They Shall Not Pass! The Unknown Story of the Southern Maginot Line
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by Eric Margolis: NSA:
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SOSPEL, FRANCE
— The wild Maritime Alps are the most remote and least known part
of this country, a chain of vertiginous, snow-capped peaks and narrow
defiles running due south along the Franco-Italian border from Switzerland
down to the Mediterranean on the Riviera.
As a military
historian, I’ve come here to remember the heroic stand against overwhelming
odds in June, 1940 of Gen. René Olry’s Army of the Alps:
a little French Thermopylae.
The German
offensive in the West that erupted on 10 May, 1940 was a revolutionary
kind of fluid warfare based on fast-moving armor and mechanized
units, close air support, and advanced communications.
In only six
weeks — by 20 June 1940 — France’s proud army, considered the finest
in the world, was shattered; 240,000 French soldiers were killed
or seriously wounded; 2,000 French tanks were destroyed by the German
“blitzkrieg.”
Germany’s generals
had learned much from the slaughter of World War I, vowing to make
their troops mobile to avoid static warfare. France’s hidebound
generals, by contrast, planned to refight World War I in a defensive
campaign based on fortified regions and massed artillery.
The German
armored attack cut through the dense Ardennes Forest, crossed the
moat of the Meuse River, and broke into the open plains of Picardy
before the slow-moving French forces could effectively respond.
The German 1940 offensive, planned by Gen. Erich von Manstein and
Adolf Hitler, and executed by the dashing Generals Erwin Rommel
and Heinz Guderian, was one of history’s greatest military triumphs.
France’s powerful
Maginot Line forts, backed by 400,000 interval troops, was not outflanked,
as is wrongly believed. The Line achieved its twin goals of defending
Lorraine’s iron and steel industry from a surprise German attack
and forcing the Germans to attack through Belgium or Switzerland’s
fortress chains.
The Maginot
Line was never designed to defend the entire Franco-German frontier.
Not one of its major forts was taken by German assault.
France’s unwieldy
field army was scattered by flank and rear attacks by German armor.
France’s air force proved ineffective. Britain’s army abandoned
its French ally and ran for the coast.
As France lay
dying, Italy’s swaggering dictator, Benito Mussolini, frantic he
might miss out on the spoils of war, declared war on 10 June on
France and Britain. Italy demanded France return former Italian
possessions of Nice, Cannes, Marseilles, and Menton.
France’s first
Maginot fort, Rimplas, was begun in 1928 after “Il Duce”
intensified his irredentist demands. A score of major forts and
smaller works were built to guard the river valleys and passes leading
into Italy. Sospel, the back door into Nice, received particular
attention.
Mussolini launched
two armies, some 340,000 men, along three axis against France’s
Maritime Alps, Savoy and the Dauphiné. Some of the units,
like the elite “Alpini,” were crack troops; others were
mediocre.
France’s Army
of the Alps has been denuded of men and material to oppose the relentless
German advance on its rear down the Rhone Valley. General René
Olry, had only 35,000 men. Among them were light ski units and elite
Alpine infantry in their trademark big berets known as “tartes.”
Italian troops
swarmed over the high mountain passes and ridges running at high
as 2900 meters. But their main attacks concentrated on the Col de
Larche with the road leading from Turin to Grenoble, Sospel, and
Menton.
The southern
Maginot forts performed perfectly. They spotted the advancing Italians
and brought down a devastating crossfire of 75mm shells on them.
Other French 155mm heavy artillery units blasted the Italian columns,
guns and armored trains, forcing the Italians to retreat in disarray.
The famed French 75mm field and fortress gun was light but it could
fire up to 18 shrapnel shells a minute, producing a lethal a blizzard
of steel.
Overlooking
the French border fortress city of Briancon was the menacing 3,130
meter Mt Chaberton, on which Italy had emplaced eight 149mm guns
in turrets. On 24 June, French 280mm mortars, firing with amazing
accuracy, blew away all eight turrets, ending the threat to Briancon.
The biggest
Italian offensives broke against Sospel, the backdoor into the Riviera,
and Menton. The ten Maginot forts between Mt Gros north of Sospel
to Cap Martin next to Menton on the Mediterranean, crossed their
flanking fire and shattered the advancing Italian infantry columns.
Italy’s deepest
penetration was 1.5 km in Menton/Cap Martin. Before Menton, eight
French soldiers at the border post of Pont St Louis stopped an entire
Italian division for a day.
The
southern arm of the Maginot Line worked brilliantly, resisting all
Italian attacks and shelling. The Line was designed for a repeat
of WWI; the Italians waged a 1914-style battle. The Germans did
not.
But France’s
little Army of the Alps, all but abandoned and forgotten in the
debacle of 1940, stood firm and fought with skill and panache against
odds of ten to one, aided by the Maginot Line and the difficult
terrain.
Olry and his
men fulfilled the motto of the Maginot Line: “on ne passé
pas.” They shall not pass.
June
22, 2013
Eric
Margolis [send
him mail] is the author of War
at the Top of the World and the new book, American
Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World. See his
website.
Copyright
© 2013 Eric Margolis
This article originally appeared on: Lew Rockwell