Excalibur Squadron OOC - European Tour '39 - CLOSED

[The Tiger Kingdom]

My policy on that for Page, for now, is to hold off on the backstory in the interests of pacing and bring it in more gradually over time, my natural instinct is to do ALL BACKSTORY at the start as well

Fair enough, not posted everything.

Not criticizing - it more comes from me just not wanting to write all that shit down again right now

[Morrdh]

Fair enough, not posted everything.

Not criticizing - it more comes from me just not wanting to write all that shit down again right now

Regardless, looks like Wade and Talbot might've already met....

[Alversia]

Not criticizing - it more comes from me just not wanting to write all that shit down again right now

Regardless, looks like Wade and Talbot might've already met....

Likewise not criticizing, just observing what works for me.

It does seem like a few of the pilots were in Spain together...what are the odds that at least some crossed paths at some point?

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Entirely off topic; I'm very interested to hear how the Maginot Line was anything other than a waste of time and money

Difficult to say. The Maginot line did allow France to field her most experienced, well-equipped armies in Belgium. This gave the British and French forces time to evacuate from Dunkirk. Had Britain lost her armies in Dunkirk, it would be reasonable to see Britain suing for peace with Hitler on his terms.

[Goram]

My policy on that for Page, for now, is to hold off on the backstory in the interests of pacing and bring it in more gradually over time, my natural instinct is to do ALL BACKSTORY at the start as well

It's much more fun to reveal backstory over time. Hold on to it until it'll have the most impact.

Entirely off topic; I'm very interested to hear how the Maginot Line was anything other than a waste of time and money

I'm sure Tiger will elaborate, but it did exactly what it was supposed to do. The Allies expected the Germans to outflank it, rather than attempt an assault. They had planned for that eventuality and moved against it.

There's a lot of reasons for the frankly unbelievable Allied collapse, but I'm not sure the Maginot Line deserves the reputation it's now got.

[Len Hyet]

I'm gonna post I swear

[Alversia]

It's much more fun to reveal backstory over time. Hold on to it until it'll have the most impact.

Entirely off topic; I'm very interested to hear how the Maginot Line was anything other than a waste of time and money

I'm sure Tiger will elaborate, but it did exactly what it was supposed to do. The Allies expected the Germans to outflank it, rather than attempt an assault. They had planned for that eventuality and moved against it.

There's a lot of reasons for the frankly unbelievable Allied collapse, but I'm not sure the Maginot Line deserves the reputation it's now got.

I agree, the Maginot Line doesn't deserve a lot of the hate it gets but there's no denying it was a massive investment in funds that could have been spent modernizing the French Army. And I would argue that the Germans bypassing it undermined French morale somewhat and allowed a certain complacent attitude to set in.

[Len Hyet]

I'm sure Tiger will elaborate, but it did exactly what it was supposed to do. The Allies expected the Germans to outflank it, rather than attempt an assault. They had planned for that eventuality and moved against it.

There's a lot of reasons for the frankly unbelievable Allied collapse, but I'm not sure the Maginot Line deserves the reputation it's now got.

I agree, the Maginot Line doesn't deserve a lot of the hate it gets but there's no denying it was a massive investment in funds that could have been spent modernizing the French Army. And I would argue that the Germans bypassing it undermined French morale somewhat and allowed a certain complacent attitude to set in.

As I recall the plan was for the Maginot Line to link up with a similar series of defenses along the Belgian border, but the Belgians never got around to building them.

[Alversia]

I agree, the Maginot Line doesn't deserve a lot of the hate it gets but there's no denying it was a massive investment in funds that could have been spent modernizing the French Army. And I would argue that the Germans bypassing it undermined French morale somewhat and allowed a certain complacent attitude to set in.

As I recall the plan was for the Maginot Line to link up with a similar series of defenses along the Belgian border, but the Belgians never got around to building them.

I heard the same, I also heard they wanted to build all along the Belgian/French border as well but the Belgians weren't keen for obvious reasons.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

As I recall the plan was for the Maginot Line to link up with a similar series of defenses along the Belgian border, but the Belgians never got around to building them.

I heard the same, I also heard they wanted to build all along the Belgian/French border as well but the Belgians weren't keen for obvious reasons.

There are lots of other exciting factors too
I hope you like 20-page analyses of the Northern French water table/typical river flood patterns

[Bakra]

So. I recently found out that Marine aviators trained in the 1920s and early 1930s were heavily educated and drilled in ground attack tactics (notably the earliest, dedicated successes in dive bombing) as a result of the Banana Wars. Tiger, would it be ok to add in "ground attack/dive bombing" as part of Chee's specialties?

