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Alert readers will notice that we haven't said a word about the Maginot Line for many paragraphs at this point. So let's get back to that. Was the Maginot Line a stupid idea that completely failed? No, it wasn't; it was a reasonable idea [[GoneHorriblyRight that did exactly what it was intended to do]] (force the Germans to attack through Belgium; free up soldiers to counter that attack). Was it a good idea? That is a much harder question. It is possible that the French would have done better if they'd spent more of their resources on other things like better mechanized forces[[note]]Though France actually had substantially more tanks than Germany in 1940, and largely better ones at that (Germany's only truly modern tanks at the time were the Panzer III and Panzer IV, and they only had a few hundred of these), Germany was vastly more adept at ''using them'' while French tank tactics had barely changed since the tank was first introduced in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. This was because French politicians of the interwar period had a hearty distrust of a professionalized military, and a professionalized military is obviously required for the development of a competent tank corps.[[/note]], better intelligence analysis, better training, etc.; but this doesn't mean necessarily that they shouldn't have built a Maginot Line, but rather that they could have spent less on it[[note]]It actually cost about 1 or 2% of the military budget, so this assumption is dubious; furthermore, France's best industrial land lay behind the Maginot Line, and given that its capture by the Germans in the First World War had put a major crimp on France's war effort then, it made sense to install static defenses to safeguard it.[[/note]], and more on other things. However, it's important to remember that, historically, even with the strategic choices they made ''the Allies had serious chances of winning the Battle of France'' in the early days, and of ''not losing so badly'' even after the initial surprise. They also arguably could have won the war if they'd invaded Germany in 1939 instead of waiting for the Germans to attack.
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Alert readers will notice that we haven't said a word about the Maginot Line for many paragraphs at this point. So let's get back to that. Was the Maginot Line a stupid idea that completely failed? No, it wasn't; it was a reasonable idea [[GoneHorriblyRight that did exactly what it was intended to do]] (force the Germans to attack through Belgium; free up soldiers to counter that attack). Was it a good idea? That is a much harder question. It is possible that the French would have done better if they'd spent more of their resources on other things like better mechanized forces[[note]]Though France actually had substantially more tanks than Germany in 1940, and largely better ones at that (Germany's only truly modern tanks at the time were the Panzer III and Panzer IV, and they only had a few hundred of these), Germany was vastly more adept at ''using them'' while French tank tactics had barely changed since the tank was first introduced in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. This was because French politicians of the interwar period had a hearty distrust of a professionalized military, and a professionalized military is obviously required for the development of a competent tank corps.[[/note]], better intelligence analysis, better training, etc.; but this doesn't mean necessarily that they shouldn't have built a Maginot Line, but rather that they could have spent less on it[[note]]It actually cost about 1 or 2% of the military budget, so this assumption is dubious; furthermore, France's best industrial land lay behind the Maginot Line, and given that its capture by the Germans in the First World War had put a major crimp on France's war effort then, it made sense to install static defenses to safeguard it.[[/note]], and more on other things. However, it's important to remember that, historically, even with the strategic choices they made ''the Allies had serious chances of winning the Battle of France'' in the early days, and of ''not losing so badly'' even after the initial surprise. They also arguably could have won the war if they'd invaded Germany in 1939 instead of waiting for the Germans to attack.
attack.[[note]]There was the abortive Saar Offensive in the middle of September 1939, but it didn't accomplish much and the French soon chickened out and returned to their original lines[[/note]]
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The UsefulNotes/{{Fr|ance}}ench [[UsefulNotes/GaulsWithGrenades military]]'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940, named after interwar period Minister of War and War Pensions André Maginot) has come to stand as one of the great symbols of shortsightedness, MyopicArchitecture, stupidity, denial, and utter failure. The French built the most advanced system of fortifications that the world had ever seen -- and, in the popular imagination, just sat there in their fortifications while the [[UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons Germans]] [[DungeonBypass bypassed them entirely]] in early UsefulNotes/WorldWarII by invading indirectly through an area where the line was incomplete.
