History UsefulNotes / MaginotLine

* Creator/{{Fernandel}} (as a singer) toured for French soldiers on the Line in 1940.

* Creator/{{Fernandel}} toured for soldiers on the Line in 1940.

The Maginot Line was modernized and reoccupied following World War II, but the advent of nuclear weapons made it largely obsolete, and the ascent of UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion 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 disco. 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.

* In ''[[Film/TheCrimsonRivers Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse]]'', the BigBad played by Creator/ChristopherLee seeks out a treasure hidden inside a fort of the Maginot Line.

A complicating factor that affected the French and British strategy was the loss of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael. If attacking across the Franco-German border would have been extraordinarily difficult, a direct assault on Eben Emael was insane. It was, at the time, the toughest nut in the world to crack, and its position was designed to further restrict German movement, designed to serve as an anchor for the planned Franco-British defensive position. The only problem was that no one considered the possibility that anyone would be crazy enough to try and land a small force of glider troops ''on top'' of the fortress. Which, of course, the Germans did, which allowed them to capture the fortress, forcing the British and French to scramble to reform a new defensive line. These glider troops (they didn't use parachutes) used an honest-to-God secret weapon, the shaped charge explosive, to blow up the artillery turrets. The action was so quick and swift that only a few men died on both sides.

Soon after the breakthrough, the entire British Expeditionary Force and the majority of the French Army were thus trapped near the French town of Dunkirk. With nowhere else to run, the British gathered everything that could float and rescued the near-entirety of the BEF and a good number of French troops. The Germans, meanwhile, were halted as ''Luftwaffe'' Commander-in-Chief Göring persuaded Hitler that his planes could annihilate the remaining Allied forces. This did not happen due to poor weather making aerial attacks difficult, and since then, the German Army began to distrust the ''Luftwaffe''. Despite this, the Allied defeat was total. Britain was ejected from the continent and, having left nearly all their equipment and heavy arms at Dunkirk, unable to redeploy their forces, giving the Germans free reign to maneuver in Western Europe. Less than ten days later, General UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his 7th Panzer Division, who moved so quickly even Berlin lost track of them during the campaign, sent a message to army headquarters as they stood overlooking the English Channel: "Am at coast." The ''Wehrmacht'' then turned south to capture Paris, now an open city, before they were finally halted on June 22, when an armistice was signed between Germany and France.

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 inter-war period had a hearty distrust of a professionalized military, and a professionalized military is almost 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.

Fun historical fact: you'd think that, after the Allies were defeated catastrophically by a surprise German attack through the Ardennes, they'd never fall for the same trick again, right? Well, that's only half right: in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Battle of the Bulge]], four and a half years later, the Germans managed to trick the Americans and launch a major surprise attack through the Ardennes (under the cover of fog and bad weather which grounded their air-forces), which the Americans considered a quiet region of the front and thus had sent weakened divisions there to recover. However, the Americans were better-armed and more numerous relative to their attackers than the French had been four years earlier and put up a much better fight. More importantly, ''this'' Allied commander (General Patton) correctly judged that this would be the main thrust of their offensive and rushed in so many troops (chiefly the US's Third Army) that the Allies soon had the attacking Germans outnumbered and out-gunned. Once their offensive had effectively been halted the Germans quickly withdrew as their positions were exposed and Hitler wanted their mobile formations dispatched to Hungary as quickly as possible so they could try to relieve the Siege of Budapest in ''Unternehmen Konrad''.

Also note: invading through the Ardennes had already been used by the Germans in World War I and went pretty badly for both sides, with the German invasion force running out of food and horses at a ridiculous rate due to the area's poor infrastructure (and the French demolition of said infrastructure as they retreated). Further note: invading through the Ardennes was ''also'' used in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; as in 1940, the Prussians managed to achieve effective surprise against the sluggish French and inflicted a devastating defeat.

The Maginot Line was modernized and reoccupied following World War II, but the advent of nuclear weapons made it largely obsolete, and the ascent of UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion 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 disco. 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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The UsefulNotes/{{Fr|ance}}ench [[UsefulNotes/GaulsWithGrenades military]]'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940) 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.

