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New Stuff. Last week the British and French were again up against a Siegfried Stellung (see p. 28).* Four hundred and fifty miles long, it begins at the point where the Rhine enters The Netherlands, parallels the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg frontiers about eight miles behind the Our, Sauer and Moselle Rivers, then skirts the Saar to the French border, then turns west and south along the Rhine and through the Black Forest until it reaches the Swiss frontier at Lake of Constance (see map). It has been under construction for three years and at one time last spring half a million laborers worked on it 20 hours a day. "The world's cannon and artillery cannot break through it," boasted the German high command as it was being rushed toward completion this summer. But in principle the new Siegfried Stellung is just a three-ring version of Colonel Lossberg's old zonal defense system of 1918.*
The Westwall section 100 miles east-west behind the Saar Valley, along which the Allies were feeling for a soft spot, is one of the newest. Behind it valleys run into the Rhine from the North and East. But no military observer expected any immediate smashing of the Siegfried Stellung, 1939 style.
As in 1918, first comes the barbed wire; then huge anti-tank teeth and a "carpet" of mines; then the self-sufficient machine-gun and anti-tank gun emplacements, some firing by remote control. Saar-brikken lies within this defensive zone, six to 18 miles deep packed with hidden anti-aircraft gun pits. Then come the bunkers and major fortifications. The average over-all depth of the Siegfried Position is 30 miles and it embraces 22,000 separate fortified positions (see cuts pp. 30, 31).
Unlike the solid, continuous Maginot Line, the Siegfried Position carries on the old Lossberg concept of defense in depth and swift counterattack from a protected rear. A break-through would be the signal for the great rear fortifications to open up with heavy artillery fire (spare gun-barrels as well as a large supply of munitions are cached in deep caverns connected by tunnel railways). Mobile troops, hitherto protected, would thrust out at the invading flanks. The cushion-&-spring force would be terrific.
How to Take It is a question the French General Staff must have been thinking about a long time. Steady artillery pounding, while useful for protecting advancing troops, probably cannot do the most important part of the job. In an advance, artillery must advance too, and artillery advances are not measured in hours but in days. Furthermore, artillery duels between open and emplaced positions have a way of going in favor of the latter.
Best Allied bet seemed to be the destruction of the vast supply system needed to feed and munition the 1,000,000-odd men the Germans will have within and behind the Siegfried Position. This is the bombers' job. That done, infantry could then be given a chance to do what skillful infantry has done since time immemorial: take up terrain favorable to it and unfavorable to the enemy—on ridges, slopes, behind spurs—and when the counter-attackers uncoil their spring, let them have it. A bath of dragon's blood made the hero Siegfried invulnerable except for one spot on his back where a leaf stuck, and that is where Hagen's spear got him.