{{short description|French military officer}} {{more citations needed|date=August 2020}} {{Infobox military person |name=Gaston-Henri Billotte |image=File:Gaston-Henri Billotte.png |image_size =250px |caption= |birth_name=Gaston-Henri Billotte |birth_date={{Birth date|1875|2|10|df=y}} |death_date= {{Death date and age|df=yes|1940|5|23|1875|2|10}} |birth_place=[[Sommeval]], [[French Third Republic|France]] |death_place=[[Ypres]], [[Belgium]] |nickname= |allegiance= {{flag|French Third Republic}} |branch =[[French Army]] |service_years= |rank=[[Army General (France)|Général d'Armée]] |commands=[[Order of battle for the Battle of France#Allies|French First Army Group]] |unit= |battles=[[World War I]]<br>[[Rif War]]<br>[[World War II]] |awards=[[Légion d'honneur|Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor]] |relations= |other_work= }} '''Gaston-Henri Billotte''' (10 February 1875 – 23 May 1940) was a French military officer best known for his central role in the failure of the [[French Army]] to defeat the [[Battle of France|German invasion of France]] in May 1940. He was killed in a car accident at the height of the battle.
==Military career==
===World War I: 1914–1918=== Billotte graduated from the [[École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr|Saint-Cyr]] military academy in 1896 and joined the infantry.
In [[World War I]] he served as a brigade commander and as an officer of the General Staff.
===Interwar period: 1918–1939=== [[File:KITLV A220 - Defilé ter ere van gouverneur-generaal A.C.D. de Graeff tijdens zijn bezoek aan Hanoi in Indochina, KITLV 79917.tiff|thumb|General Billotte in [[Hanoi]], [[French Indochina]], 1930.]] In 1919 and 1920 he was head of the French Military Mission in [[Interwar Poland|Poland]]. He served the rest of the 1920s and 1930s in colonial posts, in [[French Syria]], [[French Tunisia]], [[French Morocco]] and [[French Indochina]], where he was Commander-in-Chief from 1930 to 1932. He was promoted to general in 1927. In 1933 Billotte returned to France, where he served as a Member of the [[Conseil supérieur de la guerre|Supreme War Council]], President of the Consultative Committee for Colonial Defence and Military Governor of [[Paris]].
===World War II: 1939–1940=== {{One source|section|date=August 2020}} When [[World War II]] broke out in September 1939, Billotte was 64 and close to retirement, but he was appointed Commander in Chief of the 1st Army Group based in northern France adjacent to the [[Belgium|Belgian]] border. When the [[Nazi Germany|Germans]] attacked on 10 May, Billotte's forces advanced into Belgium under the agreed [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] plan, on the assumption that the Germans would repeat their [[German invasion of Belgium (1914)|invasion of Belgium in World War I]], attacking through Belgium into northern France, and then advance on Paris. According to the [[Manstein Plan]], the German attack in Belgium was a feint designed to draw the Allied forces northwards, while the real German assault was aimed at the [[Ardennes]] sector further south. Like all the Allied commanders, Billotte failed to discern the German plan.<ref>Julian Jackson, ''The Fall of France'', Oxford 2003</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2020}}
On 12 May Billotte was given the task of co-ordinating the operations of the French, Belgian and British armies in Belgium. He lacked the staff and the experience for this task, and is reported to have burst into tears when informed of it.<ref>Jackson, pg. 85</ref> He failed to co-operate with the British commander, [[John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort|General Lord Gort]], and the Belgian commander, [[Leopold III of Belgium|King Leopold]]. By 15 May Billotte's morale was "at rock bottom."<ref>Jackson, pg. 86</ref> After a meeting with Gort on 18 May, he remarked to a British officer: "I'm shattered and I can't do anything against these [[Panzer division|Panzers]]."<ref>Julian Jackson, pg. 86</ref>
On 20 May the British government, alarmed at the situation, sent the [[Chief of the Imperial General Staff]], General [[Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside|Edmund Ironside]], to confer with Gort and Billotte. Ironside later wrote: "I found Billotte and [[Georges Maurice Jean Blanchard|Blanchard]] all in a state of complete depression. No plan, no thought of a plan. Ready to be slaughtered. Defeated at the head without casualties... I lost my temper and shook Billotte by the button of his tunic. The man is completely beaten."<ref>Jackson, pg. 86</ref> Ironside effectively took over the co-ordinating role from Billotte and organised an [[Battle of Arras (1940)|unsuccessful attack]] southwards towards [[Arras]] in the hope of checking the German advance.
Finally realising the threat posed by the rapid German advance from the Ardennes towards the sea, the French commander-in-chief, General [[Maxime Weygand]], ordered Billotte to withdraw his forces southwards. At a meeting in [[Ypres]] on 21 May, Weygand found Billotte depressed and pessimistic, "heavily marked by the fatigues and anxieties of the past two weeks."<ref>Julian Jackson, pg. 61</ref> After leaving this conference, Billotte was severely injured when his staff car was involved in an accident, and died after two days in a coma. The British general [[Henry Royds Pownall|Henry Pownall]] (Gort's Chief of Staff) said: "With all respect, he's no loss to us in this emergency."<ref>Jackson, pg. 88</ref>
Billotte's son [[Pierre Billotte]] also graduated from ''[[École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr]]'' in 1926; joined the [[Free French]] movement and had a distinguished military and political career in postwar France.
==References== {{reflist}}
*[https://generals.dk/general/Billotte/Gaston-Henri-Gustave/France.html Generals of World War II]
{{Military governors of Paris}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Billotte, Gaston}} [[Category:1875 births]] [[Category:1940 deaths]] [[Category:French Army generals of World War II]] [[Category:French Army personnel killed in World War II]] [[Category:French Army generals of World War I]] [[Category:French military personnel of the Rif War]] [[Category:Road incident deaths in France]] [[Category:Military governors of Paris]] [[Category:École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr alumni]] [[Category:French recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)]] [[Category:Recipients of the Croix de guerre (Belgium)]] [[Category:Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour]] [[Category:Grand Officers of the Order of the Crown (Belgium)]] [[Category:Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order]] [[Category:Companions of the Order of the Bath]] [[Category:Recipients of the Virtuti Militari]] [[Category:19th-century French military personnel]] [[Category:French recipients of the Legion of Honour]]