Maurice Gustave Gamelin

Gamelin, Maurice Gustave 

Born Sept. 20, 1872, in Paris; died there Apr. 18, 1958. French general.

Gamelin graduated from the military academy at St. Cyr in 1893 and from the staff college in 1899. During World War I he was commander of a brigade and a division. From 1925 to 1928 he was the commander of the French troops in Syria and deputy supreme commissioner. He suppressed the national liberation uprising of the Syrian people against the French colonialists (1925-27). Gamelin was chief of the general staff from 1931 to 1935 and from 1938 to 1939 and vice-president of the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre from 1935 to 1940. On the eve of World War II he supported the capitulatory policy of the French ruling circles with respect to fascist Germany. On Sept. 3, 1939, Gamelin was appointed commander in chief of the allied troops in France and was one of those responsible for the defeat of France. On May 19, 1940, he was replaced by General M. Weygand. He was arrested in September 1940 and sentenced in 1942 at the Riom trial as one of those responsible for the defeat. The trial was staged by H. Pétain’s government to justify its capitulation to fascist Germany. In 1943 the Hitlerites brought Gamelin to Germany, and he remained in a concentration camp until the end of the war.