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The UsefulNotes/{{Fr|ance}}ench [[UsefulNotes/GaulsWithGrenades military]]'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940, named after interwar period Minister of War and War Pensions André Maginot) has come to stand as one of the great symbols of shortsightedness, MyopicArchitecture, stupidity, denial, and utter failure. The French built the most advanced system of fortifications that the world had ever seen -- and, in the popular imagination, just sat there in their fortifications while the [[UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons Germans]] [[DungeonBypass bypassed them entirely]] in early UsefulNotes/WorldWarII by invading indirectly through an area where the line was incomplete.
incomplete, [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey and then the French just sort of gave up]].
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* Force the Germans '''not to attack there'''. This would hopefully lead to Germany invading Belgium in order to actually get at France, which would bring UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}} into the war on France's side. In the long term this would enable an invasion of Germany through the flatter and more favourable terrain of northern Belgium, the terrain and infrastructure of the Franco-German border (hilly and poor, respectively) being unsuited to offensive incursions into Germany anyway. The French very much preferred to fight the Germans in Belgium and Germany, and not in France.
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* Force the Germans '''not to attack there'''. This would hopefully lead to Germany invading Belgium (or possibly Switzerland) in order to actually get at France, which would bring UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}} into the war on France's side. In the long term this would enable an invasion of Germany through the flatter and more favourable terrain of northern Belgium, the terrain and infrastructure of the Franco-German border (hilly and poor, respectively) being unsuited to offensive incursions into Germany anyway. The French very much preferred to fight the Germans in Belgium and Germany, and not in France.
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So the French expected that the Germans would invade France in an attempt to defeat her and so break the Franco-British blockade which would be crippling the German economy even worse than in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, ''and'' that they would do so by bypassing the Maginot Line through Belgium. [[IKnowYouKnowIKnow The Germans knew this too, they both knew that the other side knew,]] [[TrapIsTheOnlyOption and this is what the Germans did, to nobody's surprise.]] So what happened? Why did the French lose so badly?
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The line itself is not a "wall" but a series of what the French call ''ouvrages'' (lit. "work", as in "defensive works" or "waterworks"), divided into large ("''gros ouvrages''") ones (heavy artillery and infantry) and small ones ('"petits ouvrages''") (light artillery and infantry, or no artillery). These structures are essentially large bunkers dotted at critical chokepoints at the borders with Germany, Italy, Luxemburg and parts of Belgium and Switzerland. Some historians draw a distinction between the "North-East" Maginot Line (Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg) and the "South-East" Maginot Line (Italy, with small outposts on the Swiss border), also known as the Alpine Line, the Little Line or the Mediterranean Line. In practice the distinction is largely academic and boils down to if the guys you're shooting at speak German or Italian.
If you were in the vicinity of a Maginot ''ouvrage'', unlike a large fort or castle, it wouldn't be obvious that there's military fortifications nearby. This is because the Maginot ''ouvrages'' are largely underground tunnel networks, the largest ones being essentially cities capable of holding up to 1000 soldiers. These tunnels and rooms would connect to various "combat blocks" (bunkers and turrets) containing anything from a [[{{BFG}} 135mm howitzer]] to firing ports for infantry rifles, with some turrets being hidden underground and "popping up" when the need arises. They are cleverly placed in order to have overlapping fields of fire and cover each other in order to lock down an area (such as a road, valley, mountain pass, etc...) as much as possible. Thus an ''ouvrage'' might have central combat blocks with heavy or medium artillery and be surrounded by a ring of smaller combat blocks for more direct anti-infantry or anti-tank defense, alongside observation posts that can direct fire or sound the alarm if the enemy is spotted, with the whole thing being surrounded by various passive defenses like tank traps, ditches and barbed wire, or with smaller blockhouses and pillboxes not connected to the ''ouvrage'' proper. Some ''ouvrages'' could even redirect rivers or otherwise release water to flood an area and slow down enemy advance!
