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Why the Maginot Line couldn't save France in WW2
00:40:14
Kevin Passmore tells the story of the fortifications that have become synonymous with France's fall to the Nazis in 1940
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Interviewer
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Podcast Host
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine as the threat of war began to loom in the 1930s, an elaborate system of fortifications sprung up in northeastern France. Known as the Maginot Line, this string of defences was designed to protect the nation in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany. So when Hitler's forces did invade, how much blame should the Maginot Line shoulder for the fall of France in double quick time? That's a question that's troubled historians ever since the traumatic events of 1940. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Kevin Passmore explains why the lion has become a symbol of the nation's collective failure to face the challenges of the modern world.
- [01:57]
Interviewer
Kevin before digging into the controversies that have swirled around the Maginot Line since its construction about a century ago, I wonder if you could give our listeners a quick introduction to the Maginot Line. What was it?
- [02:17]
Kevin Passmore
The first myth that we can bust on the Maginot Line is that the Maginot Line didn't really cover the whole French frontier. The crucial part of the Maginot Line and what people knew as the Maginot Line at the time was on a certain part of the German border with France. If you can imagine the French border with Germany as a kind of arrow pointing into Germany, the Maginot Line was on the kind of top part of that arrow, which is the land border with Germany. Much of it was forested or it had industries on it. The lower part of the arrow was formed by the Rhine. There there were lighter fortifications, just machine gun casements, large blockhouses really covering the major crossing points. But on the land border were these huge Maginot Line forts. Altogether, under the programs that built the Maginot line, there were 19 so called artillery forts, forts, as the name suggests, which had artillery and turrets and casements. They would have crews of maybe up to 1000 men. There were also some around 30 infantry forts which were armed with machine guns and heavy mortars. They were interspersed on the German borders, but there were also some of them on key points on the Belgian border. There were also some fortifications built under this program in the key mountain passes on the border with Italy, which at the time of construction actually was considered to be a much greater danger than Germany. So that was the Maginot Line, the individual forts themselves. A second myth is that they weren't actually linked, certainly not linked underground, but what they were was constructed underground themselves. So usually in hills, the entrance to them would be in the base of the hill. A railway line would bring men and munitions and supplies in. It would go through this entrance under the hill, deep underground, and the gallery would then branch out to combat blocks. These were reached by stairs which would. And lifts, ammunition lifts as well, which would go up to the surface. And there you would find the weaponry of the fort. So that was where the Maginot Line was. There was lighter fortification on the rest of the border, but it really wasn't designed to stop a, a serious attack.
- [04:49]
Interviewer
So what was happening in Europe's geopolitical arena that kind of spurred the French into building the line?
- [04:57]
Kevin Passmore
Well, France has a long history of fortification going back to medieval times, before France really existed as a state. But there had been two waves of fortification. One was under Louis xiv, under his great fortifier Vauban. Any tourist can see the remnants of the. Well, not. They're not remnants. They're still in pretty good shape. Many of them at places like Lille or Mezieres, Neuf, Brissac on the Rhine. There are many examples of these huge masonry fortifications. There was another line of fortifications which was actually partly integrated into the rear of the Maginot Line, constructed in the 1870s and 1880s. So fortification has a long history. Now, fortification was very controversial during the war and afterwards because France went into the first World War actually with a doctrine of all out offensive. It had constructed fortifications in the 1870s and 1880s, but they went out of fashion because the French thought that they could win the war very quickly. And they planned to invade the provinces of Alsace Lorraine, which they had lost to the Germans in 1870. And they hoped that the war would be over. As the saying goes, by Christmas. That didn't happen. The war settled down into a trench warfare. But the French never gave up the idea of a breakthrough, or at least until 1917. There were disastrous attempts at breakthroughs in 1915, 1916, 1917. Then the future Marshal Petain became head of the army amidst military disaster, really in 1917, and he inaugurated what became known as a war of attrition. So wearing down the enemy behind light fortifications and wearing down enemy attacks through successive lines of fortification in depth, but also wearing down the enemy by a series of limited attacks, and counting, really, on the collapse of the German home front, which is what eventually happened. So that was a model that Marshal Petain, as he later became, because of his role in the victory, that was a method that he defended right through the 1920s. Now, he, therefore, was hostile to permanent fortification. He believed that this method of light fortification in successive lines was the best way to defend France against attack. He only ever, very reluctantly accepted the Maginot Line as it was ultimately built. Now, another reason why fortification was controversial was that after the First World War, Germany was not regarded as a threat. Germany had literally imploded in late 1918, early 1919. The army was not immune from the revolution that happened. There was attempted revolutions, attempted coups, starvation. Often people thought that Germany would be the next Russia. In fact, now, the French policy in this period was to dominate Germany. The Versailles Treaty imposed various restrictions on Germany. It lost territory to Poland, Belgium, and to France. Alsace Lorraine, which the French had lost, was recovered. The Germany army was reduced to a force designed to keep order of just 100,000 professional soldiers, plus a few police forces. So the French plan in this period was really to dominate Germany. And in the event that Germany did attack France, which would be very difficult because France actually occupied large parts of Germany, then the plan was to attack Germany and break the country in two. With the support of France's new allies in the east, the new states that had emerged after the First World War, Czechoslovakia, Poland. Well, basically any other state that would agree to join in, and they were basically going to split Germany into two, and the result would have been to break up Germany.
