Maginot Line (40 photos)
The Maginot Line (French la Ligne Maginot) is a system of French fortifications on the border with Germany from Belfort to Longuyon. It was built in 1929-1934 (then improved until 1940). The length is about 400 km. Named after the Minister of War Andre Maginot.
It included 5,600 long-term defensive fortifications, 70 bunkers, 500 artillery and infantry units, 500 casemates, as well as dugouts and observation posts.
The French assumed that the Germans would act in the same way as in 1914 - they would try to bypass the French troops through Belgium from the northeast. Therefore, their defense plan involved repelling a German attack on the Dyle River and passive defense on the fortified Maginot Line.
About 3 billion francs ($1 billion in prices of those years) were spent on the construction of the Maginot Line. The total number of troops on the line reached 300 thousand people. The underground multi-level forts were equipped with living quarters for personnel, power plants, powerful ventilation units, narrow-gauge railways, telephone exchanges, hospitals, rest rooms, inaccessible to shells and bombs. In the upper ground floors there were gun casemates equipped with elevators. They were concrete “boxes” dug into the ground with walls and ceilings 3.5–4 meters thick. An armored turret protruded upward. In front of the first line of defense, anti-tank ditches were dug and barriers made of anti-tank hedgehogs were erected. Behind the first line of defense there was a network of strong points - concrete platforms for infantry, artillery, searchlights, etc. At these points, at a depth of about 50 meters underground, there were ammunition and equipment warehouses, equipped with elevators. Even further away were positions of long-range, large-caliber guns on railway tracks. The old defensive line, consisting of forts Belfort, Epinal, Verdun, etc., was also modernized. The depth of defense of the Maginot Line was 90-100 km. French military strategists considered the Maginot Line impregnable. After the entry of German troops into Poland in 1939, France and Great Britain decided that they could not quickly help Poland and instead began planning for a long-term war. In early September, France hesitantly moved its troops into the Saar region, but on October 4, after the defeat of Poland, it again withdrew them behind the Maginot Line (the so-called Strange War). In 1940, German troops quickly bypassed it from the north through the Ardennes Mountains. After the French capitulation, the Maginot Line garrison surrendered.