In total, the North-East Maginot Line has 22 ''gros ouvrages'', 36 ''petits ouvrages''. The Alpine Line meanwhile has 23 ''gros ouvrages'' and 61 ''petits''. In addition both have literally '''thousands''' of smaller blockhouses and pillboxes.
Underground, the ''ouvrages'' are quite impressive. They are semi-self sufficient, with large stores of food, water, ammunition, fuel and other supplies. The ''ouvrages'' had their own power plants, telephone lines, depots, armories, workshops, barracks, hospitals, kitchens and even railways and ''cinemas''. In the event of a combat block being overrun the tunnels could have been blocked by heavy steel blast doors or outright collapsed. The air pressure was also kept higher than the outside air pressure to prevent any gas attack. The French had ''very bad'' memories of gas from [=WW1=] and wanted to avoid the horrors of that war as much as possible, ''merci beaucoup'', though gas ended up being a non-issue during [=WW2=] (outside of, well, [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust you know]]...). All this meant that the Maginot Line could essentially last for a while until it was overrun [[StormingTheCastle through sheer force]] or ran out of ammo and supplies.
In peacetime the various ''ouvrages'' would have a skeleton crew of full-time professional soldiers, who lived in relatively comfortable wooden housing outside the bunkers themselves. In wartime the local reservist forces would be mobilized and would bolster the garrison, which would then move to the barracks inside the bunker.
!! History and context
The French expected that the Germans would invade France in an attempt to defeat her and so break the Franco-British blockade which would be crippling the German economy even worse than in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, ''and'' that they would do so by bypassing the Maginot Line through
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Alert readers will notice that we haven't said a word about the Maginot Line for many paragraphs at this point. So let's get back to that. Was the Maginot Line a stupid idea that completely failed? No, it wasn't; it was a reasonable idea [[GoneHorriblyRight that did exactly what it was intended to do]] (force the Germans to attack through Belgium; free up soldiers to counter that attack). Was it a good idea? That is a much harder question. It is possible that the French would have done better if they'd spent more of their resources on other things like better mechanized forces[[note]]Though France actually had substantially more tanks than Germany in 1940, and largely better ones at that (Germany's only truly modern tanks at the time were the Panzer III and Panzer IV, and they only had a few hundred of these), Germany was vastly more adept at ''using them'' while French tank tactics had barely changed since the tank was first introduced in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. This was because French politicians of the interwar period had a hearty distrust of a professionalized military, and a professionalized military is obviously required for the development of a competent tank corps.[[/note]], better intelligence analysis, better training, etc.; but this doesn't mean necessarily that they shouldn't have built a Maginot Line, but rather that they could have spent less on it[[note]]It actually costed about 1 or 2% of the military budget, so this assumption is dubious; furthermore, France's best industrial land lay behind the Maginot Line, and given that its capture by the Germans in the First World War had put a major crimp on France's war effort then, it made sense to install static defenses to safeguard it.[[/note]], and more on other things. However, it's important to remember that, historically, even with the strategic choices they made ''the Allies had serious chances of winning the Battle of France'' in the early days, and of ''not losing so badly'' even after the initial surprise. They also arguably could have won the war if they'd invaded Germany in 1939 instead of waiting for the Germans to attack.
