Word: maginot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Briton is the boss, but in this War, land and air forces are integrated more closely than ever before. All the generals concentrated on a problem for which neither nation had primarily fashioned its arms: an offensive action moving away from France's great defensive bastion, the Maginot Line...
...border and the Westwall guarding it depart from the Rhine, to run across hilly vineyard and forest country. To break through the Wall here does not involve the added difficulty of crossing the Rhine. And neutral Luxembourg guards the French left flank. Last week the lower reaches of the Maginot Line and Westwall, facing each other across the Rhine from Lauterbourg south to the Swiss border, lay quiet except for occasional, experimental artillery exchanges. Soldiers of both armies were reported bathing on their respective sides of the river, in full view of each other. Signs on the German side said...
...main fortifications behind. The machine guns were so placed that every foot of passable terrain was swept by two or more death-spitting muzzles. First task of the French was to feel out these defenses by aerial photography and by scouting parties on foot and horseback, debouching from the Maginot Line...
...firm ramparts of the Westwall. It was unlikely they would do so before the French artillery-ponderous 155-mm. howitzers lobbing shells from far behind; flat-shooting 755 moving up into the cleared area-have pounded at the Wall forts for many days. The concrete fortresses of the Maginot Line are 150 ft. deep in some places and hard as flint. French hope was that the Westwall concrete, poured more hastily, can be pulverized by France's really heavy artillery...
...General Gamelin's push in the Saar was to draw German troops from the Eastern Theatre to meet a threatened grand attack-or he was shrewdly waiting for the Germans to get even further into Poland before turning on the real heat. Just as France's main Maginot Line is manned by veteran regulars, with young reservists performing the attack work, so Germany's Wall is manned by 20 divisions (some 250,000 men) of the regular Land-wehr, mostly veterans of 35-45, specially trained for defense. For sallies and counterattack which the Germans executed with...