- [09:05]
Interviewer
But you say, though, that Germany wasn't, by many people, wasn't seen as a threat. So why was the Maginot Line built in that case, if it was no longer seen as a threat, what was the need for this line to exist?
- [09:17]
Kevin Passmore
Well, after the First World War, there were discussions about how to defend the country in the event of an attack, which was considered in the immediate to be extremely unlikely. Fortification was discussed, but so were many other aspects of Defence and attack. Now, fortification became back on the agenda in 1920.
- [09:38]
Interviewer
Why is that? Why did that happen?
- [09:39]
Kevin Passmore
Well, for several reasons. One is that the Rif rebellion was over in Morocco, so Petain was able to come back and discuss fortification again. But it appeared more relevant, actually, because this was a period in which France's attempts to repress Germany had largely failed. They'd occupied the Ruhr in 1923. That had really failed because of resistance from the Germans and hostility from France's allies. So they turned towards a policy of reconciliation with Germany. And this was also the period in which the League of Nations was pushing its policy of disarmament. Disarmament really didn't mean abandoning all weapons, but it meant abandoning offensive weapons. So the French were, in this case, more inclined to fortify the frontier with Germany because defensive weapons were acceptable. But the Maginot Line was never totally defensive, because fortifying the whole border with Germany was absolutely impossible, just much too expensive, and much of it was on the Belgian border. So the French, although they begin to move away in this period from an aggressive policy towards Germany, they adopted what's known as the policy of initial defence. They would only respond to a German attack. Now, that German attack, because of the building of the Maginot Line on the German frontier, it was explicitly designed and constructed in order to force the Germans to attack through Belgium. It wasn't because they were ignorant of that possibility, but it was designed right down to the tactical level.
- [11:27]
Interviewer
So why did the French want the Germans to attack through Belgium? What was the thinking there?
- [11:32]
Kevin Passmore
Well, because they thought that they would have more time to respond to an attack. And at the time of construction, Belgium was actually a French ally. Before 1914, Belgium had been neutral, but as a result of the First World War, Belgium became a French ally. And the idea was the French would already be in Belgium and they would be able to threaten the Ruhr in the event of a surprise attack, which the French did fear, that the Germans would suddenly attack without any warning. The French would still go in to meet them, and they had various plans for doing that. And the idea was that they would neutralise, as they put it, or render passive the German border, but also, actually, increasingly the Italian border, so that they would free up all their best forces for intervention in Belgium. Now, that remained controversial, but nobody opposed that idea.
- [12:32]
Interviewer
How impressive a feat of technology was the construction of the Maginot Line? How herculean a task was this?
- [12:41]
Kevin Passmore
Well, it was an immense task. It's the greatest engineering project of its time. It was a time in which very little was built in France, because France was a poor country at the time, thanks to the war. It was built using a huge number of laborers. Many, many of them, especially in the navying stage of the excavation of the foundations of the fortification, were immigrant workers. They included many, many Italians, despite the fact that Italy was an enemy. Quite a few Germans who crossed the frontier to get work on the fortification sites. So in that sense it was a huge product of navying. It was also technologically advanced. The French used private contractors because they had research departments, they had the technical know how to build these things to work with reinforced concrete. They had the excavation equipment, the drilling equipment because they needed to drill kilometers of underground tunnels, rather like the Channel Tunnel. And also it was technologically advanced in that these forts were actually quite small. They had not a very large number of weapons and so that they were very rapid fire. The main artillery were 75mm guns, but they could fire twin guns firing alternately. They could fire 30 shots a minute. So, you know, and they were on pre planned road crossroads and various points. And so you can imagine the effect of that kind of fire.
