The concise encyclopedia of world war II 2 volumes (greenwood encyclopedias of modern world wars) ( PDFDrive ) 848

Maginot Line

officials in Berlin and European neutral capitals provided indirect intelligence on
German plans, including the build-up for BARBAROSSA in mid-1941. Useful information was gleaned from 1943 to 1944 about some secret Wehrmacht weapons
research and about planned strategy and dispositions along the Atlantic Wall.
See also Hiroshima.
Suggested Reading: R. Lewin, The American Magic (1982).
MAGINOT LINE A French system of fortification-in-depth extending from
the frontier with Belgium to the Swiss border. It was first proposed in 1919 and was
built in stages between 1929 and 1935. It represented the purest form of military
deterrence in the 20th century. It was named for André Maginot (1877–1932), minister for war. Comprising a system of interlocking fields of fire from well-fortified
sunken forts and casemates, it was much more solid and continuous than the Stalin Line built by the Soviet Union. The end product was over 100 large works (“overages”) and 400 infantry positions; 152 revolving turrets; more than 1,500 fixed
guns; and the equivalent in tunnels and underground barracks of the entire Paris
Metro. Belgium fortified along the Meuse independently of France, its works disconnected from the Maginot Line. In 1936 Belgium renounced its security treaty
with France and returned to reliance on legal neutrality, which would fail again in
1940 as it had in 1914. The French General Staff deemed the Ardennes Forrest a
sufficient barrier to German armor that any thrust there would be so slow there
would be sufficient time to react and counter it. Meanwhile, French politicians
recoiled at the expense of extending the Maginot Line and the logistical difficulties of constructing fortifications in such a densely populated area on the Franco–
Belgian border. For operational, alliance, and political and economic reasons, the
Maginot Line thus stopped at the edge of the Ardennes. That left 250 miles of exposed front, which ultimately invited a German flank attack around the northern
end of the line.
After Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, the French partly extended the
Maginot Line to cover the “Saar gap” and High Vosges. From 1939 to 1940, during the “drôle de guerre,” a short second line was built 25 kilometers behind the
main fortifications. When completed, the Maginot Line comprised two fortified
regions that blocked the main anticipated invasion routes from Germany: the
Lauter Fortified Region (RF Lauter), and the Metz Fortified Region (RF Metz).
As William Keylor has noted, “from a purely military point of view, the Maginot Line was brilliant in conception.” But its fine concepts and construction did
not resolve the main problem that emerged from October 1936, when Belgium
annulled a 1920 convention on mutual defense and instead retreated into the
same formal neutrality it adopted before 1914. That left an exposed and weakly

defended Ardennes gap and concealed threat to defense of the whole northern
frontier of France. When the great test of French fixed defenses came during the
FALL GELB (1940) invasion, the Maginot Line worked: where assaulted, it stopped
the German advance and prevented a deep invasion. However, the main Panzer
thrust went around the Line, through the “impenetrable” Ardennes. French guns
locked into fixed positions were thereby circumvented and many failed to fire a

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