Speaking of the most useless defense line in the world's military history, the Maginot Line can be said to be the first place. As a French force, spending five billion francs, investing 150,000 tons of steel, 7 million tons of sand and gravel, 1.32 million tons of cement, and taking six years to complete the Maginot Line, it did not play any role in the Second World War. The German panzers easily bypassed the Maginot Line in the Battle of France, then cut the anglo-French rear road in one fell swoop, and defeated the Anglo-French in a month.
It can be said that the construction of the Maginot Line has no practical use except for spending a large amount of money on France, and as for why France built the Maginot Line, it is generally believed that the French army lacked offensive spirit and indulged in fortress and trench warfare. To put it simply, the courage of the French soldiers was exhausted in the First World War, and now they have become cowards who only dare to shrink behind the defensive line, and who has the courage to fight Germany?
This statement is certainly unfair, after the end of the First World War, Germany's military power was reduced to a minimum, France wanted to completely dismember Germany is easy, where will it fear Germany for this reason? Moreover, the Construction of the Maginot Line began in 1930, when Hitler was still a mustache in the grass, Germany did not begin to rearmament, and its strength was completely inferior to that of France. So why did France suddenly build a defensive line to protect France's northeastern border?
In fact, in 1918, just after the end of the First World War, France's economy was only one-third the size of Germany's, and its industrial capacity was far stronger than that of France. The reason for this was that the entire western front of the First World War broke out on French soil, which naturally caused heavy losses to the French side. Even throughout the First World War, France relied on two allies, Britain and the United States, to sustain itself under the wartime system, without which France would have been defeated.
After the end of the First World War, France suddenly found itself not only economically weaker than Germany, but also less populous than Germany. Germany had a population of 70 million at that time, and France only had 40 million people, which means that Germany has nearly twice as many labors as France, which is also a great help for Germany's economic recovery.
If war were to break out again, France would be able to mobilize only 4 million people, while Germany would be able to mobilize 7 million people. Under such a gap, France is clearly powerless to defeat a re-emerging Germany.
If france had been, germany should have been completely dismembered after the First World War, transforming it into what it had been before the Franco-Prussian War, thus completely dismantling Germany's war potential. This proposal was undoubtedly correct, but the British side was very opposed, because after the end of the First World War, Britain would return to the traditional European policy of continental balance of power.
For Britain, Germany was no longer a terrible enemy, but France had replaced Germany and had the potential to become Britain's confidant. Under such circumstances, Britain naturally did not agree to France's complete dismemberment of Germany, but hoped that Germany would be able to recover in the future and form an effective role in leading France.
There is no doubt that Britain's approach is suspected of betraying allies, but britain, as an old European power, has not played the continental balance of power for a year or two, considering the characteristics of Britain's "milk is a mother", then France is doomed to be unable to dismember Germany. And in order to allow Germany to recover as soon as possible, Britain has made concessions to Germany on many issues such as war reparations, which makes France even less likely to prevent Germany's re-emergence, and even has to face retaliation and attacks from Germany alone in the future.
In such a situation, France's defensive strategy is an inevitable choice. After all, France has fewer mobilizable troops than Germany, and its economy recovers far less quickly than Germany, and if war breaks out, it will inevitably be defeated by Germany.
Therefore, France decided to build a large-scale fortress system on the northeastern border, the Maginot Line, so as to ensure that France could withstand attacks from the German side in the ensuing war.
According to the French strategic concept, the Maginot Line would help the French resist the depletion of German offensive forces, allowing the French to assemble relatively calmly and defeat Germany in future counterattacks.
It is not difficult to see that the French strategy of building the Maginot Line was correct in 1929, but the subsequent situation and technological developments in Europe were not expected by the French army.
The French lacked understanding of mechanized operations, coupled with excessive superstition about the defensive capabilities of the Maginot Line, which led to the final defeat of the French army. But this was not a mistake on the Maginot Line, it was just that the Maginot Line was born at the wrong time, which led to the Defeat of the French Army in the Battle of France.