alternatehistory.com

Winston Churchill begins his war memoirs with-

"On Armistice Day, November 11,1918, the German armies had marched homeward in good order. "They fought well," said Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Generalissimo of the Allies, speaking in soldierly mood: "let them keep their weapons."

But he demanded that the French frontier should henceforth be the Rhine.
Germany might be disarmed; her mili- tary system shivered in frag- ments; her fortresses dis- mantled; Germany might be im- poverished; she might be loaded with measureless indemnities; she might become a prey to in- ternal feuds; but all this would pass in 10 years or in 20. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift- flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. "

The French objective since Charlemagne split up the Frankish Empire was to secure the westbank of the Rhine. The French Revolution in 3 years accomplished what the Bourbons had failed to do in 300 years. And indeed the most important conquest of the Napoleonic Era was the Republican capture of the Rhine. It was the securing of France's "natural frontiers" that made possible all of Napoleon's offensives.

In 1918 France was once again in a military position to secure the Rhine frontier. It was only the interference of Woodrow Wilson's idealism that prevented this.

I'm interested in the military aspects of Hitler's Panzers attempting a blitzkrieg across the Rhine. So suppose domestic political history plays out the same in both France and Germany 1918-1940. Assuming the French and German militaries stand roughly equivalent to OTL, how much stronger is the Rhine than the Maginot Line? For the sake of this military simulation, let us assume that France gains the entire German Rhineland and does not share it with Belgium or the Netherlands. Is France safe behind the Rhine or is that an 18th century military idea no more defensible in the 20th century than medieval castles?
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