Summary: The Maginot Line was erected by the French along their Eastern--and most vulnerable--frontier, with the intent of protecting France from invasion by Hitler's Germany. A line of staggered defensive forts, anti-tank measures, and lookout posts, the Maginot Line was well-constructed and physically very difficult to traverse. Unfortunately, the Line was not complete: two major holes existed, the first along the Belgian border extending to the English Channel, and the second across the wide swath of forested land, the Ardennes, considered too thick for forces to pass through. At the start of World War II, anticipating an affront from the Germans, the French banked on Hitler's army attacking from the north, through the unprotected Belgian border. The majority of French forces were stationed in and around Belgium, with a paltry few stationed at the seemingly invulnerable Ardennes. Hitler split his army into two parts, sending some troops to Belgium, but the majority to the Ardennes. German forces broke through weak French defensives at Ardennes, and in a matter of days cut across France to trap the rest of the French troops near Belgium. The supposedly impenetrable Maginot Line had failed, and France fell to the Germans.
Related Links:
See where the Maginot Line is on a map.
Read a detailed account of the battles around the Maginot Line.
Read about André Maginot, the Line's namesake.
Details: France's northeasterly edge is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, neutral Switzerland, and Italy. At that time Belgium was an ally, and the immediate threat to France was Germany. With the Maginot Line, France hoped to create a relatively impenetrable line of defense along its vulnerable borders, giving French troops time to mobilize and providing a literal "wall" to hide behind. For the decade before the onset of World War II, it worked; in 1940, however, German troops gave France a run for its money.
Consisting of concrete walls interspersed with ouvrages, or main forts, the Maginot Line's walls were three and one-half meters thick and steel-reinforced, constructed to withstand three projectile hits in the same spot. Forward posts were built in two lines ahead of the main wall, serving to warn of enemy approach and delay their attack. Further back, between each forward post, were two-story casemates, each with a firing chamber and stocked with supplies. A crew of about thirty manned each casemate, some of which were joined by underground tunnels. Each casemate was also surrounded with anti-tank rails and barbed wire. Between each of these casemates were the ouvrages, which could contain anywhere from 500 to 1,200 men, depending on their size. Besides the main setup, the Maginot Line's sections were connected by telephone and railway service, service roads, and generators. There is little question that, before the advent of major air warfare and despite the Line's gaps, the Maginot was a forceful blockade against invasions.
The Line ran from the Mediterranean Sea up to the Alps in the south, and again from Switzerland up to the Ardennes--a forested, hilly region considered by the French to be impregnable. The only major gap besides that of the Ardennes was from the end of the northern portion of the Line to the English Channel; after Belgium broke its alliance with France, the Maginot Line was continued, but with less fortitude than the original portions, then dwindling out to an anti-tank ditch and some scattered blockhouses. Thus, the only region France saw as a potential threat that was not fortified by the Maginot Line was the northern frontier below the Liege region in Belgium, and this is where French military strategists assumed the Germans would attack.
Originally, Hitler's plan was just that--to attack with the majority of his troops through the Liege region. Midway through the strategic planning, however, the Germans decided to redistribute troops in favor of the Ardennes: the Liege attack, led by Col. Gen. Fedor von Bock, was downsized to twenty-eight divisions (three of them armored), and the Ardennes attack, led by Col. Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, was pumped up to forty-four divisions (seven of them armored). The French continued to bank on a northern attack, placing only two weak divisions at the still seemingly inpenetrable Ardennes. Another key event bolstered this view: Two German officers were forced to down their plane in Belgium, and with them the Belgians found the German's plans for the invasion--but unfortunately, the plans were only for the air attack, and did not include ground maneuvers. This finding inadvertently strengthened the French theory that the attack would be from the north.
Anticipating the Germans' move, Allied troops from Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, moved into Belgium. The Germans moved first into the Netherlands, where it took them only five days to defeat Dutch troops--who surrendered officially on May 14--and head into Belgium. The German forces attacked there first, with the second group moving south towards the Ardennes. Strong fighting in the north came before any trace of hostility was visible in the south, giving even more support to the French theory of a northern German attack--what the French missed was von Rundstedt's troops, slowly but surely advancing through the "impassable" Ardennes woods. This group was to push through into France and then move westward towards the English Channel, blocking the Allied troops in Belgium. French positioning for the German attack was not only wrong in terms of numbers, but also in the placement of units within each army. The strongest forces were invariably positioned along the Maginot Line, with weaker troops flanking them to defend the sides. When von Rundstedt's troops moved west, the weaker troops were the ones they encountered--and suffice it to say, they were easily put down. It took German forces only eleven days to move in through the Ardennes and press westward to the coast of the English Channel.
The French had other weaknesses in their military body. The so-called "Maginot mentality" that the Line was impregnable may have contributed to the French military's rather sedate attitude towards updating their equipment. France's relative ignorance of modern tactics and only token use of tanks and planes put the German forces at an advantage in terms of power and maneuvering capabilities. Although Allied troops numbered nearly double that of the German troops, the two forces were nearly equal in terms of tanks and fighter planes. France's major weakness lay in its lack of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons--the two things they perhaps needed most against the Germans.
