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
Read more about this topic: Maginot Line
Famous quotes containing the word purposes:
“A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles?... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia: What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable: The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)