Gaston Billotte

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Gaston-Henri Billotte (10 February 1875 – 23 May 1940) was a French military officer, remembered chiefly for his central role in the failure of the French Army to defeat the 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 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

In 1919 and 1920 he was head of the French Military Mission in

.

World War II: 1939–1940

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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 Belgian border. When the Germans attacked on 10 May, Billotte's forces advanced into Belgium under the agreed Allied plan, on the assumption that the Germans would repeat their 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.^{[1][page needed]}

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.