EDIT: It also occurred to me that he should know some Mandarin or Cantonese if he trained Chinese pilots. Could I shamelessly put that in too?

[Morrdh]

EDIT: It also occurred to me that he should know some Mandarin or Cantonese if he trained Chinese pilots. Could I shamelessly put that in too?

I should add those for Wade, along with 'Pigeon Japanese', since he spent time flying in China.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

So. I recently found out that Marine aviators trained in the 1920s and early 1930s were heavily educated and drilled in ground attack tactics (notably the earliest, dedicated successes in dive bombing) as a result of the Banana Wars. Tiger, would it be ok to add in "ground attack/dive bombing" as part of Chee's specialties?

Sure, that seems a good fit.

EDIT: It also occurred to me that he should know some Mandarin or Cantonese if he trained Chinese pilots. Could I shamelessly put that in too?

From what little I know about US liaison work in China, it's most likely he knew Pidgin Chinese and worked with translators. Actual Chinese fluency was vanishingly rare.

[Grenartia]

So. I recently found out that Marine aviators trained in the 1920s and early 1930s were heavily educated and drilled in ground attack tactics (notably the earliest, dedicated successes in dive bombing) as a result of the Banana Wars. Tiger, would it be ok to add in "ground attack/dive bombing" as part of Chee's specialties?

EDIT: It also occurred to me that he should know some Mandarin or Cantonese if he trained Chinese pilots. Could I shamelessly put that in too?

See, I gave Jimmy some knowledge of that in the backstory because of an aviator that transferred to Army Air.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

I can't progress on the IC until I finish my Maginot Line apologia tonight, so you really have nobody to blame but yourselves for this

[Grenartia]

I can't progress on the IC until I finish my Maginot Line apologia tonight, so you really have nobody to blame but yourselves for this

Fair enough, Tig. Fair enough.

[Alversia]

I can't progress on the IC until I finish my Maginot Line apologia tonight, so you really have nobody to blame but yourselves for this

Worth it.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

catch these hands

The First World War ended officially in 1919 with the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Almost immediately, the French government was confronted with the political necessity of undertaking measures to assure that France would not be endangered by some hypothetical future outbreak of German aggression. The problem with this was that already, the French geopolitical situation was changing in ways that forced the French leaders to anticipate a profoundly different strategic situation than the one they had faced in 1914.

The clear issue was the security of the border, which demanded some degree of fortification. French military leaders were divided on how this should be accomplished. Some generals, lead by a General Buat, literally wanted to build continuous fortifications - a Great Wall of France - across the entire border, to be maintained in perpetuity and which would simply wall France's entire European frontier off. This would have been apocalyptically expensive, and would probably serve to totally alienate the Low Countries, who were carefully teetering in the balance between the Allied and German spheres of interest. France walling itself off completely from them would probably send Belgium and Holland directly into the hands of the Germans.

Another camp, favored by Marshal Philippe Petain (who was at this point not a senile traitor, but the French equivalent of George Washington fused with Douglas MacArthur and Jesus Christ, multiplied by ten), who instead favored the establishment of a network of fortresses along the frontier, which could be mutually supporting but were not necessarily all one continuous "line". These forts would be impregnable and heavily armed, intended to provide "islands of resistance" that could withstand direct assault or prolonged siege, channeling enemy attacks into preordained pathways where they could be isolated, cut off, and destroyed in detail. This was merely ruinously expensive, so it was the preferred option.


_{Always a good sign when your Supreme Commander unironically speaks of himself as the "physical embodiment of France".}

The move towards a hard defense on the borderline was a remarkable strategic shift for France. Historically, the natural French defense strategy was to retreat into the interior and defend along the natural riverlines. This was because, with the exception of the Vosges Mountains and foothills on the direct Franco-German border), the French frontier was wide open, flat, and heavily populated - not the kind of place that would be the easiest to defend. French attempts during the First World War to stop the German advance at the edge of their state by vigorous offensive action had ended disastrously at the Battle of the Frontiers in 1914. France had won the war with a defense-in-depth strategy that had traded space (and lives) for time at battles like the First Marne and Verdun. But such a strategy was not practical anymore. The concept of planning for a future war wherein France would endure similar losses as seen at Verdun or the Marne was a total political impossibility, as well as a physical impossibility - France just wouldn't have the men to carry such a strategy out.

