So what was the point of the Maginot Line again?
>>1105604
So the Germans knew where not to attack
>>1105604
To show how much the French feared another war against Germany?
Doesn't matter anyway, it was one of the biggest failures in the history of mankind.
To prove that defence-in-depthfags are always right.
>>1105604
It was just a prank to give Germany an excuse to fuck Belgium first. It worked just as planned :^)
>>1105604
To force Germany to attack around it through Belgium, and allowind the border between France and Germany to be guarded with considerably less force than would have been needed otherwise, allowing a concentration on the Belgian plains.
>Tanks can't break woods!
Fortifications against the Low Countries
Who knows when those sneaky fuckers might jump on em
A WALL WILL KEEP US SAFE--AND WE'LL MAKE THE GERMANS PAY FOR IT!
>>1105637
>achieve local military parity with the Germans beyond the Maginot line
>It worked
How comes they collapsed so quickly then?
>>1105647
outdated strategic thinking...
>>1105634
Too bad Germans ended up barely paying anything.
>>1105647
Because these anime fed you a bunch of bullshit. They didn't actually do that, nor was it their plan. They actually offered to extend the line through Belgium several times, but were rebuffed, since Belgium wanted to remain neutral.
>>1105647
They got completely shrecked at the tactical level, outmaneuvered and caught in a pocket. The Germans bet everything on a risky attack through the Ardennes. There success there involved a fair bit of luck, which is not to take away from the Germans, because no strategy is foolproof, but it could have easily turned into a bruising and bloody counter encirclement with the logistics issues entailed. But the Germans pulled it off, and millions of French troops were caught without any supplies, while there was no reserves left to defend Paris.
>>1105630
Since the Germans ended up attacking through Belgium, the original French plan to extend the Maginot Line all the way to the northern coast turned out to be a good one. If the Belgians hadn't freaked out so much about it, the Germans might have never taken over France in the first place.
>tfw Belgium is responsible for all the death and destruction between June 1940 and May 1945
>>1105678
>The Germans bet everything on a risky attack through the Ardennes. There success there involved a fair bit of luck, which is not to take away from the Germans, because no strategy is foolproof, but it could have easily turned into a bruising and bloody counter encirclement with the logistics issues entailed.
Is it just me, or did Germany and Japan both get insanely lucky from 1938 to 1941? There are so many things that could have gone wrong for both of them, and they took such huge risks, but everything worked out just fine for those years
>>1105689
Can you blame the belgians for freaking out?
"So the plan is, after that huge and devastating war that saw most of our country occupied and literally or figuratively raped, just because you're having a spat with the Germans, is this time, you're not even going to try and defend us, and hide behind a wall?"
>>1105694
>Is it just me, or did Germany and Japan both get insanely lucky from 1938 to 1941?
They got insanely lucky those years. They did not expect their victories themselves. The German General Staff was not confident they could defeat Czechoslovakia in 1938.
That's what's so rediculous about the "The Germans could have won if they had just taken the Suez, the Middle East, Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad!
It's like "I could win the world series of poker if I got a flush every single hand."
>>1105701
Of course not. I'm not really blaming the Belgians for WWII, I just thought I was being funny.
>>1105604
Weapon and building industries lobbying and looking like doing something against hitler's threat
>>1105604
It was just a prank.
>>1105694
>mfw imagining a world where the allies didn't do literally everything wrong in the beginning of the pacific war
>>1105807
Such as? They were in a position of considerable inferiority in those first six months.
>>1105604
It was a case of generals trying to fight the last war. The maginot line would've been effective against a WWI style German attack.
>>1105837
It was effective against WW2 style German attack.
>>1105858
That's why Germany lost, right?
>>1105717
What I can't figure out, did the french ever offer to extend it up the eastern Belgian border?
>>1105881
On top of that being a facile argument, Germany DID lose the war, idiot.
>>1105898
I don't think they did, probably because the Netherlands would have the same complaints.
