The interior of a bunker on the Maginot Line, France's former great fortified wall

@ElentirENG ES 8·12·2024 · 23:10 0

The First World War was a traumatic experience for several of the countries that took part in it, due to the high number of casualties.

Mimoyecques, the fortress from which Hitler wanted to raze London with huge cannons
An old German bunker in Normandy and the American monolith above it

After the war, there were two opposing positions. On the one hand, there was a pacifist atmosphere that naively believed that this war would put an end to all wars. However, a part of society believed it was necessary to take precautions in case history could repeat itself. Driven by this idea, in 1928 France began to build the Maginot Line, a large fortified wall made up of 142 forts, connected to each other by a network of tunnels through which troops could be transported by small electric trains. This defensive network extended from Luxembourg to Switzerland, and was built with trench warfare like the First World War in mind.

The Maginot Line was a major strategic mistake, as it left the border with Belgium unprotected, which was where German troops entered French territory in 1940. In addition, the French Army was unable to understand the changes that were coming, due to the combined use of aviation and tanks in the tactics that the Germans called "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war).

However, the Maginot Line prevented the Germans from entering France through flatter ground, which would have made an invasion of the country in 1940 much easier. After World War II, the fortified line was already obsolete, but it was not abandoned until the late 1960s, in case it might be useful against a Soviet invasion. Although the rest of the network was abandoned, the French armed forces still retain one of its positions, the Ouvrage Hochwald, as a coordination centre.

This Monday, the Dutch YouTube channel Forgotten Buildings published an interesting video showing the inside of a Maginot Line bunker, specifically one of the last ones that still retains some of its 75 mm cannons, located in retractable turrets. This bunker has been sealed for many years at its main entrances and still retains many of its original elements:

You can see some screenshots from this video here. Here we see one of the tunnels through which the electric trains for transporting troops ran (at the beginning of this article you can see a photo of one of these trains).

A very well preserved ammunition depot. In abandoned batteries like this one it is difficult to see a structure like this in such good condition.

Old ammunition boxes, all empty, for the guns in this bunker. Now that's a really rare sight in an abandoned battery.

A turret with two 75 mm cannons. This turret was retractable, which allowed these artillery pieces to be kept safe in the event of an air attack.