Word: maginot
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Line or No Line? Fortnight ago a Russian communique denied that a Stalin Line "ever existed, or exists." In the sense of a continuous line, like the Maginot, none existed. But in the Smolensk area, blocking the traditional military highroad to Moscow-between the Dnieper and Dvina Rivers-the Russians had translated PU-36 into concrete and steel terms...
...army of the future will move on caterpillar treads, De Gaulle wrote in 1934. The Maginot Line is limited in depth and leaves northern France exposed, he warned. The defensive psychology of the Maginot Line "will defeat France." As to the vaunted French morale, "neither bravery nor skill can any longer achieve anything except as functions of equipment." Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain laughed off the book as "witticisms." General Weygand called it "evil." The Germans learned from...
...January 1940, while France was trying to sit out the war, Colonel de Gaulle again raised his voice. From his tank brigade in Lorraine he sent a 17-page memorandum to General Gamelin, Premier Daladier and 20 others: "The Maginot Line, however reinforced, can be crossed. . . . The defender who limits himself to resisting in a fixed position with antiquated weapons is doomed." Nobody paid any attention to De Gaulle...
Farther south the Germans, who were on the threshold of Kiev as the week began and had not gone in as it ended, complained of bad weather, of fortifications "as strong as the Maginot Line," of forts three stories deep. But as British Military Expert Strategicus wrote last week: "It is not positions which defend the troops but the troops who defend the positions." On the Ukraine front the Germans finally forced their way across the Dniester River, the boundary line until the Russians took Bessarabia in June...
Stalin means steel, but Stalin Line does not mean steel wall. The Stalin Line is an intermittent series of fortifications in depth, a ribbon of redoubts averaging 25 miles across, and too long-1,100 miles-to be solid. It was mostly built in the Maginot era of military thought, and its early links were finished in 1933. But lessons learned on other lines have been hastily applied. Still the Stalin Line has blank spots, and places where lakes and marshes are trusted too much. The Germans seemed to think the Stalin Line could be turned nearly as easily...