to:
Alert readers will notice that we haven't said a word about the Maginot Line for many paragraphs at this point. So let's get back to that. Was the Maginot Line a stupid idea that completely failed? No, it wasn't; it was a reasonable idea [[GoneHorriblyRight that did exactly what it was intended to do]] (force the Germans to attack through Belgium; free up soldiers to counter that attack). Was it a good idea? That is a much harder question. It is possible that the French would have done better if they'd spent more of their resources on other things like better mechanized forces[[note]]Though France actually had substantially more tanks than Germany in 1940, and largely better ones at that (Germany's only truly modern tanks at the time were the Panzer III and Panzer IV, and they only had a few hundred of these), Germany was vastly more adept at ''using them'' while French tank tactics had barely changed since the tank was first introduced in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. This was because French politicians of the interwar period had a hearty distrust of a professionalized military, and a professionalized military is obviously required for the development of a competent tank corps.[[/note]], better intelligence analysis, better training, etc.; but this doesn't mean necessarily that they shouldn't have built a Maginot Line, but rather that they could have spent less on it[[note]]It actually costed cost about 1 or 2% of the military budget, so this assumption is dubious; furthermore, France's best industrial land lay behind the Maginot Line, and given that its capture by the Germans in the First World War had put a major crimp on France's war effort then, it made sense to install static defenses to safeguard it.[[/note]], and more on other things. However, it's important to remember that, historically, even with the strategic choices they made ''the Allies had serious chances of winning the Battle of France'' in the early days, and of ''not losing so badly'' even after the initial surprise. They also arguably could have won the war if they'd invaded Germany in 1939 instead of waiting for the Germans to attack.
attack.
Despite all of this, the Germans did take the Maginot Line seriously, coming up with behemoths like the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav Schwerer Gustave]]'', a '''[[{{BFG}} 800mm]]''' railway cannon designed for the sole purpose of destroying the larger ''ouvrages''. Other ''ouvrages'' were attacked with more conventional means. The ''petit ouvrage'' La Ferté, for instance, saw the heaviest fighting of any Maginot Line position, holding out from the 15th to the 18th of May, 1940, before it was overwhelmed. With its turrets destroyed, the Germans threw incendiary and smoke grenades into the pits. Oxygen was soon depleted and by the 19th of May the entire garrison had been wiped out from carbon monoxide poisoning. 4 other ''petits ouvrages'' were also forced to surrender after heavy fighting, but no ''gros ouvrage'' fell to battle. After the Armistice the Germans occupied the ''ouvrages'' and with the advance of the Allies into Germany they tried to use the Maginot Line to protect Germany proper, with limited results since most of the guns were pointing ''towards'' Germany.
Despite all of this, the Germans did take the Maginot Line seriously, coming up with behemoths like the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav Schwerer Gustave]]'', a '''[[{{BFG}} 800mm]]''' railway cannon designed for the sole purpose of destroying the larger ''ouvrages''. Other ''ouvrages'' were attacked with more conventional means. The ''petit ouvrage'' La Ferté, for instance, saw the heaviest fighting of any Maginot Line position, holding out from the 15th to the 18th of May, 1940, before it was overwhelmed. With its turrets destroyed, the Germans threw incendiary and smoke grenades into the pits. Oxygen was soon depleted and by the 19th of May the entire garrison had been wiped out from carbon monoxide poisoning. 4 other ''petits ouvrages'' were also forced to surrender after heavy fighting, but no ''gros ouvrage'' fell to battle. After the Armistice the Germans occupied the ''ouvrages'' and with the advance of the Allies into Germany they tried to use the Maginot Line to protect Germany proper, with limited results since most of the guns were pointing ''towards'' Germany.
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The Maginot Line was modernized and reoccupied following World War II, but the advent of UsefulNotes/{{nuclear weapons}} made it largely obsolete, and the ascent of UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion and UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}'s aversion to bellicism in its constitution and population that has developed since has rendered war between the two old rivals increasingly unlikely. The ''ouvrages'' were gradually decommissioned and occasionally sold off. Some of them were turned into wine cellars, mushroom farms and at least one nightclub. Others are now museums that can be visited (including one in Hatten that doubles as a [[TankGoodness tank museum]]). Some bunkers remained in use as fortified command centers in the case of nuclear warfare. Rochonvilliers was one such bunker that was finally decommissioned in the 90's as the absence of the Soviet threat made its expense difficult to justify. Hochwald is the only Maginot Line ''ouvrage'' still in use, as an emergency command center near the Drachenbronn Air Base. While most bunkers are not in active usage, they're technically owned by the French military, and access is forbidden for some of them, and they could theoretically be modernized and reactivated if the French saw a need to.
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