The Maginot line, symbol of the defeat of 40

A consequence of the First World War

At the end of the First World War, France had to completely review its military strategy. Indeed, the experience of war consecrates a radical change in the way of waging war :with the appearance of the air force, the armored army and the development of a plethoric and extremely destructive artillery, the simple soldier on foot finds himself very helpless, as evidenced by the frightening losses of the French army during all the war. The strategy of the all-out offensive that had been that of the French general staff in 1914 is no longer viable, and a new strategy must therefore be defined.

In the early 1920s, two rival doctrines confront each other in this way:that of Foch who advocates the creation of a rapidly mobilisable mobile army, and that of Joffre and especially Pétain that experience of war has convinced that a continuous defensive front is invulnerable and that it it is therefore on the latter that the defense of France must rely.

Additionally, the Treaty of Versailles returned Alsace and Lorraine to France. These new territories, rich and densely populated, will therefore necessarily have to be taken into account in the new French defense policy , because the old line of forts that runs from Montmédy to Belfort cannot ensure the defense of these territories in the event of a new war, a war the fear of which constantly haunts the French general staff.

The First World War also allowed a rehabilitation of the fortifications. Indeed, the rapid fall of the Belgian forts in the first days of August 1914 had convinced the general staff of the vanity of this kind of fortifications and had had the forts disarmed. This is why the dozens of forts Séré de Rivières built in the 1880s were practically not used during the first phase of the war, and why the troops moved far ahead of the forts in contact with the Germans, this is also why the forts fell so quickly to the Germans in the early days of the Battle of Verdun.

But it is this same battle which will allow the rehabilitation of the fortification:the resistance of the fort of Vaux, the important role of the fort of Souville during the battle will make make the general staff aware of the usefulness of fortifications, and the lessons learned from this battle will be crucial in the years to come. The new strategy will therefore be resolutely defensive, it will rely on massive fortifications housing effective artillery.

The new French fortifications will therefore be built according to these principles:protection of the border from the North-East facing Germany and from the South-East facing Italy following the principle of the continuous front in order to establish a line of fire without interruption all along the fortifications. The backbone of the system will be made up of deeply buried fortified structures, the various organs of which will be as dispersed as possible and equipped with equipment allowing the crews to live and fight for months without having any contact with the outside world. Here is the device whose construction will be entrusted from 1922 to the Commission for the Defense of the Territory (CDT) then to the Commission for the Defense of Borders (CDF).

Building the Maginot Line

These two commissions will be responsible for defining the nature and layout of the new fortifications. On the other hand, they will not be the ones who will implement the construction of the fortifications, it is only a question of a body of reflection where different conceptions of the fortification will oppose each other. At the end of 1925, the Superior War Council approved the report of the commission which provided for the construction of a discontinuous system of fortifications , and this from time of peace. The project presented in November of the following year provides for the creation of 3 fortified regions – that is to say 3 continuous lines of fortifications separated by non-fortified spaces such as the fortified curtains of Séré de Rivières – centered around Metz , the Lauter valley and Belfort as well as fortified positions behind the main positions. This project is gradually reduced to reach the final project of 1929 which provides for the creation of 2 fortified regions (Metz and Lauter), a specific line of defense along the Rhine in Alsace as well as the defensive organization of the Alps.

In 1927, the Commission for the Organization of Fortified Regions (CORF) was created. Its role will be to implement the decisions of the CDF and it is she who will be the main architect of the Maginot line. Comprising the best specialists of the three arms concerned by the Maginot line – artillery, infantry and engineers – it will be responsible for establishing the tdefinitive list of positions , implement the sites and equipment. The CORF created regional delegations in Metz and Strasbourg to which the local engineering chiefdoms (Thionville, Bitche, Mulhouse, Belfort, Nice, among others) will be subordinate. The immensity of the task, the enormity of the sites, the number of technical problems, the overwhelming responsibility left to the charge of the technicians and officers who worked on this gigantic work required calling on the scientific and technical elite of the country. .

All that remains is to have the project approved by the political institutions. The CORF project was approved by the Council of Ministers in early 1929. When André Maginot succeeded Paul Painlevé at the Ministry of War at the end of 1929, he was responsible for taking over the file. It is he who gets the project voted on in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, where it will be approved by more than 90% of the votes. On January 14, 1930, he passed a law providing for the allocation of 2.9 billion francs over 5 years to fortification sites. But, in fact, the work has already started a long time ago.