The UsefulNotes/{{Fr|ance}}ench [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940) 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.

* 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 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.

The French [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940) 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.

Today the Maginot Line is effectively obsolete. It was modernized and reoccupied following World War 2, but the advent of nuclear weapons made it largely useless, and the ascent of the European Union making the Franco-German border obsolete 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 disco. Others are now museums that can be visited. 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, and they could theoretically be modernized and reactivated if the French saw a need to.

So what did the Germans do in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_France Battle of France]]? They launched a feint attack up in the northern plains of Belgium and Holland to distract the French and play to their expectations, and in the meantime they secretly sent their main force through the Ardennes. French mechanized forces established a weak series of outposts across both areas, the bulk of Franco-British infantry forces were moved by rail to the northern plains, and a weak follow-on infantry force was later moved to the Ardennes. So when the German forces actually encountered the French mechanized forces in the Ardennes, they outnumbered them by something like 20:1. And once they broke through them, the French infantry force in the area was also outnumbered by 10:1. And once they broke through ''them'', there were no more prepared defensive outposts and the only troops in their way were ones hastily railed in to stop them. Who were ''also'' outnumbered.

One curious fact was that the Germans originally planned to do exactly what the French expected: attack through northern Belgium. However, neither Hitler nor any of the generals was enthusiastic about this plan; in addition, at one point, the Belgians captured a German officer who had a copy of a draft of this plan. Legendary German General Erich von Manstein (who understood logistics), with the help of the somewhat-back-stabby BloodKnight Heinz Guderian (who did not, but inspired Manstein [[AttackAttackAttack to greater boldness]] in the planning), came up with this Ardennes attack plan. Chief of the German General Staff General Halder disliked this idea at first, but Hitler had independently suggested something similar early on and Halder was partly browbeaten and partly personally overawed by Hitler into accepting the Ardennes plan over the northern plains plan.

The French [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940) from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII 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 Germans [[DungeonBypass bypassed them entirely]] by invading indirectly through an area where the line was incomplete.

The above story is, however, an extremely pervasive case of ArtisticLicenseHistory. In real fact, the goals of the Maginot Line upon its construction (1930) were this:

Today the Maginot Line is effectively obsolete. It was modernized and reoccupied following World War 2, but the advent of nuclear weapons made it largely useless, and the ascent of the European Union making the Franco-German border obsolete 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 disco. Others are now museums that can be visited. 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 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, and they could theoretically be modernized and reactivated if the French saw a need to.

The French [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940) from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII has come to stand as one of the great symbols of shortsightedness, MyopicArchitecture, stupidity, ostrich-like response to threat, and just general fail. 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 Germans did a huge DungeonBypass by invading indirectly through an area where the line was incomplete.

Today the Maginot Line is effectively obsolete. It was modernized and reoccupied following World War 2, but the advent of nuclear weapons made it largely useless. The ''ouvrages'' were gradually decommissioned and occasionally sold off. Some of them were turned into wine cellars, mushroom farms and at least one disco. Others are now museums that can be visited. 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 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, and they could theoretically be modernized and reactivated if the French saw a need to.

* 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 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 France.

* Free up soldiers for the real fight up in Belgium. France really needed this: she had lost so many younger men to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/TheSpanishFlu that there was gaping hole in the manpower pool where the forty-something year-old men were supposed to be [[note]] While most of that class was still alive, a relatively large number were in technical or management positions: there were very few men this age who could be conscripted without harming the economy [[/note]]. Moreover another hole in the manpower pool was looming, the number of men turning 18 in the years 1932-7 being just half that of previous and subsequent years. Germany, Britain, and Italy also had these gaps but France's were (proportionally) bigger. Thus, she badly needed economy of manpower.

