“U.S. Strategists Keep Getting France’s Defeat Wrong,” written by Professor of History Alan Allport, was published in Foreign Policy. Following is an excerpt:

The reality of French strategy in 1940 has little to do with these politically convenient caricatures. Take the much-disparaged Maginot Line first. Contrary to a lot of modern assumptions, it was never expected to defeat a German attack by itself. The point of the Maginot Line was not to stop the boche in their tracks, but to channel any future westward offensive away from the French industrial heartland—which had been so devastated in the First World War—and toward the Low Countries, particularly Belgium.

There, the French ground forces could meet their enemy on a usefully constricted battlefield that would have the inestimable advantage of being in someone else’s country. In this, the Maginot Line accomplished exactly what it was designed to do. The Germans never successfully took it by frontal assault, and some of the French garrison troops held out doggedly until early July 1940, weeks after the armistice. The Maginot Line cost a lot less than the modernization of the French battle fleet in the 1930s, which, as it turned out, made not a single contribution to the country’s defense. If the French lost the battle in Belgium, that was not the fault of the Maginot Line’s architects.