ABSTRACT
Clemenceau reached the pinnacle of French political power at the crisis of the war, in 1917, when most of the French army had mutinied, Russia had left the war, and large German reinforcements were heading west. When the Germans struck, in 1918, the Allied line nearly buckled, and Clemenceau pushed the Allies to appoint Foch to supreme command of all the armies. He did this despite his personal distaste of Foch, believing that he was the one military man with the vision, competence, and drive to win the war. As the war concluded, Clemenceau pushed Foch aside, in the belief that it was time for generals to move aside to make room for the politicians who would decide postwar policy. He did so, however, in ways that left Foch feeling slighted and embittered. The rupture between the two men never healed, leading to a flurry of postwar memoir writing where both men expended vast quantities of ink insulting the other. Michael Neiberg's essay does an outstanding job of unraveling a complex narrative and separating fact from fiction.
