Marshal Foch Quotes

When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.

Victory is a thing of the will.

They stand as living proof of Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s words “The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

The time of Kafka's novel is the time of a humanity that has lost its continuity with humanity, of a human­ity that no longer knows anything and no longer remembers anything and lives in cities without names where the streets are without names or with names dif­ferent from those they had yesterday, because a name is continuity with the past and people without a past are people without a name. ... The street Tamina was born on was called Schwerinova Street. That was during the war, when Prague was occupied by the Germans. Her father was born on Cernokostelecka Avenue. That was under Austria-Hungary. When her mother married her father and moved in there, it was Marshal Foch Avenue. That was after the 1914-1918 war. Tamina spent her child­hood on Stalin Avenue, and it was on Vinohrady Avenue that her husband picked her up to take her to her new home. And yet it was always the same street, they just kept changing its name, brainwashing it into a half-wit.

Foch never for a moment thought about the easy ways of bringing his name before the public and the political world, or even about acquiring a reputation for military insight among the chiefs of the French army. He never posed as a central figure at public functions; he was never interviewed by the press; he made no use of the professional reviews to bring his name before military readers. Ile never published a line until his chiefs suggested the publication of his lectures at the Staff College. From the day when he received his first commission he was a hard-working student of war, patiently preparing himself to do his duty when the opportunity came, and meanwhile content to put all his energies into the work assigned to him. Success in the career of arms is not always associated with high personal character or with this modest pursuit of duty for its own sake.

The indestructible might “of all the German tribes” would rise once more and the unquenched fires of warrior Prussia glow and burn again. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift-flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French Army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. Very different were the sentiments and views of the English-speaking world, without whose aid France must have succumbed. The territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles left Germany practically intact. She still remained the largest homogeneous racial block in Europe. When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.

France had been bled white by the war. The generation that had dreamed since 1870 of a war of revenge had triumphed, but at a deadly cost in national life-strength. It was a haggard France that greeted the dawn of victory. Deep fear of Germany pervaded the French nation on the morrow of their dazzling success. It was this fear that had prompted Marshal Foch to demand the Rhine frontier for the safety of France against her far larger neighbour. But the British and American statesmen held that the absorption of German-populated districts in French territory was contrary to the Fourteen Points and to the principles of nationalism and self-determination upon which the Peace Treaty was to be based.

new and more terrible cause of quarrel than the imperialism of czars and kaisers became apparent in Europe. The Civil War in Russia ended in the absolute victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet armies which advanced to subjugate Poland were indeed repulsed in the Battle of Warsaw, but Germany and Italy nearly succumbed to Communist propaganda and designs. Hungary actually fell for a while under the control of the Communist dictator, Bela Kun. Although Marshal Foch wisely observed that “Bolshevism had never crossed the frontiers of victory,” the foundations of European civilisation trembled in the early post-war years. Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of Communism. While Corporal Hitler was making himself useful to the German officer class in Munich by arousing soldiers and workers to fierce hatred of Jews and Communists, on whom he laid the blame of Germany’s defeat, another adventurer, Benito Mussolini, provided Italy with a new theme of government which, while it claimed to save the Italian people from Communism, raised himself to dictatorial power. As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into even more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their destruction.

It was the Franco procedure all over again, and among the conspirators were Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, and General Weygand, who had been Foch’s chief of staff; also Chiappe, the Corsican head of the Paris police, and Doriot, former Communist leader said to have sold out his party and bought himself an estate in Belgium with money got from the Nazis. CSAR was the name of this group

It was the Franco procedure all over again, and among the conspirators were Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, and General Weygand, who had been Foch’s chief of staff; also Chiappe, the Corsican head of the Paris police, and Doriot, former Communist leader said to have sold out his party and bought himself an estate in Belgium with money got from the Nazis. CSAR was the name of this group—Comité pour Secret Action Révolutiormaire—

Before them stood a small, erect man who fixed them with a withering gaze, Marshal Ferdinand Foch. After cool introductions, Foch opened the proceedings with a question that left the Germans agape. “Ask these gentlemen what they want,” he said to his interpreter. When the Germans had recovered, Erzberger answered that they understood they had been sent to discuss armistice terms. Foch stunned them again: “Tell these gentlemen that I have no proposals to make.

Had Marshal Foch accepted Matthias Erzberger’s plea to stop the fighting on November 8 while negotiations were under way, likely, 6,750 lives would have been spared and nearly 15,000 maimed, crippled, burned, blinded, and otherwise injured men would instead have gone home whole. All this sacrifice was made over scraps of land that the Germans, under the armistice, were compelled to surrender within two weeks.

Credibility precedes great communication. There are two ways to convey credibility to your audience. First, believe in what you say. Ordinary people become extraordinary communicators when they are fired up with conviction. Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch observed, “The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” Second, live what you say. There is no greater credibility than conviction in action.