Shocked by the carnage of World War I--much of which was waged on its own soil--France constructed a vast network of forts in the years before World War II. Among these was the Maginot Line, the last of the great gun-bearing fortifications, but France also built defenses along its coasts and in North Africa. This fully illustrated volume describes the design and construction of these fortifications, reviews French defensive doctrine and strategy, and explains why these efforts proved unable to halt the German blitzkrieg in the spring of 1940.