Word: germanic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Marching into position on Sept. 5, French Moroccan troops accidentally collided with Kluck's cavalry and reserves. Kluck sent corps after corps to reinforce them, opened a hole between the First and Second German armies through which British and French troops, advancing on schedule, poured the next day. The Second German Army retreated north and east, separated further from Kluck's men, who were now being attacked from the rear. Three days later, faced with disaster, the whole German front withdrew, retreated 60 miles in five days, abandoned the attack on Paris, lost the chance of a lightning...
...then commander of the 6th Infantry Division in Paris. In 1912, when Joffre was promoted to the Supreme War Council, Gamelin was chosen as Joffre's chef de cabinet, or military secretary. During this time the French General Staff was discussing (but only discussing) the possibility of a German violation of Belgian neutrality to attack France. Gamelin made a study of it and wrote out a defense of such an attack. That was the germ of Joffre's Instruction...
...morning of March 21, 1918, a heavy German bombardment opened a vast offensive designed to break between the French and British armies where they joined in the devastated regions of the Somme. Gas soon shrouded the British batteries and their fire ceased. A little before 9 a. m. masses of German troops released from the Eastern Front poured through the fog toward General Cough's British-battalion after battalion, column after column, complete with field bakeries, ammunition trains, medical units, until more than 1,000,000 men were in motion, and advancing columns stretched back 45 miles behind...
Fighting defensively on a six-to-twelve-mile front, Gamelin's 9th fell back slowly, until on March 26, when the German advance had traveled 28 miles, it was almost isolated as units on both flanks gave way. Gamelin was faced with two possible movements: he could withdraw at once and take heavy losses, or counterattack on his flanks and, risking annihilation, take the chance of pulling his people out in comparative safety that night. He prepared to attack, moved his headquarters to the front, casually invited some British generals in to dinner-it was just before the emergency...
Brazil to Syria to Home. In 1919 General Gamelin headed the French military mission to Brazil, a job requiring the greatest tact since the old German pre-War influence in the Brazilian Army was still strong. In 1925 he was recalled and soon sent to Syria to help put down the Druse revolt, a suppression which he later succeeded in accomplishing alone with considerable bloodshed on the part of the Druses. He was on hand when French planes and artillery wiped out 1,456 civilians in the native quarters of Damascus, thus proving that Maurice Gamelin had no particular interest...