In addition, a new factor had been added to the equation. The new provinces that had been added to France as a result of the Versailles Treaty in Alsace and Lorraine, sitting directly along the Franco-German border, were extremely resource-rich (especially in metals and resources that were militarily valuable), and had already become cornerstones of the French economy. A defense-in-depth strategy would abandon these provinces to the Germans and fundamentally undercut the French capacity to wage war.

So the French counter-strategy against a German invasion could not be carried out within French borders. It was perceived as politically, economically, and militarily impossible. It would need to come either on the borders themselves, or on some kind of neutral ground - meaning Belgium or Switzerland. Dealing with this issue, more than anything else, would be France's thorniest issue in regards to its defense - and would ultimately be its true undoing.


_{Way to editorialize, map key.}

Construction of the Maginot fortifications began in 1928, with the prime focus placed on fortifying those same resource-rich Alsatian regions. These would of course, be the closest regions to any prospective German advance. These fortifications were the ultimate apex of everything that the French military had learned after four bitter years of trench warfare, and were masterpieces of defensive engineering. Miles and miles of ground were extensively surveyed. Forts and subforts were painstakingly sited at angles and in locations where dead ground would be at an absolute minimum, and to where each fortification could support each other by interlocking fields of fire that extended for miles. The forts were outfitted with the best weaponry the French military had to offer, including heavy artillery and copious numbers of machine guns, backed by redundant power and telephone connections, living quarters, infirmaries, and transit systems, all buried deep underground where German bombs and shells couldn't get to them.


_{Sorry, Fritz - you're out of luck!}

But infamously, of course, the Maginot Line extended only from the northwestern tip of the Franco-Swiss border to the easternmost edge of the Franco-Luxembourgish border, meaning that the Belgian frontier was uncovered. French politicians had argued long and hard over the exact borders of the Maginot Line, and where it ought to conclude. Some, veterans of the "Great Wall of France" fights, argued that the Line needed to go all the way to the English Channel in order to truly guarantee French safety, forming a sort of compromise between the Buatists and the Petainists - the Petain strategy on Buat's scale.

But this could not have happened, for a number of reasons. The first was the simple geographic reality of Northern France. If you've ever read anything about the First World War, the endless horror stories of the mud of Flanders, Verdun, and Passchaendaele reveal the first reason - the French countryside is muddy as hell. This is because, thanks to all those beautiful rivers and the English channel right nearby, the water table in Northern France is very high. This would mean that, unlike the nice dry rocky Vosges mountains on the Franco-German border, building Maginot-style fortifications across the northern frontier would be exponentially more expensive than they had been in the Vosges, and that would simply have bankrupted the French military. In addition, the aforementioned difficulties with the Belgians would have come into play, meaning that the border had to be left uncovered so as to reassure the Belgians that they would be protected from Germany in the event of war, and to allow French troops to easily move forwards into Belgium should a war break out.

But this was all according to plan.

It was here, along the Belgian frontier, that what the French were really trying to do was made apparent. With the Maginot Line guarding the direct German invasion route - the "traditional" route - and the mountains of Switzerland being effectively impassable to any invading force, the Germans would be left with only one viable pathway into French territory: through Belgium. This was perfect for the French. The Germans invading through neutral, helpless Belgium - a gallant ally in the First World War, of course, and still fielding a small but well-equipped Army - would shock the world and guarantee British help, just like it had in the Great War. It would buy time for the French to mobilize their reserves and put their full army into the field - just a handful of days would theoretically be enough. And finally, it would allow the French to mount a defense against the Germans on somebody else's land, without endangering their own territories. This was quite appealing.

The plan was thus: In the event of war, the Germans would be stymied by the Maginot Line and forced to contemplate an invasion of Belgium to get into France. They would, presumably, invade Belgium, scandalizing the world and mobilizing global opinion. At this point, France's best armies - which would be stacked up along the Franco-Belgian border, along with whatever British forces were in the area - would move up and scramble like hell into Belgium. Their ultimate end-goal would depend on the speed of the German advance. If the Germans were very fast, the defensive line would be set up along the Scheldt River in Eastern Belgium, which would preserve a small Belgian foothold, retain the port of Antwerp and the Scheldt Estuary, and prevent the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine from seizing the Belgian coast. If the Germans were very slow, the Allies would aim for the line of the Albert Canal, which would allow a whopping 70% of Belgium to be shielded behind the Allied armies. And for the most likely eventuality - which would be the Germans advancing at a moderate speed - the Allies would set up at the Dyle River, in the middle of Belgium, just short of Brussels. This latter plan, known as the "Dyle Plan" or "Plan D", was the bedrock of all Allied joint planning for almost a decade. Of course, this all depended on a pliable Belgian government, but the French were sure they would come around (they didn't).

