The Maginot Line has an underserved reputation as an example of failure. I think that this is unwarranted, it did exactly what it said on the can. It made the invasion of France through the French/German border impossible.

Its reputation is not due to the fortifications weakness's, there layout or construction but to a change in politics - Belgiums (relatively late) declaration of neutrality which meant that the line had to be extended with time running out and Gamelin's cocksure over confidence in his dispositions and the fallacy that the Ardennes was impassable.


In other words the Maginot line became the "fall guy".

It has been said that the French army would have been better off building more tanks and aircraft etc..

This forgets two things:

i) French manpower had been decimated by the efforts of WW1. In terms of numbers France would be overmatched by a resurgent Germany.

ii) The French had more than enough tanks and in a lot of cases better tanks. It was doctrine that let them down as it did for the British - the Germans had mass attack, the Entente used "penny packets".




IMHO Gamelin's 'Dyle" plan was the problem, not the Maginot line. Leaving the  Ardennes so weakly defending was criminally negligent (especially due to the fact that many reports from the area told off a mass of troops and armour weaving their way though the Forest). When the Germans did run against the most north/west fortifications they were in a lot of cases knocked back.



The Maginot Line was the "Shield of France" it was the "Sword of France" that caused the collapse. Gamelin swung his sword too early and left a gap that allowed him to be skewered in the ribs.

VF wrote:

The Maginot Line was the "Shield of France" ...

Although by putting all their resources into the static defensive fortifications, the Maginot Line also served very effectively as the "Shield of Germany" too, in that the Germans did not need to bother building fortifications or even concentrating forces on their side of the line as they knew French policy was to remain tied to their static defensive forts. According the Germans needed only to weakly defend the frontier facing the Maginot Line and could deploy the relieved forces elsewhere, such as in the Ardennes.

in reality the Maginot Line was never intended to be the ultimate savior of France but was rather intended to prevent  a concerted attack through the traditional invasion routes and to permit time for the mobilization of troops. It could also be argued that by leaving the Belgian Gap reletively undefended, the line acted in support of a French strategy of enticing the Germans to enter Belgium (as in WW1) thereby forcing neutral Belgium to resist and so enter the conflict on the allied side, as well as diverting the battle front onto terrain that the French army believed was more favourable to its tactics.

VF wrote:

This forgets two things:
i) French manpower had been decimated by the efforts of WW1. In terms of numbers France would be overmatched by a resurgent Germany.
ii) The French had more than enough tanks and in a lot of cases better tanks. It was doctrine that let them down as it did for the British - the Germans had mass attack, the Entente used "penny packets".

IMHO Gamelin's 'Dyle" plan was the problem, not the Maginot line. Leaving the  Ardennes so weakly defending was criminally negligent (especially due to the fact that many reports from the area told off a mass of troops and armour weaving their way though the Forest). When the Germans did run against the most north/west fortifications they were in a lot of cases knocked back.

The Maginot Line was the "Shield of France" it was the "Sword of France" that caused the collapse. Gamelin swung his sword too early and left a gap that allowed him to be skewered in the ribs.

 
VF and MM,

I completely agree with what you said VF.
yes enough tanks and enough planes, but not enough pilots. And the communication and coordination between the French tanks was lamentable and the difficulties with the B1 turret...at the end of the Fall Rot the French had more planes then at the start...and also the American bought planes arriving...

And yes the Dyle plan (or the Koningshooikt-Wavre line) was the problem. But perhaps the British pushed for it, because of Antwerp?
Already in 2006 and on a French forum I made what ifs, as what if the British had stuck to their defence positions of 1939 along the Belgian border and the French instead of sending their best troops to Breda (Netherlands) had instead fortified the Ardennes Belgian and German border next to the Maginot and the Siegfried line... and let the neutral Belgians defend themselves, perhaps only delaying the German push for some three or four days...I had only mixed replies...I even agreed that at the end, even with no Dunkirk, The British would have pushed to the South together with the French as in the real Fall Rot...but perhaps then no Pétain and an evacuation to the AFN (Afrique Française du Nord)...?

The warning of the push through the Ardennes was even mentioned to Gamelin by the French contra-espionage even months before the attack through the Ardennes, but Gamelin neglected it.
I first read it from a Frenchman from New Caledonia on the American Historum (he was also a time on Passion Histoire, but I understand why he left, because when I mentioned it overthere they didn't believed it or believed a certain Nord...

As I already during the last fifteen years studied the Belgian 18 days campaign in depth and later for the BBC (in discussion with a Swedish Baron) and  on a Napoleon forum and on the just mentioned Passion Histoire the French campaign nearly to death and found a lot of anomalies even from honest historians, I am rather persuaded that the Gamelin failure in the German push through the Ardennes was possible.

I discussed it also in a thread about Case yellow and red with Triceratops and the French Abelard:
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1139p50-case-yellow-case-red-and-sealion
OOPS, as I read first page three of the thread and now page two I see that we discussed already a lot, even with you and MM...  ...

I have done in depth the change to neutrality from Belgium in 1936 for a French Napoleon forum and also the January 1940 crisis when French troops wanted to enter Belgium and were halted by the Belgian Gendarmerie...
If you understand French I will seek it back, I guess it is from 2006...and as I have not so much time for the moment (I will explain on the "Daily diaries" as some don't like that one breaks a serious thread with some personal diaries).

