Maginot Line Will Tour Colorado in July

from You’re Only Ancient History Forever

(Crested Butte) The legendary Maginot Line, completed in 1936 and thought to be impregnable by the French, will visit this former coal-mining giant as part of a 250-year celebratory summer spectacular journey through the Rockies.

     Joining the Maginot Line will be the upstart Siegfried Line, or West Wall as well as the stumblebum Hindenburg Line, a German forward defensive position built in 1916-1917 near Soissons on the Aisne.

     What the three lines have in common is that none actually kept anyone out. The Maginot was flanked in 1940, the Siegfried slowly deserted in the face of bloody Allied victories from 1944 to 1945, and the Hindenburg, despite spotty fighting, was lost to the Armistice signed in way back in 1919.

     Perhaps what continues to delight war historians is the failure of the Maginot Line, which proved worthless when the Germans simply took a shortcut through Belgium, going around the lavish defenses and marching on to Vichy Paradise. Two wars in a row saw German troops soaking their feet in the Meuse

     Despite its link to the nation’s most devastating defeat in history the line still evokes a certain pride, a subtle patriotism. Discovered in a Paris garbage heap in 1942, the failed logistical landmark was cleaned up and put back together from pre-World War II maps and graphs. Its accompanying military fortifications Siegfried and Hindenburg have always been maintained and had only to be collected and shipped (pillboxes and all) to New York where the coming summer tour of the United States originates.

     “The real draw here remains the Maginot,” said Entraylea Maginot, great-granddaughter of Andre Maginot the namesake of the inglorious ditch. “That’s what the people come out to see. It cost 3 billion francs just for the carpeting!”

     The older Maginot, who, fortunately for his Noblesse oblige, passed on some eight years before the line’s ineffectiveness was brought to light by German generals in 1940, did not know either of the other lines. It is expected that they will all get along during the travels.

     The Colorado Division of Enforcement and Tourism hopes that the inclusion of the tours and the legal sale of legal marijuana will increase tourism by 30% this summer.

– Bambi Bumble