The Allied plan would look, in sum, like a giant door literally swinging shut on the German advance. The Allies would make a massive northeastern pivot, swinging into line along some Belgian river and then setting up along the new line to dig in and wait for the Germans to come to them. At that point, so the thinking went, the war was basically over. The Germans would be checkmated, unable to advance past the Maginot Line or through the combined French/Belgian/British armies all condensed together along an easily-defendable river. All that was left was for the Allies to run out the clock as the burden of sustaining the massive German war machine, coupled with popular and military discontent over an immobile and unsuccessful war, brought the Nazi government down, 1918-style.


_{Home by Christmas?}

Of course, that didn't happen. The Germans moved more quickly than anyone thought possible, through a region that most thought was basically impassable (and, crucially, the defense of which by the French and Belgians was both a) planned and b) never actually implemented). The French launched forwards into Belgium, only to discover that the battle wasn't really on the plains of central Belgium but in the forests to the east, and that they had been cut off by surprise. By the time this was realized and accepted by the Allied high command, it was too late to do anything about it.
But none of that hinged on the Maginot Line's mere existence or "failure" as a concept.

As a corollary, the Maginot Line's actual combat record was fundamentally impeccable. Of the 47 enumerated individual forts that comprised the Maginot Line, 42 of them survived the Battle of France untouched and unconquered. The first one that was taken by German forces - Villy-Laferte - was probably on balance the single smallest and weakest fort, manned by only about a hundred men and outfitted with half the typical defenses of a full fort, and held out for three full days with absolutely no outside support against a much larger German assault force. The remainder fell because, more than anything else, of the complete collapse of the French command-and-control system by that point, rendering French reserve troops and armor helpless to intervene to assist (which had been counted on in the original plan). The southern Maginot Line, facing Italy along the Alpes-Maritimes, was never breached at all.


_{Charts of the forts in the Montmedy area, including Villy Laferte, where the entire garrison was wiped out by German incendiary attack. Armored support was actually available, but the French command denied the request. We'll hear about all that later as well.}

To sum up, the Maginot Line failed in neither of its intended goals, those being 1) to ensure the Franco-German border was rendered impassable (it was) 2) to funnel any subsequent German advances into Belgium rather than France (it did) and 3) to minimize the number of French troops needed to hold the frontier (it did). When it was actually tested in combat, it did exceedingly well, despite the fact that its fortresses had no air support, armored support, reinforcements, or mutual fire support. The fact that the French defense failed was due to literally half a dozen different reasons, all of which are more fascinating than "the French don't know how walls work".

People chuckle about the Line like the French never conceived of anybody *going around * it, when the entire concept of the Line was to force people to go around it. The failpoint was that the Allied leadership (don't forget that the British were as complicit in this as the French were) failed to consider the idea that the Ardennes sector of Belgium was passable by motorized forces, and that nobody had any idea of what the fuck to do if the Germans tried anything even remotely tricky. The Maginot Line is also blamed (most frequently by British sources) for fostering a "defensive mentality" among the French populace and leadership, and that's not really true either. That mentality predated the Line and was manifested through it - the mentality was created by the fact that the French, more than any other nation (apart from Imperial Russia, which had died of its wounds), were among the most prominent victims of the First World War, being made to suffer casualties at an unimaginable rate and only saved through extreme defensive efforts after years of offensives and "offensive spirit" had only resulted in millions of dead French soldiers sprawled out in front of German machine guns.
To blame the French for having a "defensive mentality" is to essentially blame the French for learning the correct lesson from the First World War.

The idea that the Line was a waste of money or resources that could have been used more productively is also somewhat confusing, although impossible to actually prove. For one, the Line arguably saved resources. If it wasn't there, the French would have had to devote a much bigger proportion of their Army to guarding the Franco-German sectors, with correspondingly higher manpower and industrial pressures, and correspondingly negative effects on the French budget and military resources. The Line's construction probably cost more, but it cannot be dismissed as a "waste", either - had there been no line in 1940, it's easy to imagine a circumstance in which France would have perhaps fallen even faster under combined thrusts in Holland, Belgium, and along the frontier.

