Alphonse Joseph Georges Alphonse Joseph Georges ( Allier - Montluçon , August 15 , 1875 – April 24 , 1951 ) was a French army officer . He was commander in chief of the North East Front in 1939 and 1940 . Opposing the plan by supreme commander Maurice Gamelin to move the best allied forces into the Low Countries , he was overruled by his superior . Georges tried to allow as much initiative to his inferiors as possible to improve operational flexibility . Alphonse Georges , the son of a blacksmith , was born at Montlucon , France on 19 August 1875 . He entered École Spéciale Militaire de Saint - Cyr and graduated third in his class in 1897 . He served in French Algeria with a tirailleur regiment . Military career . First World War 1914 - 1918 . He served in the French Army during the First World War and was seriously wounded while leading his battalion in 1914 . He was then assigned to the general staff of the army where he remained for the rest of the war . Interwar Period 1918 - 1939 . In 1918 Georges served under General Ferdinand Foch as operations chief . He was also chief of staff under Marshal Henri - Philippe Petain in French Morocco during the 1920 - 26 Rif War and as a division commander in Algeria ( 1928 – 32 ) . Georges was appointed to the Supreme War Council in November 1932 . Based in Paris , he witnessed the assassination of French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou and King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseilles on 9 October 1934 . Seriously wounded during the assassination , Georges had a long recovery , but was expected to succeed General Maxime Weygand as head of the French Army in 1935 . However , the French prime minister Edouard Daladier , thought he was too right - wing and appointed General Gamelin instead . World War 2 1939 - 1945 . Georges was appointed as Gamelin ' s deputy but the two men did not get on and they had a fraught relationship . On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 , Georges became commander of all French field armies . Gamelin and Georges assured Daladier that France had the greatest army in the world and were shocked when the Allied front was broken through at Sedan by the Wehrmacht . According to the memoirs of then - French Army captain Andre Beaufre , after the front was broken , the feeling was rife in Georges ' headquarter staff that the battle with the Germans was lost , with Beaufre himself witnessing Georges breaking into tears . On 19 May 1940 Gamelin and Georges were sacked and General Weygand returned as head of the French Army . After General Petain took power after the fall of France and the collapse of the French Third Republic , Georges refused to play any significant role in the new Vichy France government . Winston Churchill wanted Georges to become commander of French forces in Algeria , Morocco and Tunisia after the invasion of North Africa in February 1942 . However , President Franklin D . Roosevelt insisted that this post should go to General Henri Giraud . In January 1943 , Giraud and General Charles De Gaulle became co - presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation ( NCNL ) . Georges was appointed minister without portfolio but it was not long before like Giraud he was ousted by De Gaulle . Alphonse Georges died in 1951 .