Background
Joseph Micheler was bom in Phalsbourg, France, in 1861.
Joseph Micheler was bom in Phalsbourg, France, in 1861.
He entered St. Cyr in October 1880, and was appointed a sub-lieutenant on the completion of his course in 1882.
By 1916 he commanded the French Tenth Army at the battle of the Somme. His performance there earned him promotion to army group commander.
At the start of 1917 General Robert Nivelle, newly appointed commander in chief of the French army, was preparing an offensive northward against the Germans on the Chemin des Dames. Micheler took charge of the Reserve Army Group, which con-sisted of the Fifth, Sixth, and Tenth armies and was charged with penetrating the German position, driving into open country, and bringing the war to a quick conclusion. Micheler soon developed doubts about Nivelles prospects for success. The rugged terrain, the poor access roads, the bad weather all militated against a victory at tolerable cost, even a lesser victory than the one Nivelle pledged. At the same time, Micheler was unwilling to confront Nivelle directly with his doubts; although these doubts were shared by the army's other group commanders and many of the rest of the ranking field officers involved in planning the operation.
To add to the dim prospects for the coming campaign, Micheler found he was not, in fact, commander over the Sixth Army. There, General Charles Mangin, Nivelle's friend and protégé, operated on his own: he set unrealistic objectives for his army in the coming assault and, when challenged by Micheler, appealed directly to Nivelle.
Micheler's only solution to this tangle was to send covert messages to political leaders. War Minister Paul Painlevé, for example, was made clearly aware of the army's doubts about the coming offensive. From late March until the climactic gathering of civil and military leaders at Compiègne on April 6, the issue hung in doubt. But Nivelle met Micheler's silence at Compiègne by renewed pledges of victory joined to a threat to resign if his plans were counter-manded.
The Nivelle fiasco hurt, but did not destroy, Micheler's career. The Reserve Army Group was dissolved and Micheler reverted to command the Fifth Army. There, in December 1917, he criticized General Pétain, the new French commander in chief, for excessive caution in arranging French defenses! Micheler spent his last days in the field in the spring of 1918. On the old battleground of the Chemin des Dames, German troops smashed the French defenses and drove southward toward the Marne in late May. Micheler and his neighbor at the Sixth Army, General Duchêne, both of whom had ignored Pétain's call for a defense in depth, were both dismissed.
Micheler died in Nice in 1931.