The French military's development didn't exactly suffer either as a result of the Line's construction. As has been proven by multiple other sources, Allied armor in 1940 actually outnumbered the Germans at basically all times (approx. 3500 Allied armored vehicles were in the field as opposed to 2400 or so Panzers), and were on average better machines than the tanks the Germans were fielding. French aircraft were roughly equal to most German aircraft on a qualitative basis, with the Dewoitine D520 just coming into production being a rough match for the ME109. And while the Allies were outnumbered in the aerial battles of May-June 1940 (although not nearly as badly as many sources claim), that was due to far different reasons that because of a lack of funding 8-12 years prior to the actual outbreak of the war due to the construction of the Line.

I'll close on a fairly simple point: most English-language WW2 history does a really, really poor job in characterizing the strategies, ideas, and perspectives of non-English-speaking countries (with the notable exception of Germany, on whose behalf American and British historians are endlessly willing to expound upon). This is really frequently seen in the combat experiences of countries like France, Russia, Italy, China, and other Allies and Axis nations. Most of these countries, if they're addressed at all in the conventional histories, are dealt with only selectively, and frequently in terms of cliches and oversimplified narratives that date from a handful of showpiece sources (like Mitsuo Fuchida, on behalf of Japan), or from assumptions made by historians from the America-Britain axis who are generally pretty eager to just endlessly rehash D-Day and Iwo Jima and kinda gloss over the rest of the war, especially the parts that they didn't get directly involved in. Analysis of the 1939-40 French war effort falls squarely in that particular void, which is unfortunate, because it's real interesting in a sort of weird alt-history kind of way (in addition to its own historical value, which is obviously self-evident).

"So, Tiger," I can already hear you chuckling indulgently, "if the Maginot Line was such a good idea, tell me - why did France lose the war in 1940, really?"

We'll explore that in detail later. But rest assured - it wasn't because of the Maginot Line.

[Alversia]

I take my hat off to you, Sir. That was an excellent read and well worth waiting for. I like to think I learned a few things today.

The only thing I would contest is that the quality of French aircraft was equal to that of the Luftwaffe. With the exception of the D.520, I'm led to believe most of them were under-powered pieces of muck.

Other than that, bravo.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

That's absolutely great!

Now, advance the IC

[Grenartia]

catch these hands

The First World War ended officially in 1919 with the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Almost immediately, the French government was confronted with the political necessity of undertaking measures to assure that France would not be endangered by some hypothetical future outbreak of German aggression. The problem with this was that already, the French geopolitical situation was changing in ways that forced the French leaders to anticipate a profoundly different strategic situation than the one they had faced in 1914.

The clear issue was the security of the border, which demanded some degree of fortification. French military leaders were divided on how this should be accomplished. Some generals, lead by a General Buat, literally wanted to build continuous fortifications - a Great Wall of France - across the entire border, to be maintained in perpetuity and which would simply wall France's entire European frontier off. This would have been apocalyptically expensive, and would probably serve to totally alienate the Low Countries, who were carefully teetering in the balance between the Allied and German spheres of interest. France walling itself off completely from them would probably send Belgium and Holland directly into the hands of the Germans.

Another camp, favored by Marshal Philippe Petain (who was at this point not a senile traitor, but the French equivalent of George Washington fused with Douglas MacArthur and Jesus Christ, multiplied by ten), who instead favored the establishment of a network of fortresses along the frontier, which could be mutually supporting but were not necessarily all one continuous "line". These forts would be impregnable and heavily armed, intended to provide "islands of resistance" that could withstand direct assault or prolonged siege, channeling enemy attacks into preordained pathways where they could be isolated, cut off, and destroyed in detail. This was merely ruinously expensive, so it was the preferred option.

(Image)
_{Always a good sign when your Supreme Commander unironically speaks of himself as the "physical embodiment of France".}

The move towards a hard defense on the borderline was a remarkable strategic shift for France. Historically, the natural French defense strategy was to retreat into the interior and defend along the natural riverlines. This was because, with the exception of the Vosges Mountains and foothills on the direct Franco-German border), the French frontier was wide open, flat, and heavily populated - not the kind of place that would be the easiest to defend. French attempts during the First World War to stop the German advance at the edge of their state by vigorous offensive action had ended disastrously at the Battle of the Frontiers in 1914. France had won the war with a defense-in-depth strategy that had traded space (and lives) for time at battles like the First Marne and Verdun. But such a strategy was not practical anymore. The concept of planning for a future war wherein France would endure similar losses as seen at Verdun or the Marne was a total political impossibility, as well as a physical impossibility - France just wouldn't have the men to carry such a strategy out.