- [14:21]
Interviewer
Do you get the sense that the French population were generally supportive of the construction of the line?
- [14:28]
Kevin Passmore
They were. Most were especially on the right and in the political centre. But there was also a lot of pacifism and anti militarism in France. The two are very different. Anti militarism was a communist view. The communists, who had anything up to 10 to 15% of the vote in the period, they were pretty much indifferent to French military weapons. They weren't interested in the Maginot line, apart from the occasional article in which they too actually were impressed by its technology. But the only weapons they ever admired were the weapons of the Red Army. So you get photographs in humanity. They're a newspaper of Red army weapons. But they were indifferent to the Maginot Line. The Socialists, they said it wouldn't work. They said it's incomplete. There will be gas attacks, bombers will overfly it and it just won't work. The other great political opposition to it was the population of Alsace Lorraine.
- [15:27]
Interviewer
Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because that's quite an interesting, interesting point in your book. There was quite a lot of opposition to it in Alsace and Lorraine, wasn't there?
- [15:35]
Kevin Passmore
There was an awful lot. Alsace Lorraine was at the time Alsace. In 1919, almost the entire population were first language German, speaker of German dialects, of different German dialects.
- [15:49]
Interviewer
So this had very recently been a part of Germany, is that right?
- [15:51]
Kevin Passmore
Yeah, it had been annexed by Germany in 1870, and the French got it back as a result of the First World War. They lived with a myth of Althas Lorraine as wholeheartedly French under the occupation. But when they went there, they were surprised to find that these people actually spoke German, that many of them were not unsympathetic to Germany, that they were very religious, whereas France was a secular state in which church and state had been separated. The French attempted to assimilate the population by introducing French education, French judicial, French legal processes and so on. And it provoked a lot of opposition. Now, Alsace Lorrainers themselves, they had been in an uncomfortable position actually in Germany as well, because the Germans were quite prejudiced against the people of Alsace and Lorraine. They saw them as potentially treasonable, but so did the French. So they were distrusted by the French as well. They saw themselves as occupying this unique position between France and Germany, and they saw themselves as having a special role in reconciling the two countries. And there was much opposition to the construction of the line. People thought, well, Alsace should be a bridge between France and Germany. And they said, do not surround us with a wall. They said it in German, do not surround us with a wall. There were nationalists and plenty of nationalists in Alsace Rennes, who, despite being German speakers, also disliked, and they were in favour of war. So Alsace was very divided. But the process of building the wall meant that even nationalists criticised it.
- [17:32]
Interviewer
Why is that?
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Kevin Passmore
There were multiple reasons, but the two most important is that it involved the expropriation of huge numbers of plots of agricultural land along the frontier. Once it was constructed, it involved lots of restrictions about movement, about access to people's farm. Payments for expropriation often hadn't been paid. Another thing that the population of Alsace Lorraine disliked was that they were Alsace, and particularly the Moselle, which is present day, what the French call the Lorraine these days a French department. They were very hostile to immigrant workers who came to work there. So those were reasons. There were also multiple incidents between troops who had come from the French interior, what the Alsatians and Lorrainers called the French of the interior. There were many incidents between them in the villages and towns, violent incidents. Often the French called the Alsace Lorrainers. They insulted them as Boches, and that created all sorts of difficulties. The problem for the French was that they needed to use local troops to actually man the Maginot Line, because the Maginot Line was supposed to guard against a surprise attack by the Germans. And therefore it was. It had to be manned instantly. And that meant that reserves. You know, people who weren't in the standing army but who were in the reserves, they had to come from local villages and man the Maginot line. So it was instantly ready. And now most of them, especially the older reserves, could not speak French and so the French army distrusted them and it caused multiple problems.
- [19:22]
Podcast Host
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Interviewer
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- [20:53]
Interviewer
Siemenmobile.com so while we're on this subject, what was the experience of the people who manned the forts? You refer in your book to this kind of troglodyte existence. How tough was it to work on the Maginot Line?
