Marshal Joseph Joffre, a hero from the 1914 Battle of the Marne, argued that the best approach was to build a few heavy fortifications inside France to protect key areas against invaders, while allowing the French army room to maneuver and thwart an attack. Kaufmann, Aleksander Jankovic-Potocnik and Patrice Lang. The French decision to build the Maginot Line was partly the result of centuries of invasions along its border with Germany, where France had few natural barriers to prevent armies from entering its territory.Īfter World War I, in which France had fought a bloody, desperate struggle for survival that cost the lives of nearly 1.4 million soldiers, military leaders began to debate about how best to counter Germany in a future war that they saw as inevitable, according to the 2011 book The Maginot Line: History and Guide, by J.E. WATCH: World War II Documentaries on HISTORY Vault Instead of being stymied by the Maginot Line, German forces went around it, driving their tanks through a wilderness area in neighboring Belgium that the French wrongly assumed would be impenetrable. Leaders had focused upon countering the tactics and technology of past wars, and failed to prepare for the new threat from a blitzkreig of fast-moving armored vehicles. Nevertheless, after World War II erupted, the fortified border that was supposed to serve as France’s salvation instead became a symbol of a failed strategy. “The Maginot Line was a technological marvel, far and away the most sophisticated and complex set of fortifications built up to that time,” William Allcorn wrote in his 2003 book The Maginot Line 1928–45. It was designed to withstand heavy artillery fire, poison gas and whatever else the Germans could throw against it. The Maginot Line was fortified with reinforced concrete and 55 million tons of steel embedded deep into the earth. Built at a cost that possibly exceeded $9 billion in today’s dollars, the 280-mile-long line included dozens of fortresses, underground bunkers, minefields, and gun batteries. The Maginot Line, an array of defenses that France built along its border with Germany in the 1930s, was designed to prevent an invasion.
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