Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Commanders of the Allies in 1918 and their autographs.Pétain Haig Foch Pershing
"On May 30 [1917], just before the period of the most extreme incidents, Pétain's staff offered an explanation of the causes of the mutinies. After acknowledging that 'indiscipline in the army comes from a variety of sources of which the relative importance cannot be ascertained,' the report broke the causes down into two categories: 'those which come from the conditions on the front, [and] those which are the result of external influences on this life.' Among the causes associated with life on the front were weakness of the military justice system, inadequate number of leaves, lack of rest between battles, and drunkenness. Among the external causes were pacifist propaganda, unfavorable orientation of the press, and ideas about peace stemming from the Russian revolution."
After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne, begun on April 16 — an offensive that Nivelle had asserted would provide the breakthrough of the German line that would lead to victory, mutinous incidents broke out in the French army, particularly among the troops that had suffered the highest rates of casualties in the offensive. The mutinies were of greater or lesser severity, beginning in April, with the most serious incidents in May and June. Nivelle, whom soldiers and politicians had both lost faith in, was replaced by General Henri Phillippe Pétain. The Russian Revolution of March provided a model for some soldiers.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 362, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
1917-05-30, May, 1917, Russian revolution, mutiny, French mutinies, Pétain, Petain