At the end of 1928, the first work of the Maginot line is put in construction :this is the work of the Rimplas, in the Alps, facing Italy, while most of the fortifications will then be turned towards Germany. Most of the major works in the North-East were started in 1929. The blocks were poured and reinforced between 1929 and 1934. Most of the works were operational from 1935, even if many works still had to be carried out to improve comfort in particular. inside the works. At the same time, hundreds of casemates and thousands of small blockhouses were built according to the plans of the CORF and millions of rails were planted in order to establish a huge anti-tank barrier along the North-East border. In 1936, most of the Maginot Line was built and operational, and the CORF was dissolved, which did not mean, however, that the construction of the Maginot Line ceased.

Budgetary and technical constraints

Throughout construction, CORF was under constant budget pressure, either because of unforeseen expenses due in particular to certain soils requiring special arrangements, or also because of the very high inflation in these years. For these reasons, the ambitions of the CORF had to be constantly revised downwards, which means abandoning the construction of certain blocks, certain casemates, or even certain entire works. This created serious weaknesses in certain sectors.

In 1934, however, a second installment was launched to equip certain sectors abandoned by the first phase of work:the border with Belgium was thus fortified from Longuyon to Willy and the region of Faulquemont. But the works built in this second period benefited from a much lower budget and were therefore of much lower quality than the works built in the previous period.

After the end of the CORF mandate in 1936, the construction of the Maginot Line continued under the aegis of the Main d'Œuvre Militaire (MOM) or Technical Services (STG) of each region, according to plans drawn up by the officers present on site. These late achievements will suffer not only from a significant lack of means but above all from a flagrant lack of coherence, given that each sector followed plans drawn up by the officers of the sector whose tactics could differ radically from those of the neighboring sector. These building campaigns isolated will not cease with the declaration of war and will sometimes continue until June 1940. In parallel with the actual construction, a campaign of technical innovation had to be launched to equip the new fortifications.

As early as 1936, France had a brand new and seemingly invulnerable system of fortifications. The years that followed and in particular, of course, the outbreak of the Second World War gave the opportunity to the Maginot Line to prove his qualities in battle. Indeed, the Maginot Line played a real strategic role in the French campaign, a role that is often unknown to the general public today even though the fighting that took place there was very violent.

The Maginot line in the war

As soon as the large works are put into service, they are occupied by specialized troops created for the occasion, the fortress troops, comprising detachments of infantry, artillery and Genius. These troops are stationed in peacetime in barracks at the rear of the works which they occupy at the slightest warning. Thus, even before the declaration of war in September 1939, the Maginot Line will be put on alert several times according to the convulsions of Franco-German diplomatic relations. This will notably be the case during the remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 or the Anschluss in March 1938. However, on August 23, 1939, when the reservists are put on alert, the occupation will be final. During the fall and winter of 1939-1940, as on the rest of the front, no notable event took place on the Maginot Line except for a few skirmishes and some aerial combat. Half of the French army – the 3rd, 5th and 8th armies – massed behind the line will be totally passive during these nine months of phoney war.

On May 10, 1940, the German army launched its major offensive against Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France. The French army stationed behind the Belgian border immediately rushes to meet the Wehrmacht troops in Belgium while the troops of the Maginot line remain in their positions. In fact, in the first days of the campaign, the battlefield will remain far from the Maginot line.

The first significant contact between the German army and the fortifications of the Maginot line took place on May 16, 1940 at level of the Ferté structure, near Montmédy. It is a small work of lesser quality built from 1934, but it is the first work of the Maginot line that the Germans will have the opportunity to attack. They will therefore put all the chances on their side and unleash on the two casemates a deluge of shells which the modest work is absolutely not able to resist. Three days of incessant bombardment drowned the interior of the structure in smoke and caused the death by asphyxiation of the 107 soldiers of the crew.

Apart from this tragic episode, most of the Maginot Line remained away from the main axes of the German offensive. Fearing the resistance of the fortifications, the Germans only very late launched attacks against the line itself. In reality, it was necessary to wait for the beginning of the evacuation of the troops from the Maginot line, after Weygand had given his order for the general withdrawal of the army, on June 12, for the Germans to decide to attack the Maginot line. On this date, the French army was already defeated and could no longer offer effective resistance to the Wehrmacht. The troops of the Maginot Line then remained the only body of the French army to still hold their positions and still possess all their armament and equipment.

However, when the Germans launched their first major offensive against the Maginot Line, the majority of its garrison troops were still in place. The Wehrmacht chose to attack in the Saar Valley. The Maginot line here consists of a series of small casemates and large artificial bodies of water created to form a line of defence. On June 14, 1940, after an artillery and aviation bombardment, the Germans launched an assault on the fortified line.

