brought about the end of the war. On November 11, 1918, Foch, who had been promoted to marshal of France on August 6, accepted the German surrender.
Foch was present when the Treaty of Versailles was negotiated to end the war, and he was appointed head of the military committee charged with enforcing the terms of the treaty. He felt that the treaty should have given Germany even harsher punishment to prevent the rise of German military power in the future. Frustrated that his advice was not taken, Foch predicted another European war with Germany at its center within twenty years. Perhaps fortunately, Foch did not live to see the truth of his prediction. At the age of seventy-seven, he died of a heart attack in Paris on March 20, 1929. He had continued to work for France almost until the day of his death.
