The Maginot Line, the once indomitable fortress barrier between Germany and France now coexists with nature. Eventually, nature will dominate its concrete and steel intruder. Built by the French during the 1930’s in order to deter and protect France from their centuries old rival, Germany. It was the brainchild of Andre Maginot, a wounded Great War veteran, politician, and Minister of War during the 1920’s.
Knowing that there would be a shortage of potential soldiers for several decades after the First World War due to low birthrates, the line of costly, heavily fortified, underground forts and bunkers would ease the need for soldiers to protect the French frontier from the Italian to the Belgium borders. A mobile force of infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft would protect the remaining border to the English Channel.
German army planners were not going to play France’s ‘game’. In the spring of 1940, a massive armor and aircraft blitz went around the Maginot fortress line at the point of the ‘impregnable’ Ardennes Forrest in Belgium. The British and French armies were caught from behind by the audacity and speed of the attack. While the allied armies were falling back, a portion of the German Army attached the Maginot Line from the rear. A major flaw of these impressive, immobile forts was that the guns did not face to its rear!
By June, almost half a million French soldiers bunkered in the fortresses surrendered. Its other major flaw was being outmaneuvered and underestimating their foe.
Today, much of the underground structures were auctioned off to make museums, to grow mushrooms, to store wine, and even to create a disco! Gangs take risks in the unlit tunnels to steal copper wire. An unauthorized ‘guest’ can still see evidence of war art by the soldiers who resided there in the 1930’s. Pictures of Mickey Mouse still adorn the faded fresco walls.