- [21:07]
Kevin Passmore
Peacetime and wartime were different. But already in peacetime it became very clear that the underground fortifications were not suitable for long term occupation. The absence of natural light, the cold that was remedied to some extent by swallowing central heatings in the underground sleeping quarters. But above all the damp because there was condensation because especially in winter, cold air from outside condensed on warmer surfaces inside. And secondly, underground Maginot Line forts were not built within the water table there they differed from some other well known fortifications, like the bunker in Germany was built in the water table, so it was very damp, but the Maginot Line fortifications suffered from the presence of numerous underground springs which leaked through the masonry lining of the walls. And there wasn't enough money to concrete all those underground galleries, so they were constantly damp. There were puddles on the floors. Breathing was difficult, and that's why people called it a troglodyte existence. During wartime, troops found that they had to stay in there for eight months at a time. And because some of them were highly trained, they couldn't easily be replaced in peacetime. They'd spent maybe a couple of weeks in there and they'd stayed in these new, highly modern camps that had been built around the Maginot Line. But in wartime that became a major problem with morale problems often.
- [22:43]
Interviewer
Okay, I want to get to the war in a minute, but first I want to sort of talk to you about the rise of Hitler in the early to mid-1930s and also the fact that, I guess during the 30s it became increasingly obvious that maybe a war of movement of tanks and planes might dominate any future conflict. How did these technological and strategic developments impact attitudes to the Maginot Line ahead of the war?
- [23:16]
Kevin Passmore
The rise of Hitler in 1931 to his arrival in power in 1933 didn't affect the form of the Maginot Line proper very much because it was already well underway. But as you say, the technological changes there, tanks hadn't been very fast in the 1920s and so they couldn't really support a war of movement very easily. But faster tanks, faster planes, tracked supply vehicles, what the French call chenelets, Bren carriers in the British army, these all made war of movement much more likely. The French were actually the first to establish an armoured division, the so called Light Armoured Division, which was envisaged from 1933 and formed in 1935. The Germans were very interested by that and it was a reason why the Germans formed their own armoured divisions. Now, on the Maginot Line itself, they did become very worried about the possibility that it would be attacked by tanks. And so in the 1930s, the major change was that they installed anti tank guns, very effective anti tank guns, actually. 47mm anti tank guns, which were very effective. But the war of mover mattered in the sense that this coincided actually with the retirement of Marshal Petain, who was committed really to defence in a war of attrition. And the arrival at the head of the army of General Weygand and then Gamelin, who were much more committed to manoeuvre. Now, they didn't change the doctrine of initial defence, but they wanted fast forces which would act as a mobile strategic reserve or to meet the Germans as far as possible into Germany. Now, Gamelin Weygond always envisaged a deep action in Belgium. There's a famous debate in the Superior war Council in 1931 in which they went head to head with Petain. Petain said, no, no, we should just advance a little way and dig in, where they said, no, no, the defence of France is on the Belgian border with Germany and we've got to get there. There is another way which the rise of Hitler did affect the Maginot Line, is that France became very divided over the response to Hitler on the right and increasingly the centre. Appeasement became the order of the day and appeasers said, well, we must remain behind our fortifications. The left, on the other hand, from 1934-35, became committed to anti fascism and the alliance with the Soviet Union. France signed a mutual support pact, the Soviet Union in this period, and they said, no, no, we must resist Hitler militarily. Now, they didn't have a very clear idea of how to do so because they hadn't really thought about military methods. But that meant that the army never thought that we must remain behind the Maginot Line, but some of the population thought that they should, particularly on the right appeasers and so on. So the army always remained committed to the advance into Belgium, although the controversy about how remained.
- [26:27]
Interviewer
We're going to jump forward now to the events of the summer of 1940, which obviously saw the fall of France to German forces. Why did the Maginot Line fail to prevent the Germans from conquering France in double quick time? But just as an addition to that question, is it unfair to blame it on the Maginot Line, the failure of France to prevent Hitler's forces?
