Maginot Line

The slaughter of French soldiers in the offensive operations of World War I haunted the nation, and France was unwilling and unable to assemble a large standing army after this terrible loss. Fortifications were therefore necessary to provide time for a general mobilization. Moreover, French generals had concluded from their victory at Verdun in 1916 that defenders always triumphed.

The Maginot Line was never tested. Its supposed impregnability lulled army leaders into complacency. They neither extended its fortifications along the French-Belgian frontier to the sea nor grasped the significance of the new German tank tactics that permitted Germany in 1940 to skirt the Maginot Line and break through the thin French defenses in the Ardennes.

Richard Bienvenu
University of Missouri