The texts bellow are not written by me and they answer the "weak maginot" theme.They are replies to questionHuszar666 wrote: ↑18 May 2022, 18:33This is not correct. The line was held till the armistice (and in a few cases even after that) and at no point was it "abandoned".The Maginot Line failed because the French planned on connecting their forts with Belgium and because they messed up hard in the Ardennes.The Germans just bypased the line and didnt really fight the defenders there.In some cases that i found of them attacking Maginot they easily "won" but i say "won" because at that point the French army had left the forts almost empty and moved its armies elsewhere so the Germans mostly walked through them.
I reality, the Germans were able to penetrate the line in at least two points, despite the French holding it with the intended garrison.
The Great Powers figured out how to penetrate fixed defences back in 1918, every last one of the forts or fortification lines in WW2 was defeated by determined assault. Probably Sevastopol held out the longest, but even that was only possible because the Germans had better things to do between December 1941 and June 1942 than to assault the line.
Eben Emael fell in how many HOURS again? How long did the Norwegian coastal forts last? Mannerheim Line? Metaxas Line? El Alemain position? Or the fabled Ostwall?
Not counting rare exceptions (Árpád Line, Sevastopol, Mannerheim Line, maybe the Westwall) the time every last fortification line bought for the defenders could be measured in days, maybe in a couple of weeks - if and when the attacker arrived at the line at the end of his logistics line.
In contrast to Germany the Western Allies had a HUGE pile of old WW1 superheavy artillery, building bunkers EVERYWHERE that can survive 12"++++ shells would bankrupt you faster than building the Z-Plan ships in two years...
{Did the germans attack maginot directly ?}
[They did, on small isolated forts only (and after penetration through the border, in area where they could come from behind like around Sedan). I think that you don’t understand the Maginot line concept. It was not just forts. Those forts were multilayered and were supposed to be supported by rear artillery positions and interwinned infantry divisions. Not a single major position/fort felt from frontal assault. As for the poor building, well, the Schoenenbourg fort had to be treated with 160 Stuka bombs, 50 x 420 mm shells and 30x 280 mm shells). In most assaults, bare one, germans had to use heavy support (one example above, i can multiply them). You can also ask the Italians if the forst were of poor conception….]
This talks about the withdrawing of troops
[You left out one important fact about the attack on Saarbrucken. When the French set up a line along the Somme and Aisne rivers a general withdrawal was issued at the western end of the fortifications at Montmedy and Marville. Then the 3rd Army issued orders for the timing of the successive withdrawal of the other sectors including interval troops and fortress crews which was completed by June. 15th. Tiny skeleton crews remained in place to give the illusion of a strong defense to allow the withdrawal.
At that point only La Ferte’ had fallen from the Maginot Line proper and it took three German infantry divisions three days of hard fighting to knock the single petit ouvrage out. By June. 12 when the Germans started seriously zeroing in on the rest of the Maginot Line during Operation Tiger and Bear the bulk of the interval troops had been removed and redeployed to shore up the Weygand Line.
Other fortresses of the Maginot Line extension neighboring La Ferte were completely abandoned because they risked being cut off completely. German success in breaching sections of the Maginot Line didn't begin until AFTER the interval troops were removed and the line was essentially isolated. The Maginot Line was heavily dependent on regular infantry and artillery from the field army holding the intervals between the fortresses and countering any breakthroughs.
Probably the biggest myth about the Maginot Line was that it was intended to fight in complete isolation. It wasn't. The interval troops were essential to its defense. Even still the Germans failed to take a single gros ouvrage by force. And contrary to your post the did attack the artillery blocks. They attacked the gros ouvrages at Schoenenbourg, Hochwald. Between June 14th to June 24 Hochwald and Schoenenbourg fired over 15,000 and 13,000 rounds respectively at German targets and in support of neighboring forts.
All the gros ouvrages held out against the heaviest of German fire and repelled attacks by infantry until the armistice took effect. Read Blitzkrieg In The West Then And Now by Jean Paul Pallud it goes into great detail into German attacks on the Maginot Line.]
Now on the Belgian fort
[While 1,200 soldiers were authorized to be at the fort on any given day, only 650 were there, with an additional 233 troops six km away at the time of the German assault.]
This one is from the wiki
Belgium was doomed to fail when in 1936 Leopold 3 shit his pants and didnt allow the French army to be on his soil
The Metaxas line was just bypassed because it wasnt completed.
Norwegian forts were very old and in no case up to ww2 standarts.
Mannerheim line
[The Finns originally aimed to make its defence line impregnable, however actual construction progress came nowhere close to this goal by the time the Winter War broke out, in contrast to the Maginot Line which effectively deterred a cross-border assault. The Finns had funds and resources for only 101 concrete bunkers; the equivalent length of the Maginot Line had 5,800 of these structures, with underground railway connections between them.[17] The weakness of the line is illustrated by the fact that the amount of concrete used in the whole Mannerheim Line—14,520 cubic meters or 513,000 cubic feet—is slightly less than the amount used in the Helsinki Opera House (15,500 cubic meters or 547,000 cubic feet). The much shorter VT-line used almost 400,000 cubic meters (14,000,000 cubic feet) of concrete.]
The Atlantic wall was again was cut of from the main mobile force,talking about Normamdy and had Germany fight with a dead luftwaffe and submarines couldnt get close to help with the big ships.Had Germany been in a better shape to defend it the US would either attack from the south of France or just get slaughtered on the Normandy beaches
What i propose is closer to a maginot line but with a strong airforce and a more mobile tank force than what the French had in the 40s.France was just rellying on its allies to win a german invasion when they should have just built the line till the sea and not give a shit about Belgium.Apart from that the French should have more modern tanks AND RADIOS on all of them.The only 12 inch guns on land come from railway artillery and if the defender can have something like the Adolf Kannone every few miles with some sort of rocket long range mortar too then even that railway artillery is redundant.The biggest problem comes from above but with a proper airforce from the defenders side it can be negated i guess.
3)I guess if they produced enough synthetic fuel they could trade it for the other minerals you mentioned,just an idea.Just my 2c sollution,what do you think ?