- [26:54]
Kevin Passmore
Well, that's a very difficult question and the answer is not straightforward. At one time, people did think it was the fault that the French remained behind their fortifications. Now, that's clearly nonsense, because the French lost because they advanced into Belgium and they were surrounded by German forces which broke through further south, headed to the Channel and surrounded the forces in Belgium. Now, the Maginot Line, in a sense, had forced that to happen. But the purpose of the Maginot Line was to force the Germans to attack in Belgium. But of course, the French didn't expect to lose in Belgium. The mistake was to underestimate the security of the section on the French border at Sedan and on the Meuse and into Belgium, which was very lightly fortified, where the Germans broke through. So that's only tangentially related to the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line itself nevertheless did have some role to play in the failure to respond to the breakthrough at Sedan. One reason, and this is quite a long and complex story, is that the French had neglected the Sedan sector. And partly they did so because they prioritized other areas, including actually defence of the Maginot Line.
- [28:14]
Interviewer
Sorry, Kevin, just to interject, where is the Sedan sector?
- [28:17]
Kevin Passmore
Well, the Sedan sector, if you can imagine the Belgian border going from the north, from the North Sea, down towards Luxembourg. On the border between Belgium and Luxembourg, there's a huge forest called the Ardennes. Now, the French thought that, not that it was impenetrable, but that this thick forest, it would take the Germans a long time to get through and that that would give the French the time to bring up reserves. Now, the Germans did take quite a while. They moved at an average of about three or four miles an hour, getting through. But what they did do was that they immediately crossed the Meuse and the French had no time to bring up reserves. The Germans got into their rear and from that moment, response was impossible.
- [29:05]
Interviewer
What about the fighting on the Maginot Line? I mean, was there much fighting on the Maginot Line?
- [29:10]
Kevin Passmore
There was quite a lot of fighting and there was a. Well, it became the scene of a major battle. In fact, when the Germans attacked at Sedan, that was their main point of effort. But they had two kind of diversions. One was a major attack, a much more significant attack in the Belgian plains towards the north, which, of course, attracted the Allies, including the British Expeditionary Force, into Belgium. But they also attacked the advance posts of the Maginot Line. These were kind of lightly fortified posts in front of the Maginot Line to give the impression that they might attack the Maginot Line. Now, that happened, happened in early May. Well, the attack began on the 10th of May, and these attacks on the outposts lasted for about a week. And then things settled down. The Germans devoted all their forces to surrounding the forces into Belgium. The Maginot Line was not attacked for a while. But then in the second stage of the battle, the French had withdrawn back to a line stretching along the River Somme, along a canal, the name doesn't matter. And then along the River Aisne, and there it joined the fortifications. And so they had a long line, so the Maginot Line was part of that. But on the 10th of June, the Germans broke through that line on the N and they headed south and they surrounded the Maginot Line. Now, The French high command debated, well, what should we do here? Should we withdraw from the Maginot Line and try to save the troops? And eventually, in the course of the 11th and 12th of June, they decide, well, we'll withdraw on the 13th. But at the same time, unfortunately, as the Germans were heading south and getting in behind the Maginot Line, but also the Germans broke through it in the so called Saar area, which was in a kind of gap in the fortifications which was defended by the so called aquatic Maginot Line planned flooding. On 15 June, they crossed the Rhine. And so the Maginot Line was surrounded on all sides.
- [31:08]
Interviewer
So the Maginot Line was breached then. So it did fail in that respect then?
- [31:12]
Kevin Passmore
Well, yes, Hitler was particularly concerned to break through the Maginot Line. He was at least as obsessed with fortification as he was with armoured warfare. And this was a. The Germans claimed that they broke through the Maginot Line. Whether it really was the Maginot Line, the area they broke through, is up for debate because they didn't break through the strong fortifications. They broke through this gap, which was defended by flooding and light fortifications. But even there, it's arguable whether they really broke through, because on the first day of the battle on the 14th, the French held them off, they fought them off. And the only reason the Germans broke through was because the French went through that night with their plan to withdraw. So the Germans were able to pursue them and break them up piecemeal.
- [32:04]
Interviewer
Okay, I want to step away just briefly from the actual sort of kind of physical performance of the Maginot Line. It's more like the psychological sort of impact the line had had on the French. Cause you write in the book that the Maginot Line has been portrayed as kind of a sign of a nation's decadence. It's sort of collective failure to face the challenge of the modern world. Can you tell us a little bit bit about this decadence argument? Because I think that's quite interesting.
