Myth of The Line
The first month of the Finnish campaign was humiliating for the Red Army. By the third week of the war, Soviet propaganda was working hard to explain the failure of the Red Army to the populace, and claimed that the Mannerheim Line was stronger than the Maginot Line. The Finns aimed to make its defence line impregnable, but in comparison with the Maginot line, it was thin. The Finns had funds and resources for only 101 concrete bunkers; the equivalent length of the Maginot Line had 5,800 of these structures, with railway connections between them. The weakness of the line is illustrated by the fact, that the amount of concrete used in the whole Mannerheim Line - 14,520 cubic meters or 513,000 cubic feet (14,500 m3) - is slightly less than the amount used in the Helsinki Opera House (15,500 cubic meters or 547,000 cubic feet). The much shorter VT-line used almost 400,000 cubic meters (14,000,000 cubic feet) of concrete.
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