Built over two decades at the expense of huge portions of the French defense budget, the brainchild of French Minister of War André Maginot– some 5,000 interconnected concrete and steel blockhouses arrayed against Germany– was to provide a huge defensive line for “la Guerre de longue durée” (the war of the long duration) just in case the Germans ever came back.
“Finally the Maginot Line was rolled up. What France considered invincible broke before the might of German arms. In Alsace alone, 500,000 Frenchmen laid down their arms.” Photo Via NY Public Library
Of course, the Germans ran around the wall through the Low Country and Ardennes and the vaunted line was rolled up largely intact after the Battle of France, some 78 years ago today.
Something kinda like this:
The Franco-German Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, knocking the French ostensibly out of WWII after just nine months of campaigning. Of course, the Vichy regime was non-viable from the start and by November 1942 the Germans went ahead and occupied the whole of metropolitan France as De Gaulle grew in power from London, but that is a whole different story.