Maxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II, as well as a high ranking member of the Vichy regime.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, was a senior officer of the British Army. During the First World War he commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war. He was commander during the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, the Third Battle of Ypres, the German Spring Offensive, and the Hundred Days Offensive.
Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet, was one of the most senior British Army staff officers of the First World War and was briefly an Irish unionist politician.
Ferdinand Foch was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War. An aggressive, even reckless commander at the First Marne, Flanders and Artois campaigns of 1914–1916, Foch became the Allied Commander-in-Chief in late March 1918 in the face of the all-out German spring offensive, which pushed the Allies back using fresh soldiers and new tactics that trenches could not withstand. He successfully coordinated the French, British and American efforts into a coherent whole, deftly handling his strategic reserves. He stopped the German offensive and launched a war-winning counterattack. In November 1918, Marshal Foch accepted the German cessation of hostilities and was present at the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played a very important role in the formulation of British foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. From December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's War Cabinet.
Robert Georges Nivelle was a French artillery general officer who served in the Boxer Rebellion and the First World War. In May 1916, he succeeded Philippe Pétain as commander of the French Second Army in the Battle of Verdun, leading counter-offensives that rolled back the German forces in late 1916. During these actions he and General Charles Mangin were accused of wasting French lives. He gives his name to the Nivelle Offensive.
Violet Georgina Milner, Viscountess Milner was an English socialite of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and, later, editor of the political monthly National Review. Her father was close friends with Georges Clemenceau, she married the son of Prime Minister Salisbury, Lord Edward Cecil, and after his death, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner.
Lieutenant General James Guthrie Harbord was a senior officer of the United States Army and president and chairman of the board of RCA. During World War I, he served from mid-1917 to mid-1918 as chief of staff of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), commanded by General John J. Pershing, before commanding a brigade and briefly a division and then the Services of Supply of the AEF. In the former role he was, in the words of former soldier-turned historian David T. Zabecki,
The U.S. Army's first modern operational-level chief of staff in a combat theater, and he would be the model for all others who followed. He played a key role in developing the staff structure and organization used throughout the U.S. military to this day, as well as by most NATO countries. He was one of the most influential U.S. Army officers of the early 20th century.
The Supreme War Council was a central command based in Versailles that coordinated the military strategy of the principal Allies of World War I: Britain, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan. It was founded in 1917 after the Russian Revolution and with Russia's withdrawal as an ally imminent. The council served as a second source of advice for civilian leadership, a forum for preliminary discussions of potential armistice terms, later for peace treaty settlement conditions, and it was succeeded by the Conference of Ambassadors in 1920.
The Allied leaders of World War I were the political and military figures that fought for or supported the Allied Powers during World War I.
This article is about the role of Douglas Haig in 1918. In 1918, during the final year of the First World War, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig was Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front. Haig commanded the BEF in the defeat of the German Army's Spring Offensives, the Allied victory at Amiens in August, and the Hundred Days Offensive, which led to the war-ending armistice in November 1918.
The Calais Conference was a 26 February 1917 meeting of politicians and generals from France and the United Kingdom. Ostensibly about railway logistics for the upcoming allied Spring offensive the majority of the conference was given over to a plan to bring British forces under overall French command. The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was supportive of the proposal and arranged for the British war cabinet to approve it in advance of the conference, without the knowledge of senior British generals Douglas Haig and Sir William Robertson. The latter were surprised when the proposal was presented by French General Robert Nivelle at the conference. The next day the two generals met with Lloyd George and threatened their resignations rather than implement the proposal. This led to the significant watering-down of the plan with greater freedom given to British commanders. The conference caused mistrust between the British civil and military chiefs and set back the cause of a unified allied command until Spring 1918, when the successful German spring offensive rendered it essential.
The equestrian statue of Ferdinand Foch stands in Lower Grosvenor Gardens, London. The sculptor was Georges Malissard and the statue is a replica of another raised in Cassel, France. Foch, appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces on the Western Front in the Spring of 1918, was widely seen as the architect of Germany's ultimate defeat and surrender in November 1918. Among many other honours, he was made an honorary Field marshal in the British Army, the only French military commander to receive such a distinction. Following Foch's death in March 1929, a campaign was launched to erect a statue in London in his memory. The Foch Memorial Committee chose Malissard as the sculptor, who produced a replica of his 1928 statue of Foch at Cassel. The statue was unveiled by the Prince of Wales on 5 June 1930. Designated a Grade II listed structure in 1958, the statue's status was raised to Grade II* in 2016.
