André-Gaston Prételat

André-Gaston Prételat (14 November 1874, Wassy, Champagne, France – 6 December 1969, Paris, France) was a general in the French Army.

His first post, from 1910 to 1912, was as military attaché to Tangier. During the First World War he was the chief of staff of 70th Division (1915) and then of XXIII Corps (1916), before becoming the commanding officer of the 159th Regiment and Deputy Chief of Staff to Gouraud's French Fourth Army (1917), and finally Chief of Staff of the Fourth Army. After the Armistice, he became chief of staff of the Army of Alsace (1918), the troops occupying the Alsace Lorraine (annexed by France from Germany).

During the inter-war years he returned to the French colonies, acting as chief of staff in the Levant from 1919 to 1923, then as chief of staff to General Gouraud for four years from 1923. He next held three posts as general officer commanding, first of First Division (1927 to 1930), then of the Eleventh Military Region (1930), and finally of the Paris Military Region (aka the Second Military Region, from 1930 to 1934). From 1934 to the outbreak of the Second World War he was Member Supreme of the 19-strong war council.

In 1938 he was commander-designate of the French Second Army, and in that role he held exercises that year which revealed that the Ardennes were impossible to defend; although his prediction as to the time it would take Germany to breach defenses was off by only three hours of the time it actually took on May 1940, he was accused of pessimism. He pointed out security weaknesses in the defensive fortificiations of the north-east border of France in December 1938 and attempted to address these with improvements he planned in April 1939 but efforts had scarcely been undertaken when the war began in September 1939.

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