PS: VF, I like your colourful language as for instance:
"The Maginot Line was the "Shield of France" it was the "Sword of France" that caused the collapse. Gamelin swung his sword too early and left a gap that allowed him to be skewered in the ribs."

Kind regards, Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

VF wrote:

This forgets two things:
i) French manpower had been decimated by the efforts of WW1. In terms of numbers France would be overmatched by a resurgent Germany.
ii) The French had more than enough tanks and in a lot of cases better tanks. It was doctrine that let them down as it did for the British - the Germans had mass attack, the Entente used "penny packets".

IMHO Gamelin's 'Dyle" plan was the problem, not the Maginot line. Leaving the  Ardennes so weakly defending was criminally negligent (especially due to the fact that many reports from the area told off a mass of troops and armour weaving their way though the Forest). When the Germans did run against the most north/west fortifications they were in a lot of cases knocked back.

The Maginot Line was the "Shield of France" it was the "Sword of France" that caused the collapse. Gamelin swung his sword too early and left a gap that allowed him to be skewered in the ribs.

 
VF and MM,

I completely agree with what you said VF.
yes enough tanks and enough planes, but not enough pilots. And the communication and coordination between the French tanks was lamentable and the difficulties with the B1 turret...at the end of the Fall Rot the French had more planes then at the start...and also the American bought planes arriving...

And yes the Dyle plan (or the Koningshooikt-Wavre line) was the problem. But perhaps the British pushed for it, because of Antwerp?
Already in 2006 and on a French forum I made what ifs, as what if the British had stuck to their defence positions of 1939 along the Belgian border and the French instead of sending their best troops to Breda (Netherlands) had instead fortified the Ardennes Belgian and German border next to the Maginot and the Siegfried line... and let the neutral Belgians defend themselves, perhaps only delaying the German push for some three or four days...I had only mixed replies...I even agreed that at the end, even with no Dunkirk, The British would have pushed to the South together with the French as in the real Fall Rot...but perhaps then no Pétain and an evacuation to the AFN (Afrique Française du Nord)...?

The warning of the push through the Ardennes was even mentioned to Gamelin by the French contra-espionage even months before the attack through the Ardennes, but Gamelin neglected it.
I first read it from a Frenchman from New Caledonia on the American Historum (he was also a time on Passion Histoire, but I understand why he left, because when I mentioned it overthere they didn't believed it or believed a certain Nord...

As I already during the last fifteen years studied the Belgian 18 days campaign in depth and later for the BBC (in discussion with a Swedish Baron) and  on a Napoleon forum and on the just mentioned Passion Histoire the French campaign nearly to death and found a lot of anomalies even from honest historians, I am rather persuaded that the Gamelin failure in the German push through the Ardennes was possible.

I discussed it also in a thread about Case yellow and red with Triceratops and the French Abelard:
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1139p50-case-yellow-case-red-and-sealion
OOPS, as I read first page three of the thread and now page two I see that we discussed already a lot, even with you and MM...  ...

I have done in depth the change to neutrality from Belgium in 1936 for a French Napoleon forum and also the January 1940 crisis when French troops wanted to enter Belgium and were halted by the Belgian Gendarmerie...
If you understand French I will seek it back, I guess it is from 2006...and as I have not so much time for the moment (I will explain on the "Daily diaries" as some don't like that one breaks a serious thread with some personal diaries).

PS: VF, I like your colourful language as for instance:
"The Maginot Line was the "Shield of France" it was the "Sword of France" that caused the collapse. Gamelin swung his sword too early and left a gap that allowed him to be skewered in the ribs."

Kind regards, Paul.

I think the Maginot Line gets a bad press. Its correct to say it didn't save France.IMHO its incorrect to say it failed.It worked exactly as planned. Where it went awry is with the subsequent deployment of the French and British forces and a belief that that May 1940 would be the same as May 1918. I understand that the the British,the French and Belgium didn't want a repeat of WW1 by losing territory before they began and I think you see this in their initial moves. Where it falls flat is when you look for the weak spot - the Ardennes. Now obviously we have the Mk1 retroscope ,but their are shadows of WW1. In the BBC documentary from the 60's there is an episode when a gentleman recalls being a young man undertaking a recce. He reported seeing thousands upon thousand of German troops marching in an area they supposedly shouldn't have been. He reported this directly to British High Command who basically asked him about the perils of flying and told him that he couldn't have seen what he saw.

Roll onto 1940 and you find that were many reports of movement in the Ardennes yet Gamelin ignored every one of them.Yet it was so close had the Battles of Stonne and Bulson gone better the French may have blunted the German advance enough to extricate themselves by holding the high ground. As it was they didn't and the rest is, well,history.

Yes VF, the Maginot line was not the point. It was the breakthrough in the Ardennes to a bad defended area in France. 
In the Belgian Ardennes the coordination with the entering French troops was a complete catastrophy, as the Cointet elements on the wrong place for advancing French in the Ardennes and the difficult cooperation between the Belgians and the French even to the point that they nearly shoot purposely! on each other, what was luckily avoided...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointet-element

And perhaps we will never know if Gamelin was prewarned some two months before the happening by the French Deuxième Bureau and perhaps even two months earlier it was already too late to change the Breda-Wavre line, probably inspired by a new von Schlieffen plan which really existed and was captured at the crash landing of the higher German officers at Maasmechelen. Plans that were immediately mentioned by the Belgians to the French-British allies then already at war, while Belgium was still officially neutral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechelen_incident

Kind regards, Paul.