Peace in our time.
And ...it worked.
The Germans went through the Ardennes
Players of the SPI/AH game France ‘40 will know that the Maginot Line meant absolutely nothing.
France would have been better off continuing to build the Char B (a fine tank for the time) and beefing up their air force.
In Doulas MacArthur’s memoirs, he maintained the Maginot Line was an offensive device. It freed the maximum number of troops for the attack. In memory of the “Miracle of the Marne” attacking with elan was supposed to be how the French would deal with the Germans in the next war.
Somehow that concept didn’t work. It could have been related to the fact that of a 39,840,000 population, 4,375,000 Frenchmen ended up as killed or wounded in WW I. Today taking into account the emotional trauma to relatives, we would probably say almost the entire country had PTSD.
I read where the Maginot Line protected Germany as well as France. It made the French defense-minded and when Germany denuded that area of troops and tanks to invade Poland, the French, if the had the will, could have walked into Germany and would have snuff the whole Third Reich B/s/ (the German generals would have taken “loser” Hitler out themselves).
Great video...so much new information I never knew. I had no idea that the line was technologically advanced and fortified. Nor the huge scale of it.
for later