>>1105881
Germany didn't attack the Maginot Line. They went around it, through Belgium.
>>1105858
Yeah except that the Germans broke through the most heavily fortified areas of the Maginot line.
>>1106614
Yeah after France was out of the war. Fortifications are not supposed to be self-supporting and invincible. They are supposed to delay and funnel enemy forces, so your mobile forces can strike them where they don't want to be. The Maginot Line did exactly that.
>>1106640
No, not after france was out of the war. They broke through before France surrendered.
>>1106681
Either way the line held up for mobile reserves to arrive if there were any. Germans breaking through after 6 weeks is pretty much the worst fact you want to bandy about for your argument.
>>1106705
What argument? I said the Germans broke through the maginot line. Did they? Yes they did. Why didn't they break through earlier? There was simply no reason to.
>>1106726
Sorry, were you just posting to prove that you can waste bandwidth without making any point? I thought you were trying to say something relevant to the thread.
>>1106734
Argument was
>It was effective against WW2 style German attack.
Answer: It did not stop even a single offensive.
>>1106746
this is like saying a city wall is pointless if a battering ram could eventually break through
>>1106762
Because city walls are pointless. That's why we don't see them anymore.
The maginot line held a whole 5 days. Wether that is 'effective vs. WWII German attack' is up to you to decide.
I also find it interesting how the only fortifications that would've supposedly held up a determined offensive are ones that have never been attacked, like the Czech line.
>>1106746
It's meant to delay and redirect, which it did. Literally the point that was made repeatedly in this tread over and over by several different posters.
>>1106774
>The maginot line held a whole 5 days. Wether that is 'effective vs. WWII German attack' is up to you to decide.
The forces manning the Maginot Line was under a retreat order. Most had already left. Please leave this board and do not come back.
>>1106782
>it's not victory, if the enemy retreats
Hurr durr. Are you French?
>>1106782
No they weren't and no they didn't.
>>1105604
To invite the Germans to invade the Benelux, then counter-attack and all the war and destruction happens there instead of in french clay.
>>1106813
How retarded are you? they were under a retreat order because of the successful German offensive the Ardennes, not because of an eminent attack on the Line
>>1106828
*through the
>>1105821
surrendering an 80,000 man garrison to the Japs because they made absolutely no effort to defend themselves on more than one front
>>1105694
Fortune favours the bold
>>1105694
Well people like to ignore how lucky the allies got with the Enigma machine, the Japanese not attacking the Soviets, Japanese militairy attachee's in Berlin giving away Intelligence to the Allies for free, and of course Hitler at Stalingrad, Leningrad, Dunkirk etc. etc.
>>1106868
> Enigma Machine
How was it luck when the British government had an entire school specifically for breaking enemy codes?
> Japanese not attacking the Soviets
They did and they got BTFO
> Hitler at Stalingrad, Leningrad, Dunkirk
How is it luck that your enemy's leader is a megalomaniacal, delusional control freak?
>>1106908
>How was it luck
Ofc it's luck that they got an enigma machine into their hands. And of course that the polish guys who cracked the machine survived and could escape to share the codes with the Brit.
>Japanese not attacking the Soviets
You're talking about Khalkin Gol, and the Soviets actually took more losses than the Japanese, despite having a huge advantage.
Are you saying it's not luck? Hitler was the guy who approved the Blitzkrieg. The majority of the German Officer Corps was strictly against focussing the valuable motorized troops in an area like the Ardennes. The fact that Hitler decided in favour of Manstein was simply a stroke of luck. He could've made a good decision at Stalingrad, Leningrad and Dunkirk, but he didn't.
Had the Maginot Line been built as envisioned, it would have stopped the Germans cold in 1940, as witnessed by how difficult the German Siegfried Line was for the Allies in 1944, despite the Germans being on their last legs.
>>1105626
Mechanized invasions can't break tree trunks, Ardennes was an inside job.
If anything, the most heavily attacked fortress of the line, the Ouvrage Schoenenbourg held for the whole battle and finally surrendered only by direct order of the French HQ on July 1st.
