Let me see, who should I trust on this point? Bazza, the forum joke, who sits in his bedroom fapping over youtube clips that support his petty prejudices? Or, perhaps, Professor William Keylor of Boston University, a world-renowned expert on the subject who I can quote as saying:
…the decision to build the Maginot Line was not irrational and stupid, building the Maginot Line was a sensible response to the problems that would be created by the coming French withdrawal from the Rhineland in 1930…
Well this took an interesting turn… (I say interesting, I mean not that interesting but at least different)
Could you put all of that quote in please? It would be rational if it were completed, as it stood it was useless as they (the Germans) went around it, the French also hoped it would/could drag Britain in to the war as the line quite obviously wasn’t working. Am I wrong? History and facts sort of back me up.
I’ve just tried to get that full quote and up came Wikipedia, is this what you’re using? I worry I really do, Bath I thought higher of you than reading such basic things, run along and get the full quote.
What did De Gaulle think of this?
I thought the Persians only made progress at the Battle of Thermopylae by outflanking the Greeks through a picnic site and had the Greeks been a bit sharper they would have seen this coming and there wouldn’t have been the knock-on effect of losing the fleet at Artemisium.
All of which is as relevant as this poor thread.
A once noble beast now trapped in a spiral of confused pain, spinning around over the same ground, as if a clumsy fat dentist from Milwaukee has put four rounds into it for cash, and has missed major organs with every bumbling attempt.
Make tools do Milwaukee…
Isn’t Barry knowledgeable, everyone? Quite the renaissance man.
word. I’m gonna add this to his dossier. Specialist subjects: Early 80s cultural references, and whatever it is you cunts are talking about now.
Well done. What does “not building it fully for offence at a start” actually mean?
They didn’t take the wall to the English channel as it could possible cause offence to the Belgiums as they were neutral.
I am pretty good at certain things one must admit.
Liverpool keepers I think
French Onion.
What do you mean? Who did they fight, the Belgiums and French.
Actually, it’s from Prof Keylor’s book which is in my office at the moment, so I can’t access it for the rest of the quote. Sounds like wiki copied it. However, even from home I can quote from Professer Kiesling at West Point Academy who, in her paper published in Defence Studies in 2003 said much the same thing:
Thanks largely to an infatuation with a mythical Blitzkrieg, we are far too quick to dismiss the methodical battle as an example of stupid doctrine.
She goes on to argue that this is the product of lazy and biased thinking fuelled by prejudice.
EDIT: You can’t read the whole paper as it is behind a paywall. I can access from my work password. However, I think the first page (and especially the last paragraph) on the bit you can see nicely sums up your thinking, Bazza
Exactly. the French expected and wanted to fight in Belgium. That’s where the Allies concentrated their armies. It was unthinkable that the Germans would attack through the Ardennes at Sedan. The Ardennes was regarded as a natural extension of the Maginot Line. It was the brilliance of Rommel and Guderian, the organization of the panzer divisions coupled with the centralized thinking of the French that led to a failure to respond at Sedan and the subsequent Fall of France
The thing I will say for this discussion;. I am honestly using this as a case with my masters students tomorrow morning and have added a slide saying, simply, Were the French stupid?
