The Great Wall of France

Military history readers could use a good study of the Maginot Line, the system of fortifications that France built between 1927 and 1940. It was the most massive defensive line created in modern times, and played a major role in French—and German—military planning leading up to World War II. It has also become a myth used by historians from the 1940s on to explain why France was defeated in 1940. Kevin Passmore’s new book, for all its virtues, will unfortunately frustrate military history readers.

Passmore, a professor of history at Cardiff University in Wales, provides a rich assortment of information related to the Maginot Line, but he never provides the basic outline that military history readers will want. They will want to know about the full range of defensive works, from fortified houses and pillboxes at the frontier to the 45 massive gros ouvrages, the elaborate forts, manned by hundreds of soldiers, that were expected to resist assaults for days if not longer. They will also want to know about the thickness of the concrete and armor protecting the various works, and what weapons these were designed to defeat. Most of all, many will want to know about the weapons, from machine guns firing through embrasures to heavy artillery in armored cupolas, that were intended to ward off both infantry and tanks. And then they will want to know how the forts stood up to German attacks in 1940.

While none of this is systematically laid out for readers, Passmore does provide a great deal of political, cultural, and institutional military history that the handful of technical military books on these forts completely overlook. One of the issues that gets attention is the role of language and ethnicity in the regions where the forts were built, and the men who then served in them. Since the Line was meant to stop invasions from either Italy or Germany, the fortifications were constructed at, or near, France’s frontiers with those countries. In the South, this meant sparsely settled Alpine regions, but farther north many of the ouvrages were sited in Alsace-Lorraine. This province had changed hands in 1871 when the Germans won the Franco-Prussian War, and then reverted to French rule in 1920. By 1935, when manning the Line became important, only younger people had been educated in French. In fact, some of the men drafted into the army had fought as Germans in World War I. Even more important, the population of the areas around the forts in Alsace spoke a German dialect. Passmore goes into great detail throughout the book to explain how this complicated things for the French: soldiers from “interior France” were uncomfortable serving in a region where the people worshipped, sang, and spoke in German, yet staffing the defense line with local men—Germanophone and sometimes of questionable loyalty—was no more appealing to the command. In the end, when German troops actually assaulted the Line, the loyalty of local men was not an important issue.

Maginot Line has a fairly thorough chronicle of the interplay between French military and political leaders during the interwar years that led to the decision to built the Line, how much of it to build, and how it fit into France’s plans to defend itself in the next war. Readers who are not familiar with France in this period will have to deal with a great many names of people and parties, as well as acronyms. When the war comes, in 1939, Passmore provides a history of the Phony War and then the French strategy of an advance into Belgium that led to defeat and, eventually, the armistice. Very little of the fighting that led to the fall of France, however, took place on the Maginot Line.

Finally, on page 332 (of a total of 404) readers get what those interested in military history will want: on May 15, 1940, German forces attacked petit ouvrage La Ferte, a small fortress near the border with Belgium. Passmore provides both an overhead map of the works, and a side-view diagram, as well as a list of the fort’s armament. He then gives a detailed description of how the Germans overcame the fort’s defenses. The attack, and the failure of the fort’s ventilation system, led to almost the entire French crew’s deaths. The remainder of the book covers German attacks on other parts of the Line, as well as the failed Italian assaults on the southernmost forts. Maginot Line ends with a consideration of the Line in “Myth and History,” which examines how its loss was treated under Vichy, and how it has been seen since by politicians such as De Gaulle and by historians.

It's interesting to contrast Passmore’s work with Fortress France (2006), a much more conventional book by J.E. and H. W. Kaufmann. Their book has everything many readers will want: countless diagrams, lists of weapons, thicknesses of armor and concrete, and a concise, but complete, chronicle of how the Line performed in combat. It does not have the wide-ranging riches that Passmore brings to his book, which includes painter Fernand Léger, vaudeville acts, detective books and films set in the Line, and extensive coverage of the morale and health problems that fortress units faced.

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Our Reviewer: Jonathan Beard is a retired freelance journalist who has devoted most of his life to reading military history. When he worked, he wrote and did research for British, American and Danish science magazines, and translated for an American news magazine. The first book he owned was Fletcher Pratt’s The Monitor and the Merrimac. Jonathan reviews regularly for the Michigan War Studies Review. His previous reviews here include Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians' First Battles in the Revolution, The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944, Prevail Until the Bitter End: Germans in the Waning Days of World War II, Enemies Among Us, Battle of the Bulge, Then and Now, Mussolini’s War: Fascist Italy From Triumph to Collapse, Engineering in the Confederate Heartland, The Bletchley Park Codebreakers, Armada, Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, The Collaborators, The Enigma Traitors, When Men Fell from the Sky, Midway: The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle, When Men Fell from The Sky, The Lost Scientists of World War II, U.S. Battleships 1939–45, The Last Emperor of Mexico, Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan, Convair B-36 Peacemaker, Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and The Concentration Camp Brothel.

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Note: The Maginot Line is also available in e-editions.

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