Saphroneth
Banned
The Zone is actually quite small, and it's more accurate to say that the French plan was to fight in Belgium rather than in France. If the Germans didn't want to invade Belgium, then - that's fine, no war. (If the entirety of the WW1 fighting, meaning four years of intense artillery and poison gas bombardment, had been in Belgium, the area of the as-originally-established Zone Rouge would have been about 4% of Belgium; the area of the current zone rouge would be about 0.3% of the country.)Fair enough, my mistake. So the French plan was to make Belgium uninhabitable?
It was too small for the deployment plan the French developed.
Actually, the correct comparison is that, if the French had had more men, they'd have put them on the front line as well (if using their historical deployment plan). Their doctrine was unfortunately flawed, and saw no need for reserves (thus they didn't keep any).They needed all their troops at the front, which still failed to halt the German advance. The fact they deployed them as they did points to poor deployment plans, but the lack of reserve points to a manpower pool that was too small. If the French had put less men on the frontline, it would have been even less effective at stopping the Germans.
Remember, the Germans essentially concentrated a huge fraction of their army to punch through a very small part of the French front line, and after that they didn't face much actual fighting with that section of the German army.
Bottom line is - if the French had felt they needed a reserve, they'd have made one - for example, by using the Eschaut plan instead of Dyle-Breda.
Which only accounted for 10% of the allied troops IIRC. Coupled with the French army being undersized for their own deployment plan, I would posit the British needed more troops as well.
It's not truly fair to use numerical counts with the British force size, since the British were essentially all the equivalents of DLM or DCr (mech/armoured units). It's more accurate to say that the British provided a large fraction of the mobile "elite" units.
I judge the Maginot Line in the context of what it was designed for: the defence of France. France fell and the Maginot Line saw barely any fighting whilst it fell. Therefore, I conclude the Maginot Line was a failure.
If France didn't fall, the Maginot Line would still see barely any fighting. The Maginot Line worked as designed - the problem is with the rest of the French military.
In any case - the Maginot Line let the French thin out their forces on the German border, so they could deploy more further north. It freed up lots of precious French manpower for the task.
Without it the French would have been more vulnerable, not less.