Fighting rages all day in the woods of the Saar Valley. In the evening, the French troops, reinforced by some Polish units, succeeded in repelling the Germans at the cost of 500 dead. The Wehrmacht lost more than 1,000 men. Paradoxically, it was the greatest French victory of the 1940 campaign, won on the very day of the fall of Paris.

But this is a one-shot victory. The Sarre troops, like the rest of the French army, had to fall back and almost immediately left the positions they had fiercely defended on June 14. The Germans can therefore pass without incident. The general withdrawal of all the field troops will leave the Maginot line with only 22,000 defenders from Luxembourg to Switzerland.

From then on, the Germans were able to take advantage of this gap which cut through the Maginot line to encircle it. Soon, most of the fortified works find themselves attacked from all sides. On June 15, the German army launched an offensive on the corner of the Maginot line in Lower Alsace. For several days, the Germans will try to cross the line of fortifications, but they will fail. On June 19, a new German attack was launched in the Vosges. The ridge of the mountain range is defended only by a series of small casemates which the withdrawal of the field artillery has deprived of all support. They can therefore only resist hard before being taken. On June 16, the Germans had also taken advantage of the French withdrawal into the Rhine valley to launch a daring amphibious operation. In a state of very strong numerical inferiority and almost without artillery support, the French could only fight a battle of delay before withdrawing little by little. The fighting will however rage until the entry into force of the armistice signed between France and Germany on June 22.

Fighting isn't just happening in the Northeast, though. On June 10, 1940, Italy had declared war on France and launched an offensive against the French fortifications in the Alps. Despite a significant numerical superiority, the Italian advance was laborious and experienced great difficulties due in particular to the effectiveness of the fortifications of the Maginot Line of the Alps.

After the armistice

When the armistice came into effect on June 24, 1940, the Maginot Line was largely intact. No large works of artillery surrendered to the Germans. Some casemates and small works surrendered to the Wehrmacht from June 20 but neither the artillery - the Germans used 420mm guns - nor the aerial bombardments succeeded in putting the concrete fortresses out of harm's way. and steel. When the fighting stops, the two enemies remain face to face and the situation will turn out to be quite tricky to resolve. According to the laws of war, the troops of the Maginot line being undefeated, they must be able to withdraw without being imprisoned, which the Germans refuse. The French negotiators at the armistice commission are forced to give in.

For several days, a French military delegation carrying orders from the government will therefore tour all the works of the Maginot line to organize the surrender and the departure into captivity of all the garrisons. The 1 ^st July 1940, the 22,000 defenders of the Maginot line will leave their works to hand them over to the Germans. Like two million French soldiers, they will live almost five years of captivity in Germany.

During the Occupation, the Germans took advantage of the potential of the Maginot Line. Some works are used to test new German weapons, others become veritable underground war factories sheltered from Allied bombing.

As the prospect of an Allied attack on Europe grew more and more likely, the Germans hatched grand plans to turn the Maginot Line around and make it a vast line of defense facing west. But, when the Americans came into contact with the rear of the Maginot line, in October 1944, no notable modification had been made by the Germans. In some places, the Maginot line will hinder the Allied advance but it does not play a real strategic role during this campaign. Before leaving certain works, the Germans will sometimes carry out destruction with explosives.

The progressive abandonment of the Maginot line

Once peace returns, the Maginot line is not disused. It now occupies a place in NATO's strategy since it is envisaged as a line of defense against a possible Soviet offensive on Western Europe. However, if the Maginot line had been at the forefront of military technology in 1939-1940, it was totally outdated in the face of new artillery equipment, at the time of the Cold War and the atomic bomb.

During the 1960s, the Maginot line was gradually abandoned by the army. Many works are purely and simply abandoned and fall into oblivion. Others are still occupied by the army today, in particular the Hochwald structure in Alsace, which today houses one of the largest radar bases in Europe. Others finally were acquired by associations of amateurs who restored them and opened them to the public. It is now possible to visit some of these places which played an important although too often overlooked role during the 1940 campaign. The fortress troops will have finally lived up to their corps' motto "On ne passe pas".

Bibliography

- The story of the Maginot line by Jean-Pascal Soudagne, Ouest-France, 2010.

- The Maginot Line:Conception, realization, destiny, of Henri Ortholan. Editions Bernard Giovanangeli, 2019

- THE MAGINOT LINE, THIS UNKNOWN BY PIERRE MARTIN - PIERRE GRAIN. Publibook, 2009.