Thread by @PaulMMCooper

Some of the world's most melancholy ruins are the concrete remains of the Maginot Line.

This border wall of concrete fortifications, traps and weapon installations was built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany, and today it forms a tragic monument to those days.

After the horror of the First World War, it was clear to many in Europe that the world had reached a new phase of armed conflict.

Much of the countryside of Eastern France was now a ruined and pockmarked wasteland.

(📷aerial view of Fort Vaux in ruins, 1916. Verdun.)

French decision-makers knew that the victory of 1918 had relied on the help of the British Empire & the United States.

With a return to isolationism in the UK & USA, France now had no guarantee of this kind of help in future wars. They knew that alone, France could be defeated.

Debates raged over what to do about this. Some argued that France should invest in modern aircraft & armour.

But others had a more ambitious plan. They advised the construction of a vast defensive wall, stretching the whole length of the 450 km border between Germany & France.

As Germany began to rebuild their military and flout the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, these voices gained strength, until André Maginot, a veteran of the First World War, became French Minister for War in 1928.

He convinced the government to invest in the border wall.

The line was built in several phases from 1930, with the main construction largely completed by 1939, at a cost of around 3 billion French francs.

It was not one line, but several stretches with multiple layers leading back into France, 15 miles deep at its thickest points.

France poured 1.3 million cubic yards of concrete into the line. They built 150,000 tons of steel buildings, including thousands of turrets, towers & bunkers.

Maginot himself died in 1932, and the line was named after him in his honour.

(📷Alexandre Guirkinger)

The Line comprised of over 500 separate buildings but was dominated by large forts (known as ‘ouvrages’) which were built about 15km apart.

Each ouvrage housed 1000 soldiers with artillery, and between each one were smaller forts which housed between 200-500 men.

There were 50 ouvrages in total along the German border, each with the firepower to cover the two on either side.

They were protected by reinforced steel that was inches deep & capable of taking a direct hit from most known artillery fire.

(📷Paul Reed flickr.com/photos/battlef…)

One such fort is the "Bréhain works" in the town of Bréhain-la-Ville. They consist of 10 blocks branching off into a roughly 4,600-foot underground gallery.

These hydraulic turrets are the only parts of the fortification visible above ground.

(📷Alexandre Guirkinger)

The turrets were designed to be raised into firing position by a hydraulic, steam-powered piston built in the warren of tunnels below ground.

The Maginot Line was impervious to most forms of attack, including aerial bombings and tank fire, and underground railways linked the forts to allow reinforcements to travel underground.

(📷Overland Travel overlandtravel.de/night-blue-hou…)

Perhaps inspired by the indignities suffered by soldiers in the trenches of WWI, the forts also had state-of-the-art living conditions for garrisoned troops, supplying air conditioning and eating areas for their comfort.

It’s commonly believed that the fact the Maginot Line didn’t extend to the English Channel was a strategic error or design flaw. But this was actually its function.

French strategists wanted to force a German attack through the low countries or Switzerland.

In fact, the Maginot Line seemed to solve a number of problems that the French faced in their rivalry with Germany.

Firstly, it reduced the manpower needed to defend the long land border, which evened the odds between France’s 39 million inhabitants and Germany’s 70 million.

It was also designed to hold the line while the French army mobilised, a process that could take between two to three weeks.

This reduced the danger from a German surprise attack, and meant the French army didn’t have to be constantly mobilised.

Finally, it ensured that the next war would be fought not on French soil, but in Belgium or Switzerland.

France, still reeling from the enormous damage caused by the battlefields of the First World War, saw this as an attractive proposition.

And the line, for the most part, worked as intended. In 1939, it forced the German army to go around it, just as designed. But it wasn't the line that failed.

(📷Alexandre Guirkinger, "Bunker 5", 2007)

The French line was weak near the Ardennes, a heavily forested mountain range that was thought to be impossible for an army to cross.

If Germany attacked here, the French believed they would have time to bring up reserves and counterattack.

(📷Paul Reed flickr.com/photos/battlef…)

But Germany's mechanised army was able to take French forces by surprise.

They advanced rapidly through the forest and across the River Meuse, encircling the Allied forces & leaving the garrisons on the Maginot Line's fortresses completely isolated.

France fell 6 weeks later.

Today, the mossy ruins of the Maginot line form a testament to human folly and the cruelties of war.

It forms a landscape of disappearance and loss, that reminds us of the dark past we have only recently emerged from, and the divisions that all too recently split our world.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the photography in this thread, please check out the artists' pages below.

Alexandre Guirkinger: rose-paris.com/artist/alexand…

Paul Reed: flickr.com/photos/battlef…

Here's a short reading list on the Maginot Line:

- "The Maginot Line 1928–45" by William Allcorn: books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr…

- "Fortress France" by Kaufmann & Kaufmann: books.google.co.uk/books?id=8ea-w…

- "The Battle for the Maginot Line 1940" by Clayton Donnell: books.google.co.uk/books?id=vx6ps…

If you enjoyed this, you can read more of my research into the ruins of the past in this thread-of-threads:

https://twitter.com/PaulMMCooper/status/915959278028148736

And if you're interested in learning more about the world's ruins, please check out my podcast Fall of Civilizations (@Fall_of_Civ_Pod).

Each episode, I look at a different example of societal collapse from history to find out what we can learn.

fallofcivilizationspodcast.com

And if you'd like to chip me a tip, you can do so here: ko-fi.com/paulmmcooper