The Maginot Mentality and the Fall of France

Between 1929 and 1940, the "Great Wall" of France was built. It was the "Maginot Line." It was built to help protect France from Germany and to defend the invasion routes of France’s eastern side.

It also provided time for the French army to mobilize and to make up for a potentially disastrous shortfall of manpower predicted for the late ‘30’s. Most importantly it was built to provide a hiding place for the French army and a place where its nation could feel secure in its doctrine which would become known as the "Maginot Mentality."

The "Maginot Line" was a powerful line of defense, which went from Switzerland to the Ardennes in the north and from the Alps to the Mediterranean in the south. Most of the fortresses that made up this defense line were underground and the only visible parts were the huge armor piercing guns. Inside there were tunnels, underground railroads, and thousands of men who served in the forts who "slept, trained, watched, and waited for a war that never came." People felt safe though hiding behind the most massive defense line in the world which was one of its main purposes.

The French "Maginot Line" came from the success in holding a trench line along 400 miles of land against a powerful Germany, the theory if they could hold off the Kaiser’s armies for 4 years with ditches and barbed wire then why not build a permanent defense line? Everything changes, even war. This change in war is what made the Maginot Mentality the real enemy of France.

The "Maginot Line" served its purpose for France, but the "Maginot Mentality" caused her defeat. The French view was that future wars would be fought like World War I and that a big defense line would be sufficient to defend France in any type of battle. They were wrong. France did not attempt to modernize its defense systems, which was one of the reasons France fell so quickly. Another "Hindenburg Line" would not save France. Mobile battles would be fought with tanks and aircraft and the "Maginot Line" was no match for Hitler’s Stuka dive-bombers.

By 1940, Hitler had crashed through the Ardennes forest and surrounded the entire French army and also captured a few forts with the use of paratroopers and France fell. Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, they tried to modernize the forts but this idea lost its popularity with the advent of the nuclear era and the forts were abandoned and many of the parts of these forts were auctioned off. Thus ended the great "Maginot Line" and the "Maginot Mentality"