I get what he's saying: the Maginot line was a pretty epic blunder.
But it's easy to over generalize what he's saying.
It's absolutely best practice for modern infantry to improve their defensive posture while staying in place. You can see this by the extensive trench system both sides of the Ukraine war have constructed whenever positions get fixed for even a relatively short period of time.
> I get what he's saying: the Maginot line was a pretty epic blunder.
What is often forgotten about the Maginot Line is that... it worked, it did exactly what it was supposed to. The failure was in French military leadership, largely for reasons that probably would have played out the same without the Maginot Line (e.g., refusal to believe intelligence reports, slowness in response, etc.).
Just adding to this for the uninitiated-but-curious: the German army invaded by going around the line. This meant taking tanks through the Ardennes, a bordering region consisting of mountains and forests, not quite the Panzer's ideal terrain...
Nowadays it's still used as a French expression to describe a "seemingly impassable defense that's useless in the end".
One thing I read recently said one of the aims of the maginot line was to delay the Germans (it did -- they had to go through NL/BE), and another was to ensure they went through BE and thus brought the British in to the fight (due to a UK/BE defence guarantee). It did that too.
Wasn't that that "Quiet war" ie, both france and great britain had guaranteed poland, and declared war, but didn't actually push out troops or really do anything until france was invaded?
Right—it's not like they'd have done better without it. Odds are they would have lost even sooner, in fact. The little air war after Poland was invaded would have instantly been a bloody ground war in the West, too, rather than most of the action on that front waiting until Germany marched through the low countries. Not like they'd have been better off with that border unfortified—it likely bought them some weeks or months, not that it mattered for the ultimate outcome. Hell, without it, Germany may have decided to attack West first, then turn East, rather than vice-versa.
While Patton's quote is open to interpretation, the Maginot Line is a case where he's dead on. What was the opportunity cost of building these giant and somewhat extravagant fortifications? Hindsight is 20:20 but maybe things could have worked out better for the French if they had used the massive amounts resources in a different way.
Who knows, but the plan itself was sound and it worked. It forced Germany to go via small route and thus made much less land that needed to be defended. They just didn't have a plan to defend that land - if they had a workable plan Germany would have been in real trouble - their troops were overextended on hindsight. It worked because France was incompetent not because Germany had a great battle plan.
Indeed, I believe the initial plan was to continue the line, but Belgium opposed it. And the Ardennes was thought to be difficult enough terrain that it didn't need to be strongly defended. It was actually the Ardennes that failed expectations as defensive terrain, not the Maginot line (though as you noted, it would have worked as defensible terrain if there was more competent leadership).
It's kind of like building a giant fence around an area, then leaving an opening in the middle of it, and then deciding that you don't need to have people guard that opening. And when people inevitably get through the large unguarded opening, you declare that fences are idiotic and useless.
The issue was that while Ardenne were a bad train to fight in, the French didn't contest the German advance there with fool reasons, so they kinda just traveled trough it. Hard terrain isn't that hard if undefended.
Continuing the line was an impossibility because it would have driven the low countries straight into aligning with the Axis.
Just because political concerns ruin your tactic, doesn't mean those political concerns aren't real. The Maginot line was great tactically, but worse than useless strategically, because it completely failed to achieve it's big-picture objective - keeping the Germans out of France.
The low countries were against it because they feared the Axis, and didn't want to be left on the other side of defensive fortifications. But in the end they fell to the Axis anyway, so I'm not sure how not continuing the long helped.
Either way it's a moot point. As I said, the Ardennes would have been an effective barrier if it was better defended. You can't leave an unguarded opening in your fence and then declare that fences are useless.
Yes, France still fell in the end. Static defenses weren't able to overcome weak leadership, but - importantly - it's mobile forces weren't able to overcome it either. In the end the mobile forces ended up being _much_ more susceptible to poor leadership than the static defenses, leading to a large chunk of the army getting disastrously cut off (and the need to get evacuated from Dunkirk).
For a little bit, anyway. But what does that actually mean? I often wonder what would have happened had Germany not pursued genocide, and just stopped at France. It's not like the French people would magically turn German overnight. Would the resulting entity end up like a confederacy?
Same reasoning with Napoleon, too. What if they had stopped before the Russia disaster?
