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.
Characteristics
Much more than a defensive wall, the 200-mile-long Maginot Line was really a string of connected fortresses with additional concrete, cast-iron, and steel gun emplacements and bunkers. There were underground tunnels, barracks, kitchens, ammunition dumps, and, externally, a forest of anti-tank obstacles. The line had two particularly strong points where the defences were more than usually heavily concentrated. These two places were the stretch between Longuyon and Teting (the Metz region) and between the Saar and Rhine rivers (the Lauter region).
The Maginot line fortresses (ouvrages) were designed to mutually protect each other, and so emplacements of concrete reinforced with steel were positioned at an angle so that they could give defensive fire to other emplacements. Some emplacements could descend into the ground and so be better protected when under artillery or air attack. This innovative design was the work of Colonel Bussière, who gave his retractable turrets the poetic name of tourelle à éclipse, likening their disappearance into the safety of the earth to a solar eclipse.
Guns used in the Maginot Line ranged from machine guns to 75mm artillery pieces to 135mm howitzers. Gun crews were trained much like on a naval vessel to create a close-knit and highly coordinated team that could fire off rounds accurately and rapidly. Some degree of protection for the non-retractable gun emplacements was provided by earthworks and camouflage, including living bushes and trees. If enemy tanks did approach, the emplacements were further protected by fields of metal girders driven vertically into the ground and reams of barbed wire.
The men garrisoned along the Maginot Line were protected from enemy artillery and bombs by bunkers set deep underground. The underground bunkers provided spacious accommodation, protection against gas attacks, and were stocked with enough provisions to last four weeks in isolation. Sophisticated optical periscopes allowed the soldiers a view of the exterior without ever leaving the safety of the bunkers. Underground narrow-gauge railways connected some of the casemates through a web of tunnels from several to up to 30 metres below the surface. Generators produced electricity to provide lighting and power the moveable turrets and provide the easy resupply of ammunition. Telephones provided communication with other turrets within the system.
The strength and new technical wonders of the Maginot Line were boasted of in the press, and the idea that it was a formidable, even impenetrable line of fortifications quickly took hold in the public imagination. As Gordon Waterfield, a British journalist in France at the time, remembers:
…the Maginot Line did a lot of harm, the whole idea that this was an impregnable fortress and that all we had to do was just sit there and wait for the Germans to come and shoot them down. I visited the Maginot Line and was really rather horrified by the effect it must have had on the soldiers.
(Holmes, 99)
The possible effect on morale of the almost total reliance on the Maginot Line defences was also noted by British (future) general Alan Brooke, who also visited the defences in person:
The most dangerous aspect is the psychological one: a sense of false security is engendered, a feeling sitting behind an impregnable iron fence; and should the defence perchance be broken, the French fighting spirit might be well brought crumbling with it.
(Gilbert, 56)
Breaching the Maginot Line
The German advance in 1940 involved two surprises. The first was that the attack used blitzkrieg tactics (‘lightning war’), which involved combining air and land forces deployed at speed against the enemy's weaker points on a narrow front. Stuka (Junkers Ju 87) dive bombers and tanks hit strategically important targets, knocking out such defences as artillery positions and wreaking havoc on transport and supply systems. Then motorised infantry divisions and mobile artillery support would follow up and overrun any remaining defenders. These tactics had already been used with great success in the invasion of Poland in 1939 and in the attack on Norway in April 1940.
The second surprise was where the German attack took place: the Ardennes of neutral Belgium. This region was heavily forested, and Allied military planners thought it highly unlikely the German Army would decide to penetrate through terrain seemingly unsuitable for tanks and trucks.
The German advance through the Low Countries and into France was hugely successful as the invaders performed a giant arc that cut off the Allied armies along the English Channel coast. The German attack then moved down, taking in Paris, and then swept back southeast to attack the Maginot Line from the western side, which was much less protected since most gun positions faced east. 30 French divisions had been placed here, and they became trapped between the German advance and the Maginot Line defences.
Unlike some other army groups which wilted under the Blitzkrieg, the 400,000 troops deployed in the Maginot Line put up a spirited defence and did not immediately surrender. German artillery and Stukas repeatedly bombarded some sections, but they withstood the onslaught so that none of the main fortresses fell into enemy hands. The line also faced attacks from the south. An Italian Army attacked the line in June 1940, but it failed to breach the fortifications. Unfortunately for the Allies, the admirable resistance of the Maginot Line was largely irrelevant since the main battles were being conducted elsewhere.
Surrender
The Maginot Line was finally breached at two points: Saarbrüken and Colmar. Although aerial bombing caused little damage since a direct hit was required, German 88mm artillery guns proved highly effective against the concrete fortifications when attacked at relatively close range. Another problem for the French was the lack of coordination between fortress complexes and the army, artillery, and the defenders around the Maginot Line. The French generals had spread out their tank units in a long defensive line, which was too thin to meet the German mass attacks through narrow fronts and inadequate to meet specific areas under attack.
Ultimately, the fighting at the Maginot Line was overshadowed by catastrophic losses elsewhere. Paris was captured on 14 June. The French government moved to Bordeaux and surrendered on 22 June. In the week following 27 June, French troops in the remaining fortresses of the Maginot Line surrendered.
The catastrophic Fall of France had taken just six weeks. As The Oxford Companion to World War II notes:
France [suffered] losses estimated at 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, and 1.9 million taken prisoners or missing…for a cost of 29,640 German dead (army and air force) and a total casualty figure of 163,213.
(326)
The Maginot Line had been circumvented, and France, incredibly, was all but removed from the war. The British Expeditionary Force, some 220,000 men, managed to extricate itself at the Dunkirk Evacuation, along with 120,000 French soldiers. From the safety of Britain, the Allies could at least rebuild and continue to fight a war that had started with disastrous defeats few had thought possible, even on the German side.
Later History
Parts of the Maginot Line returned to action later in the war. The German Army used parts of the line as a defence against advancing Allied armies in 1944. Later that year, as the front line shifted eastwards, the Ouvrage de Monte-Grosso at the southern end was restored and used again against German forces. Other parts of the line were restored in the 1940s and 1950s as a deterrent to invasion during the Cold War.
Today, around 20 different portions of the Maginot Line still exist and have been restored; some are open to the public, others are maintained by volunteer associations. One of the finest visitor centres is the Schoenenbourg Fort in Alsace, which also has a museum dedicated to the history of the fortifications.
