Word: maginot
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Paris fell, so did Le Havre. So did Montmedy, northern anchor of the fabulous Maginot Line, and Verdun, long thought impregnable, was encircled from the west, cracked. Meanwhile additional German forces thrust past Reims to Chalons, headed for Dijon, Chaumont, Belfort, Mulhouse, to take the whole Maginot Line from the rear...
Generalissimo Weygand had some 500,000 fresh men (27 divisions) in the Maginot Line. When his northern front started crumbling, the time came when he had to abandon the Maginot Line to save at least some of these fortress troops ("shellfish"), at least some of their mountainous supplies of food and ammunition, before they were completely enveloped. If he could get them back to the neighborhood of Dijon they might help to hold a new defense line from the valley of the Loire through the north bastions of France's Massif Central...
When the Germans discovered that only sacrifice squads were left in the $500,000,000 Maginot fastnesses, in they poured through a gap gouged out at the Saar. They also crossed the Rhine at Neuf-Brisach, where floods from a dynamited French canal dam failed to deter them. Their bombers concentrated on rail traffic behind the fortresses and reported destroying 30 French railway cars, sending several loaded with munitions high in the air. Southward German motorized and nonmotorized columns "competed with each other in tremendous marches," said the exultant German communique...
...Abandoned its almost surrounded Maginot Line...
Last week was the worst week yet for democracy-Italy entered the war, Paris fell, the Maginot Line was broken, indications pointed to a separate peace by France over the weekend. But the market reacted to Italy's war declaration by bouncing four lusty points off the floor (111.84), closing next day at 115.97. The fall of Paris pushed it to 122.27. While volume was only 40% of the average of Panic Weeks I and II in May, the market nevertheless closed the week at 123.36, up 12.52 points from...