ABSTRACT
Between 1936 and 1939, the French Service Technique du Génie poured over one and a half million cubic metres of concrete to realise the Maginot Line. Located in eastern France – primarily in Alsace, Lorraine, and the Alps regions – the line was conceived as a permanent barrier between France and her neighbours. This barrier to be the first line of defence at the outbreak of the Second World War. But few of the structures saw battle: the infamous topological miscalculation of its planners left the fortifications almost entirely outside the theatre of war. As a result, most of them remained undamaged in 1945. In the following decades, the French military made several attempts to reassign the fortifications as Cold War silos and spy stations. But when the escalating costs of the Algerian war in the 1960s forced the French government to give up on re-using the structures, the casemates of the Maginot Line were largely abandoned.
