Word: lined
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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After the catastrophe on the Somme in 1917, General Ludendorff was persuaded by a group of his junior staff officers to withdraw to a line running north-south behind the Canal du Nord between the Somme and the Scarpe River. By this move he saved his troops from a second Somme and shortened his line. More important, he gained the opportunity to prepare on virgin ground and far away from hostilities for defensive tactics which his bright young men, notably Colonel Fritz von Lossberg, had evolved for divisions after observing the French use for smaller units...
...each side attacked or defended linear fronts. In attack their tendency was to stretch and strain. On defense they tended to crack. Sent to the rear, Colonel Lossberg proceeded to construct a new kind of major fortification, based on zonal defense. He built what the Allies called the Hindenburg Line. It was not Hindenburg's and it was not a line. The Germans called it the Siegfried Stellung (Siegfried Position...
Unlike the solid, continuous Maginot Line, the Siegfried Position carries on the old Lossberg concept of defense in depth and swift counterattack from a protected rear. A break-through would be the signal for the great rear fortifications to open up with heavy artillery fire (spare gun-barrels as well as a large supply of munitions are cached in deep caverns connected by tunnel railways). Mobile troops, hitherto protected, would thrust out at the invading flanks. The cushion-&-spring force would be terrific...
...Chopin wrote the score for Poland's agony (see p. 25"), Walt Disney supplied a marching song for the Western Front. British Tommies reworded the work carol of the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White and, as they moved toward their posts in the Maginot Line last week, sang: "Heigh-ho, heigh...
Meantime the Allied blockade of Germany became impressive. In The Downs from Broadstairs to Dover stretched a long line of merchantmen arrested and anchored pending examination. Aboard each was a guard of British seamen under a junior officer. Two British destroyers and a French gunboat patrolled the roadstead...