#fortifications

Maginot Line: France's Fortress Defence System

The Maginot Line was an extensive series of fortifications built by France through the 1930s to protect its eastern borders from German attack. Stretching for over 200 miles (322 km), and including massive gun emplacements and extensive underground tunnels, the Maginot Line was rendered all but obsolete by the German attack through neutral Belgium and then north-eastern France in the opening stages of the Second World War (1939-45). The German Army's blitzkrieg tactics largely bypassed the Maginot Line and brought about France's defeat in just six weeks. Backing static defence against a mechanized and highly mobile enemy had proved to be utter folly.

Betting on Defence

The Maginot Line was designed to protect France’s border with its imperial rival, Germany, and so ran from Belfort in the south near the Swiss border to Thionville in the north near the frontier with Luxembourg. The French military planners did not imagine that an attack on France might come through Switzerland because of that state’s traditional neutral status and the mountainous terrain. For the same reasons, it was not envisaged likely that an attack would come through neutral Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and, if it did, the armies of those nations, supported by allied forces such as the British Expeditionary Force, would, it was hoped, halt any attack. The French and Belgian governments, nevertheless, did agree that Belgium should fortify its eastern frontiers in some way. Unfortunately for both countries, the Maginot Line project was never fully realised, particularly regarding the Belgian section, when Nazi Germany attacked them in the spring of 1940.

The line of defences was named after André Maginot (1877-1932), the French minister of defence between 1929 and 1932. The name La Ligne Maginot was not officially adopted until August 1935. The project began shortly after Maginot took office and was largely a response to Germany rearming and so breaking the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which had formally concluded the First World War (1914-18). The fact that the French Army staked the country’s military future on a fixed defensive position is somewhat ironic given that the French had once been pioneers of mobile tank and mixed-arms warfare, a tactic that had greatly contributed to victory in 1918.

It was true that WWI had largely been a static war on the Western Front, and the French government and senior military figures were inclined to believe that the next war would be similar in nature. There was also the point that with France having a significantly smaller population than Germany (approximately 40:60 million), any war of attrition would mean France might simply run out of soldiers. A line of fortification defences would solve that problem since these could be manned with fewer men than would be required to protect France’s entire eastern borders by any other means, such as regular garrisons.

The German Army had not seen the potential of tanks during WWI and had developed very few of them until the very end of the war, by which time it was too late to affect the outcome. This situation would now be reversed as Germany banked on mobile warfare, which combined infantry, tanks, and aircraft, while France hoped a static defensive line would be enough to deter any attack. Tanks were still part of the French Army, but these were deployed as a backup to the static defences and were not part of aggressive, attack-focused tactics. The French also significantly underinvested in anti-tank guns and air defences, weapons which would become essential to modern mechanized warfare.

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Fortifications of Laon, Picardy region of France