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The Battle For The Maginot Line 1940
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Book Synopsis The Maginot Line by : J. E. Kaufmann
Download or read book The Maginot Line written by J. E. Kaufmann and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Maginot Line, the complex system of strongpoints constructed between the world wars by the French to protect against attack from Germany, is one of the most famous, extensive and controversial defensive schemes in all military history. It stretched from Belgium to Switzerland, and from Switzerland to the Mediterranean, and it represented the most advanced and ambitious system of static defenses of its time. Much of this historic line -- with its fortresses, artillery positions, barbed-wire networks, casemates, concrete bunkers -- has survived and can be visited today ... The strategic thinking that gave rise to this enormous feat of military engineering is described, as is the planning, design, and construction of the line -- and its operational history. Each of the key sites is described in detail, and visitor information and plans are provided"--Jacket.
Book Synopsis The Battle for the Maginot Line, 1940 by : Clayton Donnell
Download or read book The Battle for the Maginot Line, 1940 written by Clayton Donnell and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vividly detailed WWII history offers an in-depth look at the French military fortifications designed to deter German invasion. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the French military constructed an extensive network of bunkers, forts, and weapons installations along the country’s eastern border. In this detailed and graphic historical account, Clayton Donnell examines what it was like for French soldiers to defend the Maginot Line when the Germans invaded in 1940. He also interrogates the popular opinion that it was a strategic and tactical disaster. Donnell gives readers an inside view of life in the bunkers, capturing the camaraderie of soldiers and the terror of the German attacks. He examines the construction and development of the Maginot Line, describing its layout from Dunkirk to Switzerland, and across the island of Corsica, in expert detail. But the narrative concentrates on its performance in combat and the experience of the soldiers who manned it as the German offensive broke over them.
Book Synopsis The Maginot Line by : Charles River Charles River Editors
Download or read book The Maginot Line written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Explains the origins of the Maginot Line, its construction, and the World War II fighting around it *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "We could hardly dream of building a kind of Great Wall of France, which would in any case be far too costly. Instead we have foreseen powerful but flexible means of organizing defense, based on the dual principle of taking full advantage of the terrain and establishing a continuous line of fire everywhere." - Andre Maginot As the power of Nazi Germany grew alarmingly during the 1930s, the French sought means to defend their territory against the rising menace of the Thousand-Year Reich. As architects of the most punitive measures in the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, the French government made natural targets for Teutonic retribution, so the Maginot Line, a series of interconnected strongpoints and fortifications running along much of France's eastern border, helped allay French fears of invasion. The popular legend of the Maginot Line portrays the frontier defenses as a useless "white elephant" project that was prompted by a gross misapprehension of warfare's new realities in the mid-20th century and quickly overwhelmed by the forceful advance of the German blitzkrieg. English idiom today invokes this vision of the Maginot Line as a metaphor for any defensive measure strongly believed in but actually useless. Indeed, usages such as "Maginot Line mentality," describing an overly defensive, reactive mindset, perpetuate the legend. As a French author and military liaison with the British, Andre Maurois, wrote about his disillusionment with the defensive line he originally enthusiastically supported: "We know now that the Maginot line-complex was a dangerous disease of the mind; but I publish this as it was written in January, 1940." In reality, however, the actual Maginot Line proved considerably more functional than memory has served. The true flaw in French military strategy during the opening days of World War II lay not in reliance on the Maginot fortifications but in the army's neglect to exploit the military opportunities the Line created. In other words, the border defense performed as envisioned, but the other military arms supported it insufficiently to halt the Germans. The French Army squandered the opportunity not because the Maginot Line existed but because they failed to utilize their own defensive plan properly. Some French commentary contributed to the legend, but the bloviating of politicians altered nothing regarding the Maginot Line's actual purpose or history: "General Maurin, defended the status quo in these words: '[H]ow could one think that we are still thinking about an offensive when we have spent billions to establish a fortified barrier? Would we be mad enough to advance beyond this barrier to undertake some adventure?' [...] but the Maginot Line had never been conceived as a sort of Great Wall of China sealing France off from the outside world. Its purpose was to free manpower for offensive operations elsewhere." (Jackson, 2004, 27). In fact, a forgotten battle in the southeast of France, where four French divisions (later reduced to three by the redeployment of one northwards in a futile effort to stem the German tide) held off 32 Italian divisions thanks to the defensive power of the so-called "Little Maginot Line of the Alps," proved the soundness of both the concept and engineering. Though the Italians suffered from poor equipment and the meddling incompetence of Mussolini's personal "leadership," the fighting on the Alpine front brilliantly highlighted the Maginot Line's success as a "force multiplier." French soldiers held off brave but futile Italian attacks at odds of 8:1 or 10:1 in favor of the Italians for five days until an armistice with the Axis put an end to this undeniable display of the Maginot Line's effectiveness.
