Purposes
The Maginot Line was built to fulfill several purposes:
- To avoid a surprise attack and to give alarm.
- To cover the mobilization of the French Army (which took between 2 and 3 weeks).
- To save manpower (France counted 39,000,000 inhabitants, Germany 70,000,000).
- To protect Alsace and Lorraine (returned to France in 1918) and their industrial basin.
- To be used as a basis for a counter-offensive.
- To push the enemy to circumvent it while passing by Switzerland or Belgium.
- To hold the enemy while the main army could be brought up to reinforce the line.
- To show non aggressive posture, and compel the British to help France if Belgium is invaded
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Famous quotes containing the word purposes:
“O, I am smitten with a hatchet’s jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
chorus: I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
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Once more: he purposes to kill me dead”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“One of the baffling things about life is that the purposes of institutions may be ideal, while their administration, dependent upon the faults and weaknesses of human beings, may be bad.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)