Inside the Maginot Line 1938 Reel 1 - French army military readiness presentation to the politicians

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Episode 125

This exquisite film footage was created by the French army to demonstrate to politicians the readiness of the Maginot defensive line in late 1938. The collection is made up of 4 reels with a total runtime of just over 42 minutes.

This reel that’s 9 minutes long, focuses on French garrison troops in their defensive fortifications and armor that was intended to be used in counter attacks.

At the outbreak of war, on paper the French army was equal and in some aspects even superior to the German Wehrmacht.

The French had 3254 tanks compared to the Germans 2439 which is an advantage of about 25% however most of them were divided among infantry units and used in a supporting role. Only about a third of French armor was organized into independent armored divisions.

You can actually see this lack of sophistication in the first scene which shows the mob of tanks and foot soldiers pushing forwards. What would happen next, which is not shown, is that the tanks would stop and wait for the foot soldiers to catch up thereby losing all momentum gained in the surge and eliminating the possibility of a decisive breakthrough.

Each French army was assigned a tank brigade which was made up of about 90 of these light tanks.

With the German invasion on May 10, 1940 the French 1st Cavalry Brigade was quickly deployed to Belgium. It was then pushed back by the surprise advance of the German 10th PzD. Thereafter it was positioned to defend the rear of the Maginot Line.

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