There was a chance the Germans ''might'' count on the French assuming this and so deploy their tank forces in the Ardennes instead, but the temporary surprise this maneuver might cause would be more than offset by the difficulty of breaking through the artillery-heavy French lines and the sheer logistical impossibility of sustaining such an offensive. Sustaining a major offensive through the Ardennes by the usual combination of rail and horse transport wasn't possible by a long shot. The German Army's horrific logistic troubles supplying troops through the region in World War One, even given lower average demand for ammunition relative to post-1916 military forces, was proof enough of that [[note]] As the French attack in August 1914 turned into a rout, the French succesfully wrecked the rail network as they retreated. This forced Germans' horse-carts to make 300km round trips to Germany and back through Ardennes that quite literally killed them - in such numbers that the German advance was basically dead on its feet for lack of horses by the time of the Battle of the Marne [[/note]].

Most of the other German generals thought this was nuts, not because of the constricted supply lines this would entail because [[EasyLogistics the logistics services were never consulted or even mentioned when planning campaigns/operations - they were just expected to fulfill any and all demands placed upon them]][[note]] This would backfire ''horribly'' in ''Unternehmen Barbarossa'' and particularly ''Fall Taifun'' when it became abundantly clear that making and then following plans ''without knowing if you're actually able to carry them out'' was really, ''really'' stupid. When we put it this way it sounds very obvious, but German military types liked to toss around a lot of technical language to conceal this fundamental oversight, which few if any of them saw for what it was. [[/note]] Rather, they wanted to fight the French on the open plains and didn't think the hills of the Ardennes were good for this because they would give the French a defensive advantage. Manstein and Guderian insisted that most of the fighting would in fact take place on the plains and not in the hills (though they'd have to go through the hills first and there'd be a fair bit of fighting there first), but their contemporaries thought this was overly optimistic and potentially disastrous.

Also note: invading through the Ardennes had already been used by the Germans in World War I and went pretty badly for both sides, with the German invasion force running out of food and horses at a ridiculous rate due to the area's poor infrastructure (and the French demolition of said infrastructure as they retreated).

Soon after the breakthrough, the entire British Expeditionary Force and the majority of the French Army were thus trapped near the French town of Dunkirk. With nowhere else to run, the British gathered everything that could float and rescued the near-entirety of the BEF and a good number of French troops. The Germans, meanwhile, were halted as ''Luftwaffe'' Commander-in-Chief Göring persuaded Hitler that his planes could annihilate the remaining Allied forces. This did not happen due to poor weather making aerial attacks difficult, and since then, the German Army began to distrust the ''Luftwaffe''. Despite this, the Allied defeat was total. Britain was ejected from the continent and, having left nearly all their equipment and heavy arms at Dunkirk, unable to redeploy their forces, giving the Germans free reign to maneuver in mainland Western Europe. Less than ten days later, General UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his 7th Panzer Division, who moved so quickly even Berlin lost track of them during the campaign, sent a message to army headquarters as they stood overlooking the English Channel: "Am at coast." The ''Wehrmacht'' then turned south to capture Paris, now an open city, before they were finally halted on June 22, when an armistice was signed between Germany and France.

One curious fact was that the Germans originally planned to do exactly what the French expected: attack through northern Belgium. However, neither Hitler nor any of the generals was enthusiastic about this plan; in addition, at one point, the Belgians captured a German officer who had a copy of a draft of this plan. Legendary German General Erich von Manstein (who understood logistics), with the help of the somewhat-back-stabb-y BloodKnight Heinz Guderian (who did not, but inspired Manstein [[AttackAttackAttack to greater boldness]] in the planning), came up with this Ardennes attack plan. Chief of the German General Staff General "a strong military leader with great powers of motivation is ''the most important'' factor for success" Halder, disliked this idea at first, but Hitler had independently suggested something similar early on and Halder was partly browbeaten and partly personally overawed by Hitler into accepting the Ardennes plan over the northern plains plan.

The French [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line Maginot Line]] (in use from 1935 to 1940) from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII has come to stand as one of the great symbols of shortsightedness, MyopicArchitecture, stupidity, ostrich-like response to threat, and just general fail. 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 Germans did a huge DungeonBypass by invading indirectly through Belgium.

