Had the Maginot line been extended to include the Belgium-French border, how effective would it have been in stopping the 1940 German invasion?

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• Dozens of forified lines were penetrated during the war without paratroopers (Mannerheim line, Panther Line, Hitler Line, The West Wall, etc..) The maginot line failed for the same reason that all the others failed. Static fortifications are immobile, cannot be altered, or rebuilt, while under attack, they are obvious, and only need to be penetrated once for the whole position to fail. The victorious Wehrmact did not need to go over the Maginot line, they gathered the force required to overwhelm it at the point of their choosing and just went through it. The LENGTH of the Maginot line was immaterial because it was not sufficiently DEEP.

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  by PaulyD on December 26th, 2006

• In actual fact, they bypassed the line entirely. My point being that static defenses like that were a throwback to WW1. The Germans rightly so, just went around them and for the most part, let them starve into submission. It could have been done with any mobile force, not just paratroops. I never once said that using paratroops meant that they were dropped right on the line. I just sorta figured that it was pretty self evident using a force like that was to bypass. Apparently it wasn't.

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  by scubabob on December 26th, 2006

• I don't know from whence the swipe at me in your edit above came. I gave you a positive rating at the time that you posted this answer nor did I offer any criticism of it.

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  by Glenn Blaylock on September 23rd, 2007