As previously said by others the line never was expected to hold forever but to serve as a buffer zone where a German attack would be delayed by a relatively small number of troops long enough so that mobilization and reorganization could be fully done.
Moreover, if Germany didn't went for a frontal assault they would then have to either go through Belgium or Switzerland, with the resulting consequences.
In 1940 the line initially did its job as the germans went through Belgium where the battles of Hannut and Gembloux showed that, although flawed on some aspects, the allied armies would be able, if not completely stop, at least to slow down the german advance.
However everything went to the shitter with the trust throug the Ardennes which caught the French HQ by surprise (though they never imagined that the Ardennes were a magical barrier, only that nobody would be able to cross them that fast) and leave to whole French 1st Army and the BEF flanked and later completely encircled.
Fun fact, a french recce pilot spotted german units in the Ardennes twice, each time to have his officers ignore him.
>>1105604
It was a smart plan desu. If the germans didn't directly attack the maginot line and just went around it (which they did) the french would only have to put a small force in the maginot line since it was so well defended and they could use their much needed troops elsewhere.
>>1105701
Maybe the Belgians shouldn't have dropped their alliance with France in the last moment if they wanted to be defended that badly?
>>1105604
The whole point of the Maginot line was to allow a small amount of troops to defend against a large group so that the war of maneuver could be won in Belgium, but other anons have already covered that.
The important thing in remembering WHY they built the Maginot was that
a) it's easy to justify politically to a very socialist, left-leaning national assembly
b) it eased the French Army's high command's concern about the 1928 conversion to one-year conscription period
After the 1st World War there was a really big backlash against militarization in France, for obvious reasons, and during in 1928 Traditionally, the conscription period was three years, but this was reduced first to 18 months in 1923 and then 12 in 1928. The French High Command (Gamelin in particular) hated this. They believed that 3 years was the minimum required for the citizen-soldier to be trained well enough to fight, and that the one-year conscripts would be worthless for anything more than a defensive action. (The conscription period was returned to two years in 1935, but by then the Maginot was well on the way to completion). Were they correct? Perhaps not, Germany's conscripts distinguished themselves well enough by the Battle of France after battles in Poland and Norway. But the fact is that the Maginot was designed to allow a bunch of monkeys to hold a vast amount of territory so that the (more competent) standing army could do the actual fighting, and it was quite successful at that.
Politically, as well, fortifications are much easier to justify than tanks or planes, because they can only be used in a defensive fashion. This is what André Maginot used to convince the socialists and left-leaning parties to support the measure. France could have theoretically used that money to invest in better tanks or better planes, but practically the political climate would have made it impossible to actually do so (the Line was a fraction of the defense budget anyway).
>>1107446
Wake you Sheeple! De Gaulle was secretly behind nazism and escaped his judgement. The Eternal Révolutionnaire strikes once again.
>>1105925
They did, but the Belgians were to devastated after the war to afford such an expensive endevor. Poor millions of dollars into something that in their minds wasn't going to be needed? Nah. The Nazis got all their victories because no one thought that a world war could happen again. It is a miracle the Maginot Line was as strong as it was, considering the butt-blasted French economy and anti-war sentiment.
>>1108014
Well, the Maginot Line was one of the few military investments both sides of the National Assembly were willing to pay for.
>>1106932
>You're talking about Khalkin Gol, and the Soviets actually took more losses than the Japanese, despite having a huge advantage.
Khalkin Gol wasn't the only Soviet vs Jap battle in that whole border war. Not to mention that the soviets won it anyway. The fact that they had an extra 7,000 casualties is irrelevant when they had twice the numbers and better equipment. This was enough to prove to the Japanese that any invasion into the USSR would be incredibly costly, detrimental to their advance in china, and worthless
>>1107977
if they wanted a wall so badly why didn't they go for something more like the great wall of china instead of just spamming a few bunkers and hope for the best?
i know it would be expensive but for fuck sake, how can you be thinking about cheap fortifications when you have fucking nazis as your neighbors
France ignored De Gaulle and allowed old fuck infantry generals to plan the defense and organization of the Army.