In addition, a new factor had been added to the equation. The new provinces that had been added to France as a result of the Versailles Treaty in Alsace and Lorraine, sitting directly along the Franco-German border, were extremely resource-rich (especially in metals and resources that were militarily valuable), and had already become cornerstones of the French economy. A defense-in-depth strategy would abandon these provinces to the Germans and fundamentally undercut the French capacity to wage war.

So the French counter-strategy against a German invasion could not be carried out within French borders. It was perceived as politically, economically, and militarily impossible. It would need to come either on the borders themselves, or on some kind of neutral ground - meaning Belgium or Switzerland. Dealing with this issue, more than anything else, would be France's thorniest issue in regards to its defense - and would ultimately be its true undoing.

(Image)
_{Way to editorialize, map key.}

Construction of the Maginot fortifications began in 1928, with the prime focus placed on fortifying those same resource-rich Alsatian regions. These would of course, be the closest regions to any prospective German advance. These fortifications were the ultimate apex of everything that the French military had learned after four bitter years of trench warfare, and were masterpieces of defensive engineering. Miles and miles of ground were extensively surveyed. Forts and subforts were painstakingly sited at angles and in locations where dead ground would be at an absolute minimum, and to where each fortification could support each other by interlocking fields of fire that extended for miles. The forts were outfitted with the best weaponry the French military had to offer, including heavy artillery and copious numbers of machine guns, backed by redundant power and telephone connections, living quarters, infirmaries, and transit systems, all buried deep underground where German bombs and shells couldn't get to them.

(Image)
_{Sorry, Fritz - you're out of luck!}

But infamously, of course, the Maginot Line extended only from the northwestern tip of the Franco-Swiss border to the easternmost edge of the Franco-Luxembourgish border, meaning that the Belgian frontier was uncovered. French politicians had argued long and hard over the exact borders of the Maginot Line, and where it ought to conclude. Some, veterans of the "Great Wall of France" fights, argued that the Line needed to go all the way to the English Channel in order to truly guarantee French safety, forming a sort of compromise between the Buatists and the Petainists - the Petain strategy on Buat's scale.

But this could not have happened, for a number of reasons. The first was the simple geographic reality of Northern France. If you've ever read anything about the First World War, the endless horror stories of the mud of Flanders, Verdun, and Passchaendaele reveal the first reason - the French countryside is muddy as hell. This is because, thanks to all those beautiful rivers and the English channel right nearby, the water table in Northern France is very high. This would mean that, unlike the nice dry rocky Vosges mountains on the Franco-German border, building Maginot-style fortifications across the northern frontier would be exponentially more expensive than they had been in the Vosges, and that would simply have bankrupted the French military. In addition, the aforementioned difficulties with the Belgians would have come into play, meaning that the border had to be left uncovered so as to reassure the Belgians that they would be protected from Germany in the event of war, and to allow French troops to easily move forwards into Belgium should a war break out.

But this was all according to plan.

It was here, along the Belgian frontier, that what the French were really trying to do was made apparent. With the Maginot Line guarding the direct German invasion route - the "traditional" route - and the mountains of Switzerland being effectively impassable to any invading force, the Germans would be left with only one viable pathway into French territory: through Belgium. This was perfect for the French. The Germans invading through neutral, helpless Belgium - a gallant ally in the First World War, of course, and still fielding a small but well-equipped Army - would shock the world and guarantee British help, just like it had in the Great War. It would buy time for the French to mobilize their reserves and put their full army into the field - just a handful of days would theoretically be enough. And finally, it would allow the French to mount a defense against the Germans on somebody else's land, without endangering their own territories. This was quite appealing.

The plan was thus: In the event of war, the Germans would be stymied by the Maginot Line and forced to contemplate an invasion of Belgium to get into France. They would, presumably, invade Belgium, scandalizing the world and mobilizing global opinion. At this point, France's best armies - which would be stacked up along the Franco-Belgian border, along with whatever British forces were in the area - would move up and scramble like hell into Belgium. Their ultimate end-goal would depend on the speed of the German advance. If the Germans were very fast, the defensive line would be set up along the Scheldt River in Eastern Belgium, which would preserve a small Belgian foothold, retain the port of Antwerp and the Scheldt Estuary, and prevent the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine from seizing the Belgian coast. If the Germans were very slow, the Allies would aim for the line of the Albert Canal, which would allow a whopping 70% of Belgium to be shielded behind the Allied armies. And for the most likely eventuality - which would be the Germans advancing at a moderate speed - the Allies would set up at the Dyle River, in the middle of Belgium, just short of Brussels. This latter plan, known as the "Dyle Plan" or "Plan D", was the bedrock of all Allied joint planning for almost a decade. Of course, this all depended on a pliable Belgian government, but the French were sure they would come around (they didn't).

