Quote:
Originally Posted by Penn
Pete, I understand the seriousness and the need to limit damage, but having worked in France, nothing could be more French, going to war with concrete, we all remember how well the Maginot line held back the German Blitzkrieg.
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Unfortunately, we all remember something inaccurate.
The Maginot Line's purpose wasn't to hold back the Germans. It was to force the Germans to attack around it, through the Low Countries, rather than across the German-French border. It was to force a replay of the Schlieffen Plan, or a variant thereof, whereby the Germans would invade Belgium and French and British forces would advance to meet them in a meeting engagement a la the Battle of Mons in World War I. The French weren't stupid, they were cynical, trying to fight the next war on Belgian soil rather than their own.
And the Maginot Line worked as planned. It forced the Germans to outflank it. German planners initially did plan a wheeling movement through Belgium, but after the plans were compromised the later Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, then serving on the Great General Staff, came up with the plan to move through the Ardennes, with the wheeling movement through Belgium as a feint to draw French and British forces north and cut them off with a penetration into their flank.
In hindsight, von Manstein's plan appears brilliant, but it was fraught with risks and relied on a lot of fortuitous developments. The Ardennes is terrible tank country, forcing German armored columns to rely on a few crowded roads to make their penetration. If the French and British had not been paralyzed by confusion in the early phases, they might have shifted their focus from Belgium and pinched the German penetration off, leaving Germany's best Panzer forces encircled. This would have especially been a possible scenario if the Belgian fortification line had held better, another German gamble that paid off, especially with the German seizure of Fort Eban Emael by coup de main.
Indeed, several French and British counterattacks did but the fear into the Germans of having their forces cut off, but Allied commanders failed to follow up operationally on these tactical successes.
That said, while the French armed forces did not view the Maginot Line purely defensively, many French civilians fell into that trap. So French politicians, looking for savings elsewhere after all the expenditures on the Maginot Line, did cut procurement of armor and transport necessary to make the maneuver force which was to meet the German attack effective. And on the tactical level, the French, with some exceptions like de Gaulle, failed to appreciate the tank as a cavalry weapon and parceled out their tanks primarily as infantry support weapons.
The French did get some measure of revenge a few years later. In Italy, the German Gustav Line across the Liri Valley, anchored on Monte Cassino, held off several major Allied offensives and an attempted end run at Anzio at the beginning of 1943. The final breakthrough of the line was brought about by Gen. Alphonse Juin's French Expeditionary Corps, serving in the U.S. Fifth Army. The French, leading experienced Moroccan and Algerian mountain troops, penetrated the flanks of the German line in the mountains on the southern flank of the Liri Valley, which the Germans considered relatively safe due to the difficult terrain. The French penetration facilitated US II Corps' breakthrough, and allowed Fifth Army to make a major push in what was initially supposed to be a mere supporting action to the British Eighth Army's frontal assault on the Gustav Line.
Sorry for the long rant, but the Maginot Line has long been a peeve of mine.