Poland has treaties with France and England: both were in process of mobilizing after the fall of Poland. I think it is inevitable that England would have at least made some attempt at war.
Though I wonder if Hitler could have made things worth if he had not started the Eastern front. (I'm not clear on how that started, and Stalin wasn't to be trusted)
Quick summary: The French Army's high command was stuporhumanly slow and weak in their response to the German attack through the Ardennes (just north of the north end of the Maginot line). Especially considering how quickly the German Army had conquered Poland less than a year earlier. And had conquered Denmark just one month before. And was wrapping up the conquest of Norway at the same time as they started attacking France...
If you know in advance that your soldiers are solid (and the French soldiers were) but your military high command will be worse than useless - then relying on fixed fortifications is actually the best possible national strategy. Your good soldiers can hold out for a while in the fortifications, taking (mostly) not-too-horrible casualties, without needing any orders from or action by your brain-dead high command.
Militaries are always fighting the last war - it's really hard for some reason to get them to recognize changes in warfare, and blitzkrieg caught them with their proverbial pants down, and then they did nothing.
True...somewhat. But read a detailed history of the Battle of France. And compare the command performance of the B.E.F. (under General John Vereker, Lord Gort) with the command performance of General Maurice Gamelin (C-in-C of the French Armed Forces) and the next tier or two of French generals under him.
For Lord Gort - it wasn't his country, he'd only been appointed to command the B.E.F. the prior September, and he'd been shuffled through a lot of different jobs in the prior decade. (Including time spent in China and India - hardly useful experience for WWII in Europe.) Still, Gort and his immediate subordinates got their sh*t together, moved fast and made good decisions in very new, chaotic, and challenging circumstances, and did extremely well.
For Gamelin & Co. - it was their country, defending it against a German invasion had been their d*mn-obvious Job # 1 since at least the German invasion of the Rhineland (March 1936), and they'd been building the Maginot line since 1930. Yet their performance in the event was laughably slow and weak even by the 1914 standards of French General Joseph Gallieni. (Who had been recalled from retirement, was in obvious poor health, and had served most of his career in French overseas colonies.)
You also need to watch out for the geopolitical issues before the war starts. Imagine that country A and country B are rivals, but each has its own internally divided politics with Fighters versus Peace-niks. In country A the Fighters bully the Peace-niks into accepting an increase in "defense" spending. Country B isn't deceived, and country B's Fighters try to persuade country B's Peace-niks to agree to more defense spending. Having succeeded they still have to decide how to split the money between tanks and static defenses.
The naive analysis just looks at the military effectiveness of the options. But there may be political implications. Perhaps if country B spends the money on tanks, that gets noticed in country A. That changes the politics in country A and lets the Fighters there persuade their own Peace-niks that more "defense" spending is needed. Whoops! The money that country B spends on tanks doesn't help defend country B as much as you would expect, if in unleashes counter-spending in country A.
What about country B spending the money on static defenses? That could help Peace-niks in country A push for cuts in country A's "defense" spending. That would multiply the effectiveness of country B's spending on static defenses.
I don't think it worked like that with the Maginot Line. Nevertheless, what a General says about military effectiveness misses part of the story.
I'll take any quotes from one of the most self engranding generals of WW2 with more than a grain of salt. Especially one who ended the serving under one of his former subordinates, Omar Bradley. Patton did have a talent for PR so, including catchy quotes.
For those talking about the "3 hours under fire": Dexpan is an expanding cement that cracks concrete over a few hours.
Once placed into a hole or crack, you don't need to hang around to do anything.
The reason for the hammer drill is to make holes in the dragon's teeth to put the Dexpan into. For that, you only a minute per tooth, and it doesn't matter where you put the hole, so you can use the teeth as cover from defensive fire while you drill.
There are great videos of WWII American troops confused at Dragons teeth. They marveled how dumb the entire the obstruction is. Months of work, removed in minutes. They just reverse their tank, take a cable, remove 4 of them, take their ENTIRE tank column through.
That's an easy stone to throw when you are fighting a war on foreign soil. Particularly since the allies struggled to oust Germans from several fixed fortifications in Europe.
You realize that Patton's quote about fixed fortifications does not apply to dragon's teeth which are not actually fixed. He was more addressing the Maginot line and other such fixed defensive permanent positions.