The Allied plan would look, in sum, like a giant door literally swinging shut on the German advance. The Allies would make a massive northeastern pivot, swinging into line along some Belgian river and then setting up along the new line to dig in and wait for the Germans to come to them. At that point, so the thinking went, the war was basically over. The Germans would be checkmated, unable to advance past the Maginot Line or through the combined French/Belgian/British armies all condensed together along an easily-defendable river. All that was left was for the Allies to run out the clock as the burden of sustaining the massive German war machine, coupled with popular and military discontent over an immobile and unsuccessful war, brought the Nazi government down, 1918-style.

(Image)
_{Home by Christmas?}

Of course, that didn't happen. The Germans moved more quickly than anyone thought possible, through a region that most thought was basically impassable (and, crucially, the defense of which by the French and Belgians was both a) planned and b) never actually implemented). The French launched forwards into Belgium, only to discover that the battle wasn't really on the plains of central Belgium but in the forests to the east, and that they had been cut off by surprise. By the time this was realized and accepted by the Allied high command, it was too late to do anything about it.
But none of that hinged on the Maginot Line's mere existence or "failure" as a concept.

As a corollary, the Maginot Line's actual combat record was fundamentally impeccable. Of the 47 enumerated individual forts that comprised the Maginot Line, 42 of them survived the Battle of France untouched and unconquered. The first one that was taken by German forces - Villy-Laferte - was probably on balance the single smallest and weakest fort, manned by only about a hundred men and outfitted with half the typical defenses of a full fort, and held out for three full days with absolutely no outside support against a much larger German assault force. The remainder fell because, more than anything else, of the complete collapse of the French command-and-control system by that point, rendering French reserve troops and armor helpless to intervene to assist (which had been counted on in the original plan). The southern Maginot Line, facing Italy along the Alpes-Maritimes, was never breached at all.

(Image)
_{Charts of the forts in the Montmedy area, including Villy Laferte, where the entire garrison was wiped out by German incendiary attack. Armored support was actually available, but the French command denied the request. We'll hear about all that later as well.}

To sum up, the Maginot Line failed in neither of its intended goals, those being 1) to ensure the Franco-German border was rendered impassable (it was) 2) to funnel any subsequent German advances into Belgium rather than France (it did) and 3) to minimize the number of French troops needed to hold the frontier (it did). When it was actually tested in combat, it did exceedingly well, despite the fact that its fortresses had no air support, armored support, reinforcements, or mutual fire support. The fact that the French defense failed was due to literally half a dozen different reasons, all of which are more fascinating than "the French don't know how walls work".

People chuckle about the Line like the French never conceived of anybody *going around * it, when the entire concept of the Line was to force people to go around it. The failpoint was that the Allied leadership (don't forget that the British were as complicit in this as the French were) failed to consider the idea that the Ardennes sector of Belgium was passable by motorized forces, and that nobody had any idea of what the fuck to do if the Germans tried anything even remotely tricky. The Maginot Line is also blamed (most frequently by British sources) for fostering a "defensive mentality" among the French populace and leadership, and that's not really true either. That mentality predated the Line and was manifested through it - the mentality was created by the fact that the French, more than any other nation (apart from Imperial Russia, which had died of its wounds), were among the most prominent victims of the First World War, being made to suffer casualties at an unimaginable rate and only saved through extreme defensive efforts after years of offensives and "offensive spirit" had only resulted in millions of dead French soldiers sprawled out in front of German machine guns.
To blame the French for having a "defensive mentality" is to essentially blame the French for learning the correct lesson from the First World War.

The idea that the Line was a waste of money or resources that could have been used more productively is also somewhat confusing, although impossible to actually prove. For one, the Line arguably saved resources. If it wasn't there, the French would have had to devote a much bigger proportion of their Army to guarding the Franco-German sectors, with correspondingly higher manpower and industrial pressures, and correspondingly negative effects on the French budget and military resources. The Line's construction probably cost more, but it cannot be dismissed as a "waste", either - had there been no line in 1940, it's easy to imagine a circumstance in which France would have perhaps fallen even faster under combined thrusts in Holland, Belgium, and along the frontier.