Had Charles De Gaulle been in charge of the French military in the 1930s. The Germans would have faced a larger, better equipped, and identically organized French army. Which would have beat the Gremans back through the Ardennes forest.
>>1105604
The Maginot line was a perfect case of "good idea, bad implementation."
The Maginot line did its job by forcing the Germans to go through Belgium, thus buying the French the time they needed to organize a response.
Unfortunately, the French kind of fucked up the "organize a response" part.
>>1108352
there is no way 40 ton tracked vehicles with hundreds of hp could possibly go through a forest
t. french generals.
>>1108354
to be completely fair the majority of German Generals felt the same way at the time.
>>1107775
>Fun fact, a french recce pilot spotted german units in the Ardennes twice, each time to have his officers ignore him.
Something similar happened during the German invasion of the USSR. The first word the Soviets got was one of their soldiers at an outpost in Poland shouting about them about being attacked, they told him that he was insane and to remember to use code next time.
>>1105807
You can put that on America, there was no need to make an enemy of Japan.
>>1108354
it was not necessarily the 'forest' part but the 'there are only four roads, why would anyone send literal thousands of vehicles through just four roads???'
but they dun did dat
>>1105807
FDR basically surrendered the pacific. so he could save communism from the fascists.
>>1105612
>The French
>fearing a war with Germany
nice meme, you should open a book, photos are rare before 1940.
The French feared another war, period. 20 year after having lost 8 million soldiers in the Great Butchery and the war happening (*insert surprised face*) yet again in France, it's understandable,
>>1108829
>no need to make an enemy of Japan
Can you explain this?
From my understanding, Japan was largely unopposed in their rape campaign through the pacific until they began hostilities against the United States.
>>1108919
muh oil embargo is an act of war
>>1105904
I think a lot of people on this website haven't caught that bit
>>1108919
>their rape campaign through the pacific
which the united states was obliged to support, with delicious oil
>>1108806
It's sad to see that, no matter where, when or who, the same kind of bullshit keeps happening.
"What, an enlisted dare to tell me something? Surely he must be wrong!"
>>1108312
wat
One of the first lessons of WWI was that large forts and tall walls are horribly useless against modern artillery "just build a wall" would have been as useful as having nothing on the border.
>>1109282
>Surely he must be wrong!"
I'm not sure it was pig-headedness as much as just making the wrong call. A French commander on the ground would likely view any German push through the Ardennes as a feint to draw troops away from (what the Allies thought was) the real battle
>>1108312
I don't think you know enough about why/in what context the Maginot line was built.
They weren't just spamming bunkers.
>>1109477
Right... WWI showed that defensive structures such as trenches were completely pointless in face of modern artillery.
>>1108354
There were no 40 ton German tanks in 1940.
>>1107439
I wish France would have done this on their entire border to the north see, it would have been like the thin red line movie in Europe except it would have been French soldiers and Germans.
>>1109551
>Right... WWI showed that defensive structures such as trenches were completely pointless in face of modern artillery.
Which must be why "modern" artillery totally flattened those trenches in 1914? Oh, wait.
If anything, World War I completely invalidated your line of bullshit, which somebody (probably German) would have stated after the Franco-Prussian War (in which Krupp artillery flattened the French infantry). World War I took that idea and flushed it down the drain. Remember when the Germans thought their barrage would overcome at Verdun? Or the British at the Somme thought that artillery would hit so hard that when Kitchener's Army left the trenches there'd be nothing left to fight? Remember when Nivelle's perfected rolling barrage would help bring France its breakthrough? You don't because all of them failed and you're a fucking idiot.
The thing World War I proved was that combined arms and proper logistics (read: why the German Spring Offensive failed) could overcome defensive armaments, and it also helps when your blockade is strangling the other side of resources.
