Word: saar
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...Field Marshal Goring remarked last fortnight, Germany got her hands on Poland's rich coal fields. Poland's production of 36,000,000 tons a year will increase the Reich's coal supply to some 220,000,000 tons-if she can hold the coal-producing Saar into which France was pushing last week. If France takes or cripples the Saar, Germany will be little better off than she was before, for the Saar's 13,500,000 tons of coal are of a much better grade than Silesia...
...French were again up against a Siegfried Stellung (see p. 28).* Four hundred and fifty miles long, it begins at the point where the Rhine enters The Netherlands, parallels the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg frontiers about eight miles behind the Our, Sauer and Moselle Rivers, then skirts the Saar to the French border, then turns west and south along the Rhine and through the Black Forest until it reaches the Swiss frontier at Lake of Constance (see map). It has been under construction for three years and at one time last spring half a million laborers worked...
...Westwall section 100 miles east-west behind the Saar Valley, along which the Allies were feeling for a soft spot, is one of the newest. Behind it valleys run into the Rhine from the North and East. But no military observer expected any immediate smashing of the Siegfried Stellung, 1939 style...
During the week, these units were reported active in the surroundings of Saarbrucken, the capture of some 200 sq. mi. including part of the right bank of the strategic Saar River (tributary of the Moselle), but they did not yet go up against the 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...
Strategy of 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...