Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France" (Yale UP, 2025)

Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France" (Yale UP, 2025)

The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. Kilometres of underground galleries led to casements hidden in the terrain, and turrets that rose from the ground to fire upon the enemy. The fortifications were invulnerable to the heaviest artillery and to chemical warfare. Despite this extensive preparation, France fell to Germany in a little under six weeks. Eight decades on, the Maginot Line is still remembered as an expensively misguided response to obvious danger. In The Maginot Line: A New History (Yale University Press, 2025), Dr. Kevin Passmore presents a groundbreaking account reevaluating the Maginot Line. He traces the controversies surrounding construction, the lives of the men who manned the forts, the impact on German-speaking inhabitants of the frontier, and the fight against espionage from within. Far from a backward step, the Maginot Line was an ambitious project of modernisation—one that was let down by strategic error and growing dissatisfaction with fortification. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Jaksot(1615)

Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumult...

2 Helmi 43min

Nicole Wegner, "Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Nicole Wegner, "Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nicole Wegner is not a book about peacekeeping practices. This is a book about storytelling, f...

1 Helmi 50min

Jeremy Black, "The Revolutionary War" (St. Augustine's Press, 2026)

Jeremy Black, "The Revolutionary War" (St. Augustine's Press, 2026)

Military historian Jeremy Black follows his engagement with the American Civil War (St. Augustine's Press, 2025) with a review of the Revolutionary War in North America and the strategic asymmetry it ...

1 Helmi 28min

Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500" (Harvard UP, 2023)

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wi...

31 Tammi 1h

Jeremy Black, "Britain's Imperial Histories (St. Augustine's Press, 2025)

Jeremy Black, "Britain's Imperial Histories (St. Augustine's Press, 2025)

Military historian Jeremy Black continues his review of the global context of martial conflict and spatial conquest into the modern era (16th-20th centuries) in Britain's Imperial Histories (St. Augu...

28 Tammi 27min

Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)

Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)

As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly to...

26 Tammi 1h 2min

Erika Quinn, "This Horrible Uncertainty: A German Woman Writes War, 1939-1948" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

Erika Quinn, "This Horrible Uncertainty: A German Woman Writes War, 1939-1948" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

Through the diaries and personal papers of a German woman, Vera Conrad, This Horrible Uncertainty: A German Woman Writes War, 1939-1948 (Berghahn Books, 2024) documents her wartime experiences and de...

25 Tammi 35min

Anna Reid, "A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution" (Basic Books, 2024)

Anna Reid, "A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution" (Basic Books, 2024)

In A Nasty Little War: The Western Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution (Basic Books, 2024), award-winning reporter Anna Reid tells the extraordinary story of how the West tried to reverse the Russ...

24 Tammi 53min

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