Flames over France Read Online Free

eighteen blockhouses, each with a retractable turret housing guns ranging in calibre from 37-mm to 135-mm. There were powerful generators to supply the forts with heat and light, compressors to ensure a constant supply of fresh air, stores and ammunition magazines, the whole linked by a series of corridors which were completely bombproof and up to a mile and a half long. In the larger forts, a miniature electric railway provided a rapid means of transport for personnel and material. Each fort was divided into two separate units, so that if one was knocked out, the other would continue to function independently, and the field of fire of each fort covered all neighbouring forts and casemates. Backing up the whole structure were mobile infantry units, with supporting artillery, which could be moved up rapidly to support the fort complexes in the event of enemy infiltration.
    Work went ahead on the fortifications — known as the Maginot Line after Andre Maginot, the War Minister of the day — at a fast rate, and its eighty-seven miles of main defences were substantially completed by 1935. By this time the line had already cost seven thousand million francs, far in excess of the budgeted figure, and the cost of maintaining it imposed an almost intolerable burden on a country whose economy was ailing — and one, moreover, where a strong Left Wing, opposed to rearmament in any form, made its voice continually heard. The result, inevitably, was that the French Army was compelled to suffer severe cuts in other areas.
    Most serious of all, the Maginot Line remained at best only a partial shield against an attack from the east against metropolitan France. At its northern end there was no extension of the fortifications to cover the 250-mile common frontier between France and Belgium — and this despite the fact that in 1914 the German Army, following the brilliantly-devised Schlieffen Plan, had debouched into France across the drab Belgian plains. There were a number of reasons for this omission, apart from the question of cost. The first, and not the least important, was that an extension of the line would have to pass right through the middle of the big industrial areas around Lille and Valenciennes, which would lead to unacceptable disruption; the second was that Belgium herself, separated from her French ally by a fortified line, might feel justified in adopting a policy of complete neutrality. In view of this, the French were prepared in Belgium’s case to adopt an offensive posture-although it went very much against their overall defensive policy — by sending their forces across the border to fight a delaying battle on Belgian soil. This strategy was feasible enough in 1935, when the French Army still enjoyed considerable numerical superiority over the Wehrmacht ; but by 1939 the German tactics, combining the use of tanks and dive-bombers, had made nonsense of it.
    Between 1935 and 1939, then, while the Germans broke all records to develop their offensive capability, the French — like a tortoise retreating into its shell — retired behind the mythical impregnability of the Maginot Line, apparently oblivious to its glaring deficience; deficiencies which should have come to the fore when, in October 1936, King Leopold III of Belgium revoked his country’s treaty with France and opted for a return to neutrality. The French northern flank had been wide open ever since.
    “And the Germans know it only too well,” remarked Max, who had been rapidly filling in the gaps in Armstrong’s knowledge of France’s defensive system as the two pored over the map in the operations room. “That’s why a massive assault in this area is their logical choice. And I will let you into a secret; we have known of their intentions for several months.”
    Armstrong nodded. “As a matter of fact, I know about that. Wing Commander Royston told me about it. A German communications aircraft, carrying the blueprint for an invasion, strayed over