Foch in Command: The Forging of a First World War General

Cambridge Military Histories

by Elizabeth Greenhalgh

Ferdinand Foch ended the First World War as Marshal of France and supreme commander of the Allied armies on the Western Front. Foch in Command is a pioneering study of his contribution to the Allied victory. Elizabeth Greenhalgh uses contemporary notebooks, letters and documents from previously under-studied archives to chart how the artillery officer, who had never commanded troops in battle when the war began, learned to fight the enemy, to cope with difficult colleagues and Allies, and to manoeuvre through the political minefield of civil-military relations. She offers valuable insights into neglected the contribution of unified command to the Allied victory; the role of a commander's general staff; and the mechanisms of command at corps and army level. She demonstrates how an energetic Foch developed war-winning strategies for a modern industrial war, and how political realities contributed to his losing the peace.

Genres: History, World War I, War, Military Fiction

568 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2011

About the author

Elizabeth Greenhalgh graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, and arrived in Australia in 1987. She worked as a research assistant in the Department, then School, of History, UNSW @ ADFA and, after completing her PhD, edited the international journal War & Society between 2005 and 2010. She then became a full-time researcher, being awarded a UNSW postdoctoral fellowship and then an Australian Research Coucil Fellowship (2010-2014).

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foch deserves a modern English language biography. The most important western front general is often overlooked outside of France as simply a coordination facilitator in a messy coalition and not a dynamic force of a rapidly modernizing army that began the war on the wrong foot but ended it-even after everything-at peak operational professionalism. While perhaps not quite the second Napoleon he is viewed as in France, Foch was in the end the general that decided the final outcome of the war more than any other from tactical innovation to constant embrace of new technologies and understandings of logistics. When Ludendorff's strategy of 'punch a hole and see what happens' came west Foch saw right through its limitations and likely directions right away.

This is a dense workhorse of an operation biography that contains very little pre or post war, but its the peak of a wartime specific biography.

[Shrike58 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read this work for some time now (something like seven years), but have held off because there was always something more bright and shiny to read. Having said that, the great value of this book is that illustrates how Foch evolved from being simply another French general with good political connections, into the man who could take the shattered and confused Entente force of 1918 and get it to focus down hard on the job at hand of staving off the great German offensives of 1918, and then driving that host of battle onto victory before the Entente's strategic logistics collapsed (probably the real reason the Armistice came when it did).

I'm not going to give a blow by blow of each successive operation, but if Foch is not a second Napoleon, what this rendition of the man reminds me of is a precursor of Eisenhower. This if for no other reason that both Foch and Eisenhower came to be deeply resented by the British generals of their respective times!

Rounding up from 4.5: For the right person this is probably essential reading, but not the general reader.

[Matt Caris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really tremendous look at Foch's rise and the education of a commander in wartime. Does a wonderful job of setting the common tropes about Foch and command in WWI into context or demolishing them completely. A really wonderful portrait of what command in war, especially Allied command, requires. Highly enjoyable, and completely revamped my impression of Foch.

[Mills College Library]

Biog F652g 2011