The Dury, Compiègne and Abbeville meetings were held by the Allies during World War I to address Operation Michael, a massive German assault on the Western Front on 21 March 1918 which marked the beginning of the Kaiser's Spring Offensive. Since the fall of 1917, a stalemate had existed on the Western Front. However, German victory against Russia in 1917, due to the Russian Revolution and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, freed up German armies on the Eastern Front for use in the west. During the winter of 1917-1918, approximately 50 German divisions in Russia were secretly transported by train to France for use in a massive, final attack to end the war. The battle that followed, Operation Michael, totally surprised the Allies and nearly routed the French and English armies from the field. The meetings below were held under these dire circumstances.
The War Policy Committee was a small group of British ministers, most of them members of the War Cabinet, set up during World War I to decide war strategy. The committee was created at the request of Lord Milner on June 7, 1917, through a memorandum he circulated with his peers on the British War Cabinet. Its members included the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, Lord Milner, Edward Carson, Lord Curzon and Jan Smuts. The committee was formed to discuss the strategic matter of the Russian Revolution, and the new entry of The United States. Coincidentally or not, the timing of Lord Milner's memo coincided with the detonation of 19 underground mines filled with explosives on the Western Front, which created the largest human explosion of all time. The night before this explosion, General Harington said to reporters "Gentleman, I don't know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change the geography". In Milner's memo, he stressed that the allies must act together for the common good, and not devolve to piecemeal arrangements that satisfied specific countries. The War Policy Committee was formed, and it discussed every major initiative taken by the allies until the end of the war. It was chaired by Lord's Milner and Curzon, with Jan Smuts as its Vice Chairman.
The Monday Night Cabal was a 'ginger group' of influential people set up in London by Leo Amery at the start of 1916 to discuss war policy. The nucleus of the group consisted of Lord Milner, George Carson, Geoffrey Dawson, Waldorf Astor and F. S. Oliver. The group got together for Monday night dinners and to discuss politics. Throughout 1916 their numbers and influence grew to include Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George, General Henry Wilson, Philip Kerr, and Mark Jameson. It is thought that word of the Ginger Group reached Douglas Haig, prompting him to invite Lord Milner to France in November for an 8-day tour of the Western Front. It was through the Ginger Group that Times editor Geoffrey Dawson published a December 4, 1916 news story titled "Reconstruction" that set in motion events that caused Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to resign, signaling the rise of the Lloyd George Ministry. Among the group's primary objectives was the formation of a small war cabinet within government to fight the war against the German Empire effectively. This point was advanced by The Times as early as April 1915, so it is unknown if the Ginger Group, or one its predecessor elements was responsible for the idea behind Lloyd George's decision to create a War Cabinet on the day he was appointed Prime Minister. However, his surprise choice of Lord Milner as one of the War Cabinet's five members shows the influence of the ginger group on him.
The onset of the 20th Century saw England as the world's foremost naval and colonial power, supported by a 100,000-man army designed to fight small wars in its outlying colonies. Since the Napoleonic Wars nearly a century earlier, Britain and Europe enjoyed relative peace and tranquility. The onset of World War I caught the British Empire by surprise. As it increased the size of its army through conscription, one of its first tasks was to impose a complete naval blockade against Germany. It was not popular in the United States. However, it was very important to England.
The Beauvais Conference of World War I was held at the request of French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to solidify command of the Western Front and to ensure the maximum participation of France's allies in the war. The conference was held on April 3, 1918, at Beauvais Town Hall, France, one week after the Doullens Conference that appointed General Ferdinand Foch as Commander of the Western Front. Clemenceau thought the wording of the Doullens Agreement was too weak, and that a correction was needed to solidify Foch's command. The urgency of the meeting was underpinned by Germany's Spring Offensive on the Western Front, which opened a gap 50 miles wide and 50 miles deep in the line, forcing the British Expeditionary Force to reel back, and retreat orders from both French and British army commanders to protect their armies.
The Rue Nitot meeting was an important First World War event, when the British Empire delegates at the Peace Conference in Versailles got together to register the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and tried to soften the conditions for peace with Germany. The meeting was held at Prime Minister David Lloyd George's flat, 23 Rue Nitot, in Paris, on June 1, 1919.