Soon after the breakthrough, the entire British Expeditionary Force and the majority of the French Army were thus trapped near the French town of Dunkirk. With nowhere else to run, the British gathered everything that could float and rescued the near-entirety of the BEF and a good number of French troops. The Germans, meanwhile, were halted as ''Luftwaffe'' Commander-in-Chief Göring persuaded Hitler that his planes could annihilate the remaining Allied forces. This did not happen due to poor weather making aerial attacks difficult, and since then, the German Army began to distrust the ''Luftwaffe''. Despite this, the Allied defeat was total. Britain was ejected from the continent and, having left nearly all their equipment and heavy arms at Dunkirk, unable to redeploy their forces, giving the Germans free reign to maneuver in Western Europe. Less than ten days later, General UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and his 7th Panzer Division, who moved so quickly even Berlin lost track of them during the campaign, sent a message to army headquarters as they stood overlooking the English Channel: "Am at coast." The ''Wehrmacht'' then turned south to capture Paris, now an open city, before they were finally halted on June 22, when an armistice was signed between Germany and France.

* Free up soldiers for the real fight up in Belgium. France really needed this: she had lost so many younger men to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and the Spanish Flu that there was gaping hole in the manpower pool where the forty-something year-old men were supposed to be [[note]] While most of that class was still alive, a relatively large number were in technical or management positions: there were very few men this age who could be conscripted without harming the economy [[/note]]. Moreover another hole in the manpower pool was looming, the number of men turning 18 in the years 1932-7 being just half that of previous and subsequent years. Germany, Britain, and Italy also had these gaps but France's were (proportionally) bigger. Thus, she badly needed economy of manpower.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes Ardennes Forest]], south of the northern plains and north of the Maginot Line. The Ardennes isn't just a forest: its a rugged, hilly, wooded country with a couple of single-tracked railway lines and a few bad roads. This is not good tank country, and attacking through there with just half of Germany's forces would require every motor vehicle in Germany to have the slightest chance of keeping the advance supplied. In UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the French attempted to invade Germany through here (to cut off the German force that they anticipated would soon invade northern Belgium) and failed miserably.

Fun historical fact: you'd think that, after the Allies were defeated catastrophically by a surprise German attack through the Ardennes, they'd never fall for the same trick again, right? Well, that's only half right: in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Battle of the Bulge]], four and a half years later, the Germans managed to trick the Americans and launch a major surprise attack through the Ardennes (under the cover of fog and bad weather which grounded their air-forces), which the Americans considered a quiet region of the front and thus had sent weakened divisions there to recover. However, the Americans were better-armed and more numerous relative to their attackers than the French had been four years earlier and put up a much better fight. More importantly, ''this'' Allied commander (General Patton) correctly judged that this would be the main thrust of their offensive and rushed in so many troops (chiefly the US's Third Army) that the Allies soon had the attacking Germans outnumbered and out-gunned. Once their offensive had effectively been halted the Germans quickly withdrew as their positions were exposed and Hitler wanted their mobile formations dispatched to Hungary as quickly as possible so they could try to relieve The Siege of Budapest in ''Unternehmen Konrad''.

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.[[/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[[/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.

Also note: invading through the Ardennes had already been used by the French and Germans (simultaneously!) in World War I and went pretty badly for both sides, with the French invasion force being repelled with heavy losses and the German invasion force running out of food and horses at a ridiculous rate due to the area's poor infrastructure (and the French demolition of said infrastructure as they retreated) ...

A complicating factor that affected the French and British strategy was the loss of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael. If attacking across the Franco-German border would have been extraordinarily difficult, a direct assault on Eben Emael was insane. It was, at the time, the toughest nut in the world to crack, and its position was designed to further restrict German movement, designed to serve as an anchor for the planned Franco-British defensive position. The only problem was that no one considered the possibility that anyone would be crazy enough to try and land a small force of glider troops ''on top'' of the fortress. Which, of course, the Germans did, which allowed them to capture the fortress, forcing the British and French to scramble to reform a new defensive line. These glider troops (they didn't use parachutes) used an honest-to-God secret weapon, the shaped charge explosive, to blow up the artillery turrets. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome The action was so quick and swift that only a few men died on both sides]].