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Interesting that they originally planned to have it cover Belgium too - if they'd actually finished it Germany would not have been able to go through Belgium af

Interesting that they originally planned to have it cover Belgium too - if they'd actually finished it Germany would not have been able to go through Belgium after all. I wonder why they didn't finish it?

vonmoltke 13y ago
As I recall there were a few reasons. The two biggest ones: 1) The Belgians threw a shitfit over the French wanting to build a wall to seal in France with them on the wring side of it. They offered instead to allow the French to connect French eastern border defenses to Belgium's eastern border defenses, promising that if the Germans did decide to invade Belgium again that their line would hold. 2) The portion that was completed cost over twice what was projected. The Franco-Belgian border would have been harder to fortify than the Franco-German border, and considering the cost overruns on the latter portion the former started to look infeasible.
- cstross 13y ago
  Also worth noting: Belgium was traditionally neutral, having been set up as effectively a buffer state in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. The bloody quagmire First World War was in no small part precipitated by Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality, which brought Great Britain into the war on the Franco-Russian side -- the UK had committed as a guarantor of Belgian neutrality. So despite strong misgivings about German revanchism during the 1920s and 1930s, Belgium was also historically somewhat ambivalent about joint defense projects with foreigners.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    But if they had allowed the British and French to advance to the defense line before the Germans invaded ww2 would have turned out very different. Part of the reason that the German blitzkrieg worked so well is the french and British forces where out of position.
    - cstross 13y ago
      Yes, absolutely. And I note that these days Belgium is home to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). They might not have worked it out after WW1, but after WW2 ...

vonmoltke 13y ago

As I recall there were a few reasons. The two biggest ones: 1) The Belgians threw a shitfit over the French wanting to build a wall to seal in France with them on the wring side of it. They offered instead to allow the French to connect French eastern border defenses to Belgium's eastern border defenses, promising that if the Germans did decide to invade Belgium again that their line would hold. 2) The portion that was completed cost over twice what was projected. The Franco-Belgian border would have been harder to fortify than the Franco-German border, and considering the cost overruns on the latter portion the former started to look infeasible.

cstross 13y ago
Also worth noting: Belgium was traditionally neutral, having been set up as effectively a buffer state in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. The bloody quagmire First World War was in no small part precipitated by Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality, which brought Great Britain into the war on the Franco-Russian side -- the UK had committed as a guarantor of Belgian neutrality. So despite strong misgivings about German revanchism during the 1920s and 1930s, Belgium was also historically somewhat ambivalent about joint defense projects with foreigners.
- walshemj 13y ago
  But if they had allowed the British and French to advance to the defense line before the Germans invaded ww2 would have turned out very different. Part of the reason that the German blitzkrieg worked so well is the french and British forces where out of position.
  - cstross 13y ago
    Yes, absolutely. And I note that these days Belgium is home to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). They might not have worked it out after WW1, but after WW2 ...