Who Was Ferdinand Foch? The Man Who Predicted World War Two

The name of Ferdinand Foch (centre right and standing up in the picture above) is often regarded a contentious one. Like many of the commanders on the Western front, he is often scapegoated for the deaths of tens of thousands of men, his mistakes proving incredibly costly.

However his contribution to the allied war effort in World War One was integral in ensuring allied victory. A determined and incredibly skilled man, Foch would later be proclaimed by writer and former soldier Michael Carver as “the most original military thinker of his generation”.

This article will explore the early life of this military virtuoso, as well as his exhaustive range of military exploits.

On 7th May 1915, the ocean liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland with more than half the passengers and crew being killed. Some of those lost were Americans and the sinking hardened opinion in the United States against Germany and marked the beginning of the process which led to the USA entering the First World War on the side of the allies. To mark the anniversary of the sinking Stephen Payne joins the podcast. Stephen is a British naval architect and worked on designing passenger ships for over 40 years and is an expert both in their construction and their history. He and Dan discuss the circumstances of the sinking, whether there was any justification for it and the effect it had on public opinion and naval policy.

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Before the War

Ferdinand Foch was born 2 October 1851 in Tarbes near the French-Spanish border. He took an interest in the military from an early age and enlisted as an infantryman in the Franco-Prussian War. After the war Foch trained as an officer from 1871-3. He received his commission in 1873 and became a lieutenant in the artillery.

Conspicuously able from the outset he rose through the ranks relatively quickly. This was in spite of the fact that his brother was a Jesuit priest, which may well have hindered Foch’s progression as the Republican government of France was fiercely anti-clerical.

Regimental commander Colonel Foch in his uniform of the 35th Artillery Regiment in 1903.

Foch taught at the military academy in Paris and published influential works on military theory; he was renowned for his advocacy of offensive strategies – strategies viewed with scepticism in France at the time. In 1907 he was made commandant of the École Militaire and, later, of the Staff College.

A physically short man, Foch remained a strong and highly intelligent figure. He was known for his unwavering work rate: historian Denis Winter recounts that, “other than always taking his meals at noon and 7:30pm, he would often work irregular hours from dawn until well into the night.”

The Great War

Learn who is considered the true father of the RAF, why a flag must be evacuated in the event of a fire and why there are two portraits of World War One German flying aces in the college library.

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Foch was General of the French 2nd Army at the outbreak of war and garnered praise for his victories at Nancy and the First Battle of the Marne. In light of his early successes he was commander-in-chief of the Northern Army Group; but after defeats at Artois and the First Battle of the Somme he was transferred to Italy.

Subsequently. Foch was recalled to the Western Front and by 15 May 1917 his reputation had recovered sufficiently that he was made Chief of Staff – a member of France’s supreme war council. He continued to impress and was eventually made commander-in-chief of the allies in Belgium and France.

Being made the Supreme Allied Commander in the spring of 1918, Foch was immediately faced with the renewed German spring offensive (‘Kaiserschlacht’). He won a decisive victory at Villers-Cotterêts on 18 July 1918 which pushed the German High Command toward the realisation that they could not win the war.

The historian Larry Addington heaps praise onto Foch’s strategy, going as far as to state,

“to a large extent the final Allied strategy which won the war on land in Western Europe in 1918 was Foch’s alone.”

Foch (second from the right) was present at the German surrender in the infamous train carriage in the forest of Compiègne. The French would surrender to Nazi Germany in the same train carriage just over twenty years later.

After the War

On 11 November Foch accepted the German surrender. He later appeared as a negotiator at the Versailles where he called unsuccessfully for a new French-German border following the course of the Rhine.

He himself was not at all happy with the outcome of the Versailles treaty, prophetically saying, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years”. World War Two started 20 years and 65 days later.

When World War I broke out in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the United States would remain neutral. The U.S.A. only officially entered the conflict three years later. It took the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 to bring America into the Second World War. But why was America reluctant to enter both wars earlier? How did its involvement change the course of both wars? Rob Weinberg asks the big questions to Dr. Mitch Goodrum at Canterbury Christ Church University.

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In recognition of his efforts he was made an honorary marshal of the Polish army and field-marshal of the British army. He went on to receive many further accolades and had numerous places and objects named for him.

Foch died on 20 March 1929 at the age of 77 and was buried with full military honours at Les Invalides alongside other notable French military figures including Napoleon.