The French military's development didn't exactly suffer either as a result of the Line's construction. As has been proven by multiple other sources, Allied armor in 1940 actually outnumbered the Germans at basically all times (approx. 3500 Allied armored vehicles were in the field as opposed to 2400 or so Panzers), and were on average better machines than the tanks the Germans were fielding. French aircraft were roughly equal to most German aircraft on a qualitative basis, with the Dewoitine D520 just coming into production being a rough match for the ME109. And while the Allies were outnumbered in the aerial battles of May-June 1940 (although not nearly as badly as many sources claim), that was due to far different reasons that because of a lack of funding 8-12 years prior to the actual outbreak of the war due to the construction of the Line.

I'll close on a fairly simple point: most English-language WW2 history does a really, really poor job in characterizing the strategies, ideas, and perspectives of non-English-speaking countries (with the notable exception of Germany, on whose behalf American and British historians are endlessly willing to expound upon). This is really frequently seen in the combat experiences of countries like France, Russia, Italy, China, and other Allies and Axis nations. Most of these countries, if they're addressed at all in the conventional histories, are dealt with only selectively, and frequently in terms of cliches and oversimplified narratives that date from a handful of showpiece sources (like Mitsuo Fuchida, on behalf of Japan), or from assumptions made by historians from the America-Britain axis who are generally pretty eager to just endlessly rehash D-Day and Iwo Jima and kinda gloss over the rest of the war, especially the parts that they didn't get directly involved in. Analysis of the 1939-40 French war effort falls squarely in that particular void, which is unfortunate, because it's real interesting in a sort of weird alt-history kind of way (in addition to its own historical value, which is obviously self-evident).

"So, Tiger," I can already hear you chuckling indulgently, "if the Maginot Line was such a good idea, tell me - why did France lose the war in 1940, really?"

We'll explore that in detail later. But rest assured - it wasn't because of the Maginot Line.

Dammit, Tig, I was drinking root beer when I read that title!

[The Tiger Kingdom]

I take my hat off to you, Sir. That was an excellent read and well worth waiting for. I like to think I learned a few things today.

The only thing I would contest is that the quality of French aircraft was equal to that of the Luftwaffe. With the exception of the D.520, I'm led to believe most of them were under-powered pieces of muck.

Other than that, bravo.

You're very kind.
In regard to your contest, the French Air Force was the victim of a particularly nasty bit of cost-cutting during the mid to late 30s where essentially every twin-engined aircraft that was designed was envisioned as a "multirole" aircraft, meaning that these endless streams of interchangeable Amiot/Breguet/Bloch/LeO aircraft were supposed to be bombers/recon aircraft/heavy fighters, all at once, and that probably killed off the potential of a lot of good designs and turned them into mushy crap. But then again, a lot of these designs never saw serious service before being written off as failures after the Armistice, so it's a bit difficult to actually judge their quality. And it's not like the Germans/British didn't have crappy designs of their own, so who's to say how bad they really were? I'm convinced that doctrinal and production issues were a much bigger factor than the actual quality of the designs, or lack thereof.

Dammit, Tig, I was drinking root beer when I read that title!

The truth hurts - or at least, it sometimes stings your nose

[Grenartia]

I take my hat off to you, Sir. That was an excellent read and well worth waiting for. I like to think I learned a few things today.

The only thing I would contest is that the quality of French aircraft was equal to that of the Luftwaffe. With the exception of the D.520, I'm led to believe most of them were under-powered pieces of muck.

Other than that, bravo.

You're very kind.
In regard to your contest, the French Air Force was the victim of a particularly nasty bit of cost-cutting during the mid to late 30s where essentially every twin-engined aircraft that was designed was envisioned as a "multirole" aircraft, meaning that these endless streams of interchangeable Amiot/Breguet/Bloch/LeO aircraft were supposed to be bombers/recon aircraft/heavy fighters, all at once, and that probably killed off the potential of a lot of good designs and turned them into mushy But then again, a lot of these designs never saw serious service before being written off as failures after the Armistice, so it's a bit difficult to actually judge their quality. And it's not like the Germans/British didn't have crappy designs of their own, so who's to say how bad they really were? I'm convinced that doctrinal and production issues were a much bigger factor than the actual quality of the designs, or lack thereof.

Dammit, Tig, I was drinking root beer when I read that title!

The truth hurts - or at least, it sometimes stings your nose

To be fair, you convinced me when you uploaded the first draft of that a few years back.

[Goram]

So, odd question. Is anyone here Turkish or has lived in Turkey - specifically Istanbul?

[Len Hyet]

So, odd question. Is anyone here Turkish or has lived in Turkey - specifically Istanbul?

No but one time I got drunk and yelled at my friends about how "it's Constantinople damn it!"