Book Synopsis The Maginot Line 1928–45 by : William Allcorn
Download or read book The Maginot Line 1928–45 written by William Allcorn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-20 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maginot Line, the massive series of fortifications built by France in the 1930s to defend its borders with Germany and Italy, is perhaps the most maligned collection of fortifications ever built. Despite being a technological marvel, and the most sophisticated and complex set of fortifications built up to that time, it failed to save France from crushing defeat in 1940. Yet there are those who argue that it accomplished exactly what it was designed to do. This book provides a concise and informative treatment of the Maginot Line, from North-East France to the Mediterranean. Packed with plans, contemporary and modern images, plus digital artwork, it presents a detailed visual exploration of this famous fortification system.
Book Synopsis History of the Maginot Line by : Marc Halter
Download or read book History of the Maginot Line written by Marc Halter and published by Moselle River. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * An exceptional illustrated account of the Maginot Line Contrary to popular opinion, the Maginot Line performed its duty without fault and fulfilled every role that was expected of it. After the war, the Line wrongly became the ideal scapegoat for the greatest military and political disaster ever suffered by France. Marc Halter, author of History of the Maginot Line, removes the mysteries that have long surrounded the legend of the much maligned fortification. In his work Halter explores the true history of these fortifications, their genesis, their functions, their construction, and the fierce fighting that took place in Alsace-Lorraine and in the Alps. He also restores the memory of the undefeated defenders of the fortress who can be counted among the first French Resistance fighters of 1940. Brian Chin, an American artist, brings a detailed knowledge of every aspect of this modern fortress system to his presentation of the settings and characters of this era. His realistic drawings bring us inside this closed world of concrete and reveal the secrets of this remarkable achievement. The comic book style employed in History of the Maginot Line is an innovative and exciting medium through which to communicate the fascinating history behind an often forgotten piece of French history. AUTHOR: Author of numerous articles and essays, Marc Halter, is an expert on the Maginot Line, which he has presented to thousands of tourists. Brian B. Chin is the author of a book on the harbour defences of San Francisco as well as a graphic album on the taking of a German fort at Metz. Illustrated throughout
Book Synopsis Maginot Line Gun Turrets by : Clayton Donnell
Download or read book Maginot Line Gun Turrets written by Clayton Donnell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maginot Line was one of the most advanced networks of fortifications in history. Built in the aftermath of World War I, and stretching along the French eastern border from Belgium to Switzerland, it was designed to prevent German troops from ever setting foot on French soil again. Its primary defensive weapons were the gun turrets. Beginning development in the 1870s and improving on German designs, they were constructed out of steel wedges and could revolve and disappear from sight after firing, making them impervious to enemy bombardment. They were deadly accurate and created havoc on the German units that attacked the line during their invasion of France in 1940. This fully illustrated study will examine the technical details of the French artillery turrets. It will show the evolution of the design of the guns and turrets used in the French forts before and during World War I, then those built exclusively for the Maginot Line to give a comprehensive overview of the weapons designed to protect France from invasion.
Book Synopsis To Lose a Battle by : Alistair Horne
Download or read book To Lose a Battle written by Alistair Horne and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 1243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne’s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry. To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).
Book Synopsis The French Defeat of 1940 by : Joel Blatt
Download or read book The French Defeat of 1940 written by Joel Blatt and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 1997-08-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why France, the major European continental victor in 1918, suffered total defeat in six weeks at the hands of the vanquished power of 1918 only two decades later remains moot. Why the stunning reversal of fortunes? In this volume thirteen prominent scholars reexamine the French debacle of 1940 in interwar perspectives, utilizing fresh analysis, original approaches, and new sources. Although the tenor of the volume is critical, the contributors also suggest that French preparations for war knew successes as well as failures, that French defeat was not inevitable, and that the Battle of France might have turned out differently if different choices had been made and other paths been followed.
Download or read book Strange Victory written by Ernest R. May and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernest R. May's Strange Victory presents a dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, Strange Defeat, about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.
Download or read book Case Red written by Robert Forczyk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even after the legendary evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940 there were still large British formations fighting the Germans alongside their French allies. After mounting a vigorous counterattack at Abbeville and then conducting a tough defence along the Somme, the British were forced to conduct a second evacuation from the ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest and St Nazaire. While France was in its death throes, politicians and soldiers debated what to do – flee to England or North Africa, or seek an armistice. Case Red captures the drama of the final three weeks of military operations in France in June 1940, and explains the great impact it had on the course of relations between Britain and France during the remainder of the war. It also addresses the military, political and human drama of France's collapse in June 1940, and how the windfall of captured military equipment, fuel and industrial resources enhanced the Third Reich's ability to attack its next foe – the Soviet Union.
Book Synopsis May 1940, from Sedan to Stonne by : Eric Denis
Download or read book May 1940, from Sedan to Stonne written by Eric Denis and published by Histoire & Collections. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 1940, the Panzers crossed the Meuse river. Guderian had the choice to go south and attack the rears of the Maginot line or to head west in order to encircle the French troops holding the Meuse line. The town of Stonne and the woody hills of Mont-Dieu were the single area where it was possible to try to stop the German advance. To attack the Germans, the French urged elements from the 3rd DIM, from the 3rd DRC and the 4th BCC, to face elements of the 10.PzDivision and of the Grossdeutschland infantry Regiment. Stonne saw very hard fighting, the town itself switched sides 17 times in 3 days. Some German officers mentioned Stonne among the battles they will never forget. Most of the Grossdeutschland infantry regiment of the 1940 western campaign were lost in Stonne. The town was totally occupied only on May 25, French pockets were still resisting to the enemy. The French infantry lost many men too: one of the 51 e RI company finished the battle with only five sergeants and 30 soldiers. The battle of Stonne has be called by the Germans the 'Verdun of 1940'.
