{"id":44543,"date":"2013-06-23T20:06:54","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T19:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/they-shall-not-pass\/44543\/"},"modified":"2013-06-23T20:06:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T19:06:54","slug":"they-shall-not-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/they-shall-not-pass\/","title":{"rendered":"'They Shall Not Pass'"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n They Shall Not Pass! The Unknown Story of the Southern Maginot\u00a0Line<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

by
\n Eric Margolis<\/a><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Recently
\n by Eric Margolis: NSA:
\n No Such Agency<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

SOSPEL, FRANCE
\n \u2014 The wild Maritime Alps are the most remote and least known part
\n of this country, a chain of vertiginous, snow-capped peaks and narrow
\n defiles running due south along the Franco-Italian border from Switzerland
\n down to the Mediterranean on the Riviera.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a military
\n historian, I\u2019ve come here to remember the heroic stand against overwhelming
\n odds in June, 1940 of Gen. Ren\u00c3\u00a9 Olry\u2019s Army of the Alps:
\n a little French Thermopylae. <\/span><\/p>\n

The German
\n offensive in the West that erupted on 10 May, 1940 was a revolutionary
\n kind of fluid warfare based on fast-moving armor and mechanized
\n units, close air support, and advanced communications. <\/span><\/p>\n

In only six
\n weeks \u2014 by 20 June 1940 \u2014 France\u2019s proud army, considered the finest
\n in the world, was shattered; 240,000 French soldiers were killed
\n or seriously wounded; 2,000 French tanks were destroyed by the German
\n “blitzkrieg.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s generals
\n had learned much from the slaughter of World War I, vowing to make
\n their troops mobile to avoid static warfare. France\u2019s hidebound
\n generals, by contrast, planned to refight World War I in a defensive
\n campaign based on fortified regions and massed artillery.<\/span><\/p>\n

The German
\n armored attack cut through the dense Ardennes Forest, crossed the
\n moat of the Meuse River, and broke into the open plains of Picardy
\n before the slow-moving French forces could effectively respond.
\n The German 1940 offensive, planned by Gen. Erich von Manstein and
\n Adolf Hitler, and executed by the dashing Generals Erwin Rommel
\n and Heinz Guderian, was one of history\u2019s greatest military triumphs.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

France\u2019s powerful
\n Maginot Line forts, backed by 400,000 interval troops, was not outflanked,
\n as is wrongly believed. The Line achieved its twin goals of defending
\n Lorraine\u2019s iron and steel industry from a surprise German attack
\n and forcing the Germans to attack through Belgium or Switzerland\u2019s
\n fortress chains. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Maginot
\n Line was never designed to defend the entire Franco-German frontier.
\n Not one of its major forts was taken by German assault.<\/span><\/p>\n

France\u2019s unwieldy
\n field army was scattered by flank and rear attacks by German armor.
\n France\u2019s air force proved ineffective. Britain\u2019s army abandoned
\n its French ally and ran for the coast.<\/span><\/p>\n

As France lay
\n dying, Italy\u2019s swaggering dictator, Benito Mussolini, frantic he
\n might miss out on the spoils of war, declared war on 10 June on
\n France and Britain. Italy demanded France return former Italian
\n possessions of Nice, Cannes, Marseilles, and Menton.<\/span><\/p>\n

France\u2019s first
\n Maginot fort, Rimplas, was begun in 1928 after “Il Duce”
\n intensified his irredentist demands. A score of major forts and
\n smaller works were built to guard the river valleys and passes leading
\n into Italy. Sospel, the back door into Nice, received particular
\n attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mussolini launched
\n two armies, some 340,000 men, along three axis against France\u2019s
\n Maritime Alps, Savoy and the Dauphin\u00c3\u00a9. Some of the units,
\n like the elite “Alpini,” were crack troops; others were
\n mediocre. <\/span><\/p>\n

France\u2019s Army
\n of the Alps has been denuded of men and material to oppose the relentless
\n German advance on its rear down the Rhone Valley. General Ren\u00c3\u00a9
\n Olry, had only 35,000 men. Among them were light ski units and elite
\n Alpine infantry in their trademark big berets known as “tartes.”
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

Italian troops
\n swarmed over the high mountain passes and ridges running at high
\n as 2900 meters. But their main attacks concentrated on the Col de
\n Larche with the road leading from Turin to Grenoble, Sospel, and
\n Menton.<\/span><\/p>\n

The southern
\n Maginot forts performed perfectly. They spotted the advancing Italians
\n and brought down a devastating crossfire of 75mm shells on them.
\n Other French 155mm heavy artillery units blasted the Italian columns,
\n guns and armored trains, forcing the Italians to retreat in disarray.
\n The famed French 75mm field and fortress gun was light but it could
\n fire up to 18 shrapnel shells a minute, producing a lethal a blizzard
\n of steel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Overlooking
\n the French border fortress city of Briancon was the menacing 3,130
\n meter Mt Chaberton, on which Italy had emplaced eight 149mm guns
\n in turrets. On 24 June, French 280mm mortars, firing with amazing
\n accuracy, blew away all eight turrets, ending the threat to Briancon.<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest
\n Italian offensives broke against Sospel, the backdoor into the Riviera,
\n and Menton. The ten Maginot forts between Mt Gros north of Sospel
\n to Cap Martin next to Menton on the Mediterranean, crossed their
\n flanking fire and shattered the advancing Italian infantry columns.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s deepest
\n penetration was 1.5 km in Menton\/Cap Martin. Before Menton, eight
\n French soldiers at the border post of Pont St Louis stopped an entire
\n Italian division for a day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\n southern arm of the Maginot Line worked brilliantly, resisting all
\n Italian attacks and shelling. The Line was designed for a repeat
\n of WWI; the Italians waged a 1914-style battle. The Germans did
\n not.<\/span><\/p>\n

But France\u2019s
\n little Army of the Alps, all but abandoned and forgotten in the
\n debacle of 1940, stood firm and fought with skill and panache against
\n odds of ten to one, aided by the Maginot Line and the difficult
\n terrain. <\/span><\/p>\n

Olry and his
\n men fulfilled the motto of the Maginot Line: “on ne pass\u00c3\u00a9
\n pas.” They shall not pass.<\/span><\/p>\n

June
\n 22, 2013<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Eric
\n Margolis [send
\n him mail<\/a>] is the author of <\/i>War
\n at the Top of the World<\/a> and the new book, <\/i>American
\n Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
\n West and the Muslim World<\/a>. See his
\n website<\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9 2013 Eric Margolis<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\n Best of Eric Margolis<\/a>
\n
\n <\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Lew Rockwell<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They Shall Not Pass! The Unknown Story of the Southern Maginot\u00a0Line by Eric Margolis Recently by Eric Margolis: NSA: No Such Agency SOSPEL, FRANCE \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}