the maintenance of the Maginot Line represented a considerable financial burden. For a country plagued by chronic budgetary difficulties and with a powerful Left wing opposed to rearmament in any form, this overall costliness meant that inevitably the French Army would be forced to accept economies elsewhere. The Maginot Line also lacked depth, with its four successive positions never occupying, even in their most advanced state, a belt larger than twelve miles deep. This too was a consequence of expense.
But the most mortal defect of the Line lay not in its depth but its length. Romantically, it came to be dubbed ‘the shield of France’. The essence of a shield, however, is that it can be manipulated to protect any portion of its owner’s body. The Maginot Line obviously was incapable of motion, yet it did not extend to cover what Clausewitz called ‘the pit of the French stomach’, the classical invasion route across the Belgian plains, over which the Schlieffen Plan had so nearly brought total calamity in 1914. By as late as 1935, the motives for not fortifying the remaining 250 miles along the Belgian frontier were only partially related to problems of cost. This extension would have to run right through the heavily industrialized Lille-Valenciennes area which straddles the frontier and would beimmeasurably disruptive as well as costly. A factor carrying even greater weight, however, was that Belgium, mindful of how her neutrality had been outraged by Germany in 1914, remained France’s close ally, so that a fortified line on the French side of her frontier would leave her out in the cold, abandoned on the wrong side of the ramparts. She would then have no option but to return to her former neutrality, and rely upon German morals. Pétain, despite his reputation for defensive-mindedness, made it quite clear when Minister of War in 1934 that, in the event of any German aggression, it was part and parcel of French strategy to ‘go into Belgium’ and to fight an offensive war of movement against the enemy there. 6 As the French Army stood in 1934, still with its crushing superiority over the Germans – who had not yet invented the Panzer corps – this strategy made excellent sense, as long as Belgium remained within the alliance. It was also clearly in France’s interest (though she could hardly explain this to the Belgians) to protect her soil by fighting the battle, with all its destructiveness, as far forward of her frontiers as possible.
With the construction of the Maginot Line, the wheel of French military thought, which had started spinning in 1870, performed a fatal full cycle. In 1870, to state it in the simplest terms, France had lost a war through adopting too defensive a posture and relying too much on permanent fortifications. Fortress cities such as Strasbourg, Metz and Paris herself had been simply enveloped by Moltke’s Prussians and besieged one by one. In reaction against this calamitous defeat, France had nearly lost the next war by being too aggressive-minded. Now she was once again seeking safety under concrete and steel. Rapidly the Maginot Line came to be not just a component of strategy, but a way of life. Feeling secure behind it, like the lotus-eating mandarins of Cathay behind their Great Wall, the French Army allowed itself to atrophy, to lapse into desuetude. A massive combination of factors – complacency, lassitude,deficiencies of manpower and finance – conspired to rust the superb weapon which the world had so admired on that Quatorze Juillet of 1919.
The French Army: Men and Arms
By the end of 1935, the eve of France’s first major confrontation with Hitler, her Army was below par both in numbers and quality of manpower. The call-up was just beginning to suffer the full effect of the ‘hollow classes’ caused by the drop in births during the Great War. In Germany, for instance, the 1915 class available for conscription (if it were not for the restrictions imposed by
But the most mortal defect of the Line lay not in its depth but its length. Romantically, it came to be dubbed ‘the shield of France’. The essence of a shield, however, is that it can be manipulated to protect any portion of its owner’s body. The Maginot Line obviously was incapable of motion, yet it did not extend to cover what Clausewitz called ‘the pit of the French stomach’, the classical invasion route across the Belgian plains, over which the Schlieffen Plan had so nearly brought total calamity in 1914. By as late as 1935, the motives for not fortifying the remaining 250 miles along the Belgian frontier were only partially related to problems of cost. This extension would have to run right through the heavily industrialized Lille-Valenciennes area which straddles the frontier and would beimmeasurably disruptive as well as costly. A factor carrying even greater weight, however, was that Belgium, mindful of how her neutrality had been outraged by Germany in 1914, remained France’s close ally, so that a fortified line on the French side of her frontier would leave her out in the cold, abandoned on the wrong side of the ramparts. She would then have no option but to return to her former neutrality, and rely upon German morals. Pétain, despite his reputation for defensive-mindedness, made it quite clear when Minister of War in 1934 that, in the event of any German aggression, it was part and parcel of French strategy to ‘go into Belgium’ and to fight an offensive war of movement against the enemy there. 6 As the French Army stood in 1934, still with its crushing superiority over the Germans – who had not yet invented the Panzer corps – this strategy made excellent sense, as long as Belgium remained within the alliance. It was also clearly in France’s interest (though she could hardly explain this to the Belgians) to protect her soil by fighting the battle, with all its destructiveness, as far forward of her frontiers as possible.
With the construction of the Maginot Line, the wheel of French military thought, which had started spinning in 1870, performed a fatal full cycle. In 1870, to state it in the simplest terms, France had lost a war through adopting too defensive a posture and relying too much on permanent fortifications. Fortress cities such as Strasbourg, Metz and Paris herself had been simply enveloped by Moltke’s Prussians and besieged one by one. In reaction against this calamitous defeat, France had nearly lost the next war by being too aggressive-minded. Now she was once again seeking safety under concrete and steel. Rapidly the Maginot Line came to be not just a component of strategy, but a way of life. Feeling secure behind it, like the lotus-eating mandarins of Cathay behind their Great Wall, the French Army allowed itself to atrophy, to lapse into desuetude. A massive combination of factors – complacency, lassitude,deficiencies of manpower and finance – conspired to rust the superb weapon which the world had so admired on that Quatorze Juillet of 1919.
The French Army: Men and Arms
By the end of 1935, the eve of France’s first major confrontation with Hitler, her Army was below par both in numbers and quality of manpower. The call-up was just beginning to suffer the full effect of the ‘hollow classes’ caused by the drop in births during the Great War. In Germany, for instance, the 1915 class available for conscription (if it were not for the restrictions imposed by
Similar Books