- [32:33]
Kevin Passmore
Well, the decadence argument underpins the myth of the Maginot Line, that there was somehow something wrong with the French. Now, the idea of decadence has origins, which really we should be aware of. Decadence is based in 19th century ideas about race and social biology. The idea is that a nation has a body and a mind and that it goes to just like human bodies and animal bodies, through cycles of decay as we all die, but also of resurgence. Now, France, the idea was, went through one of these periods of decline after the First World War because of the exhaustion of the war. Now, this is clearly nonsense because Matians do not have bodies, they do not have collective minds. The Maginot Line, I hope it might be clear from what we saw was not an immediate response to the First World War. It came much later, and it came after a period, in fact, of hubris. The French hoped that we can dominate Germany forever, and also it was the product of divisions. So the decadence idea, this generalization, just doesn't work. And they clearly were aware of the danger of armoured warfare. Their whole strategy was based on the possibility of a German armored attack.
- [33:59]
Interviewer
So would you contest then that this kind of stereotype of the Maginot Line is this sort of massive, crumbling sort of symbol of appeasement and ultracaution? I mean, do you think that's a bit unfair, then?
- [34:12]
Kevin Passmore
It's unfair as a generalization. But what historians try to do is to put this in a specific concept, because some people said that France must fight only if its interests are directly threatened. Czechoslovakia doesn't matter. Poland doesn't matter. We must only fight if France is directly threatened. So some people did believe that, but they had only recently started to believe that. These had been precisely the people who'd wanted to dominate Germany in the 1920s, but they came to think that the reason they thought it was because it was the Communists and the Soviet Union who wanted to fight. But the Maginot Line does play a part in the defeat. One is because it wasn't particularly expensive. It probably cost about 7 billion euros in today's prices, and a bit more for the lighter fortification. But it did consume human resources. And through the phoney war, about half of France's frontline soldiers were behind the Maginot Line. So what it didn't do, which is what it had promised to do, which was to economize forces for intervention in Belgium. Now, it meant that this was one of the reasons why the French had no strategic reserves to counter the attack in Belgium.
- [35:35]
Interviewer
Sure. Just briefly, Kevin, what happened to the line after the fall of France and then subsequently after the Second World War?
- [35:43]
Kevin Passmore
Well, the Germans, first of all visited it. Many soldiers came with their cameras, which is why we've got so many great photographs taken by German soldiers with their portable cameras. They used it for target practice and they experimented on it. They stripped its guns and they took them to their own fortifications, which stretched, in fact, from Bordeaux to Trondheim, the Atlantic Wall, you know, a much more substantial set of fortifications even than the Maginot Line. But they used a lot of its guns There they started to recondition it for use against an Allied invasion. The Americans came up against part of it. After the Americans finally broke through, they had some trouble breaking through the Maginot Line area, particularly actually a second line forts. They had much greater problem breaking through the German fortifications, the Siegfried Line or Westphal. But then they too experimented on the Maginot Line. But during the Cold War, the French actually began reconditioning it again, and the Alsace Lorraine frontier with Germany once more became a building site. And a lot of the forts were reconditioned as command centers.
- [36:58]
Interviewer
It was a bulwark against Soviet invasion.
- [37:00]
Kevin Passmore
Against Soviet invasion, yes, because the great problem of NATO at the time was very similar actually to the problem of the French in 1940, which is they couldn't build up their forces quickly enough to really counter a Soviet attack. The danger was that the Americans wouldn't arrive quickly enough, so their aim was to hold out long enough for the Americans to arrive or have recourse to nuclear weapons. So they did. Yes, they did attempt to. But then the French withdrew from NATO. That wasn't quite the end of it, because work on it carried on into the 1960s and some of it was still used as command posts and as nuclear bunkers into the 1980s. In fact, since then it's become a tourist site.
- [37:45]
Interviewer
And finally, Kevin, how do the French themselves view the Maginot Line today?
- [37:50]
Kevin Passmore
Well, I ask a lot of French people about the Maginot Line and regrettably, many people have never heard of it. But nevertheless, in the press you will find all the old myths. It still appears in quality newspapers, so called quality newspapers, particularly to symbolize useless but expensive policies. The French counterterrorist actions after the 2015 attacks were often described as a Maginot line, for example, but you'll find references to it in Britain as well. Even in the recent England Latvia game, the Latvian defence was said to have erected Maginot lines in the effort to keep Jude Bellingham and England attackers out of their lines.
- [38:41]
Podcast Host
That was Kevin Passmore. The Maginot Line is published by Yale University Press.