Work of the Maginot Line

Holding office as war minister in the mid and at the turn of the 1920s André Maginot was one of the outstanding personalities who caused the building-up of a defensive line of bunkers, referred to as the ‘Maginot Line’ ,to be enacted and implemented in the early 30s.
Such defensive positions were made up of somewhat odd yet attractive series of lined up bunkers, ranging from a plain interval blockhouse or fore-post to the most powerful underground fortification. Part of the bunkers have been salvaged by enthousiastic unpaid devotees, yet the greater part of them, if not out, appear as dreary, pitiful vestiges of by-gone days left over to the mercy of time and vandals.

The fort of Mutzig, from its original name Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II. (“Fortified Group Emperor William II”), is a military work built from 1893 by the Germans in the town of Mutzig in Alsace (today in the department of Bas-Rhin). This book was, by its extent and firepower, the most important fortification of the German Empire when the First World War broke out.