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One of the world’s great - really bad ideas of military history was the Maginot Line. After the brutal experience of WWI ideas where offered for the defense of France against Germany’s next attempt at pan-European real estate development. A system of fixed dug-in defensive battlements named for France's Minister of Veteran Affairs and WWI veteran himself, Andre Maginot, was built along the French-German border from Belgium through the Alsace-Lorrain region. Bunkers with machine guns and underground tunnels faced the Rhine River crossings to stop the next German march with construction finally completed in 1935, just in time for Germany's Nazi war machine build up

Unfortunately, when the German expansion plans were offered, a half a decade later, fixed position trench warfare was a thing of the past and the German armored Wehrmacht drove through the line in the Ardenne and simply bypassed the uselessly clever system. In WWII battles were fought in the area on the march to the Rhine River at the end of the war. These monuments to bad planning can still be found and are worth a visit while in the Eastern region of France. The Maginot Line monument and museum at Hatten is a 20 minute drive from Strasbourg and 30 minutes from Baden-Baden in Germany’s Black Forest region across the river. These forts actually remained in use up until the 1960's, though with not much action. There is also a private military museum nearby with military vehicles mostly from later military bases and a few airplanes (curiously now without an airport). The Maginot Line also inspired a little anti-war ditty about the fruitlessness of armed conflict - "everything’s fine on the Maginot Line". For another great failed idea in mechanized fortifications in Alsace see (Kaiser Wilhelm's Fort at Mutzig) © Bargain Travel Europe

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World War I sights in Europe
Belleu Wood/Marne Memorial
Battlefields of the Somme
Flanders Fields Belgium in WWI

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See Also

CHATEAU HAUT-KOENIGSBOURG
King’s Fairy Tale Castle in Alsace Wine Region

WINE ROAD OF NORTHERN ALSACE

OO-SO DELICIOUS STRASBOURG

GERMANY'S BLACK FOREST

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