Book Synopsis When the Odds Were Even by : Keith Bonn
Download or read book When the Odds Were Even written by Keith Bonn and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In three months of savage fighting, the U.S. Seventh Army did what no army in the history of modern warfare had ever done before–conquer an enemy defending the Vosges Mountains. With the toughest terrain on the Western Front, the Vosges mountain range was seemingly an impregnable fortress, manned by German troops determined to hold the last barrier between the Allies and the Rhine. Yet despite nearly constant rain, snow, ice, and mud, soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Army tore through thousands of pillboxes, acres of barbed wire, hundreds of roadblocks, and miles of other enemy obstacles, ripping the tenacious German defenders out of their fortifications in fierce fighting–and then held on to their gains by crushing Operation Nordwind, the German offensive launched in a hail of steel at an hour before midnight on the last New Year’s Eve of the war. Keith Bonn’s fascinating study of this little-known World War II campaign offers a rare opportunity to compare German and American fighting formations in a situation where both sides were fairly evenly matched in numbers of troops, weapons, supplies, and support. This gripping battle-by-battle account shatters the myth that German formations were, division for division, superior to their American counterparts.
Book Synopsis The Breaking Point by : Robert A. Doughty
Download or read book The Breaking Point written by Robert A. Doughty and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging narrative of the small-unit actions near Sedan during the 1940 campaign for France.
Book Synopsis Toward Combined Arms Warfare by : Jonathan Mallory House
Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Fall of France by : Julian Jackson
Download or read book The Fall of France written by Julian Jackson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-22 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 16 May 1940 an emergency meeting of the French High Command was called at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. The German army had broken through the French lines on the River Meuse at Sedan and elsewhere, only five days after launching their attack. Churchill, who had been telephoned by Prime Minister Reynaud the previous evening to be told that the French were beaten, rushed to Paris to meet the French leaders. The mood in the meeting was one of panic and despair; there was talk ofevacuating Paris. Churchill asked Gamelin, the French Commander in Chief, 'Where is the strategic reserve?' 'There is none,' replied Gamelin.This exciting book by Julian Jackson, a leading historian of twentieth-century France, charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led to the defeat and surrender of one of the greatest bastions of the Western Allies, and thus to a dramatic new phase of the Second World War. The search for scapegoats for the most humiliating military disaster in French history began almost at once: were miscalculations by military leaders to blame, or was this an indictment of an entire nation?Using eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries, Julian Jackson recreates, in gripping detail, the intense atmosphere and dramatic events of these six weeks in 1940, unravelling the historical evidence to produce a fresh answer to the perennial question of whether the fall of France was inevitable.
Download or read book France 1940 written by Philip Nord and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revisionist account of France’s crushing defeat in 1940, a world authority on French history argues that the nation’s downfall has long been misunderstood. Philip Nord assesses France’s diplomatic and military preparations for war with Germany, its conduct of the war once the fighting began, and the political consequences of defeat on the battlefield. He also tracks attitudes among French leaders once defeat seemed a likelihood, identifying who among them took advantage of the nation’s misfortunes to sabotage democratic institutions and plot an authoritarian way forward. Nord finds that the longstanding view that France’s collapse was due to military unpreparedeness and a decadent national character is unsupported by fact. Instead, he reveals that the Third Republic was no worse prepared and its military failings no less dramatic than those of the United States and other Allies in the early years of the war. What was unique in France was the betrayal by military and political elites who abandoned the Republic and supported the reprehensible Vichy takeover. Why then have historians and politicians ever since interpreted the defeat as a judgment on the nation as a whole? Why has the focus been on the failings of the Third Republic and not on elite betrayal? The author examines these questions in a fascinating conclusion.
Download or read book Case White written by Robert Forczyk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German invasion of Poland on 1 September, 1939, designated as Fall Weiss (Case White), was the event that sparked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The campaign has widely been described as a textbook example of Blitzkrieg, but it was actually a fairly conventional campaign as the Wehrmacht was still learning how to use its new Panzers and dive-bombers. The Polish military is often misrepresented as hopelessly obsolete and outclassed by the Wehrmacht, when in fact it was well-equipped with modern weapons and armour. Indeed, the Polish possessed more tanks than the British and had cracked the German Enigma machine cipher. Though the combined assault from Germany and the Soviet Union defeated Poland, it could not crush the Polish fighting spirit and thousands of soldiers and airmen escaped to fight on other fronts. The result of Case White was a brutal occupation, as Polish Slavs found themselves marginalized and later eliminated, paving the way for Hitler's vision of Lebensraum (living space) and his later betrayal and invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Using a wide array of sources, Robert Forczyk challenges the myths of Case White to tell the full story of the invasion that sparked history's greatest conflict.
