Download The Maginot Line: The History of the Fortifications that Failed to Protect France from Nazi Germany During World War II AudioBook Free
"We could scarcely dream of creating a kind of Great Wall membrane of France, which would in any case be far too costly. Instead we have foreseen powerful but adaptable means of managing defense, based on the dual principle of taking full benefit of the landscape and establishing a continuous line of hearth everywhere you go." - Andre Maginot As the power of Nazi Germany grew alarmingly during the 1930s, the French sought methods to defend their place against the growing menace of the Thousand-Year Reich. As architects of the most punitive methods in the Treaty of Versailles following World Battle I, the French federal government made natural targets for Teutonic retribution, so the Maginot Line, some interconnected strongpoints and fortifications operating along a lot of France's eastern border, helped allay French doubts of invasion. The popular tale of the Maginot Lines portrays the frontier defenses as a inadequate "white elephant" job that was prompted with a gross misapprehension of warfare's new realities in the mid-20th hundred years and quickly overwhelmed by the forceful advance of the German blitzkrieg. English idiom today invokes this vision of the Maginot Lines as a metaphor for just about any defensive measure firmly believed in but actually inadequate. Indeed, usages such as "Maginot Lines mentality," explaining an overly defensive, reactive way of thinking, perpetuate the tale. As a French writer and military services liaison with the English, Andre Maurois, wrote about his disillusionment with the defensive line he actually enthusiastically reinforced: "We know given that the Maginot line-complex was a dangerous disease of your brain; but I publish this as it was written in January, 1940."
