Word: belfort
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...powerhouse at Kembs (in front of Mulhouse), due warning was given to the German side. Evacuation of 300,000 civilians from Mulhouse to Biarritz on the Bay of Biscay was begun by the French this week. This hinted that the French may expect a real German push at her Belfort Gate, south end of the Maginot-Westwall stalemate, or through the Swiss side door. > Machine gunners on the forefront of the German advance wore steel armor covering them from neck to crotch. Weighing 30 Ibs. but only 1/20 in. thick, this gear was more psychological than practical. It would deflect...
...Land. All down the 250-mile Maginot Line, heavy guns started talking at dawn Monday. By nightfall of the first day the French were believed to have launched two high-powered flanking attacks, one at the "Burgundy Gate" or "Belfort Gap" just above the Swiss border, another into the Moselle valley just below Luxembourg. Masses of mobile troops were ready for infiltration maneuvers, to penetrate between gaps in the West Wall which, unlike the Maginot Line, is rather a series of sunken forts with tank traps and interlocking underground tunnels, than a continuous defense bastion. First "contact...
Bloody Plains. Germany contains two major theatres of war although for more than a hundred years no big war has been fought on German soil. In 1914 this was due to German possession of Alsace and Lorraine, which kept the French from pouring through the Lorraine Gateway and the Belfort gap. In 1870, when the French owned the border provinces, the stupidity of Marshal Bazaine, who shut himself up in the fortress of Metz and refused to stir, deprived France of the opportunity to push into the South German Basin...
Opposite the corner of the South German Basin which is entered by the Belfort gap lies the Moravian Gateway (where Napoleon fought Austerlitz in 1805) and the Moravian Gate leads to the Baltic Plain, to Breslau, Warsaw and Danzig (which Napoleon entered...
...politicians took no open part in last week's campaign. He was André ("L'Americain") Tardieu, Premier in 1929-30. After a year and a half's retirement writing his memoirs on the Riviera, André Tardieu was reported ready to run for Parliament from Belfort, at the insistence of Belfort's boss, Senator Viellard, steel tycoon. M. Tardieu went to Belfort. but instead of announcing himself a candidate for the Chamber, he made his sponsor's ears burn by declaring that he was through with parliamentary government forever...